D. Jackson - A Plunder of Souls

“Put down your knife,” Ramsey said.

Gavin hesitated, his blade hand trembling.

“I said put it down!”

Beads of sweat broke out on the old man’s brow, but the knife slipped from his fingers.

“Now…” Ramsey glanced around and pointed to a shade just a few strides from where Gavin stood. She was hideous; the skin on her face was putrified and pitted. Her dress was stained through from her rotting body. “Embrace her.”

“No!” Ethan shouted.

Ramsey’s blade flashed. “ Vola ex cruore evocatum. ”

More crates soared toward them. Ethan had no choice but to protect Janna and shield his head and neck from the containers.

Peering out at Gavin as the crates rained down on him, Ethan saw the man face the shade. His entire body appeared to be quaking; Ethan thought that he was fighting Ramsey’s control spell. He didn’t take a step forward, but the ghostly form continued to drift toward him. She held her arms open, a leering grin on her gruesome visage.

“Embrace her!” Ramsey shouted again.

Gavin’s arms began to open, slowly, as if they were being prised apart. He squeezed his eyes shut, tears coursing down his cheeks.

The last of the crates tumbled over Ethan’s back, and he jumped to his feet.

But by then the shade had reached Gavin. At her first touch, the old man screamed, his head thrown back, his face a mask of agony. The shade enveloped him in her grasp, cutting short Gavin’s howl. His trembling ceased. The shade seemed to pass through him, and when she had cleared the back of his body, Gavin fell forward, as rigid as an iron post. He made no effort to protect himself as he fell. Ethan guessed that he was dead before he hit the ground.

Reaching Gavin at last, Ethan found him frigid to the touch. He turned him over. The man’s face remained twisted from his final moments of torment. The sweat on his brow had turned to ice.

“Kaille!” Mariz called.

He and Janna were standing again, but the other shades continued to converge on them. If Ethan didn’t return to them now, he might not be able to at all. They would be unable to conjure together.

With a last glance down at Gavin, Ethan hurried back to the other conjurers. Patience’s ghost was but a short distance from them. He stared keenly at her, hoping that he might see some hint of recognition in her gleaming eyes, some sign that Ramsey’s control over her was less than absolute. But she barely noticed him; she gave no sign that she knew him for the friend he had been to her when she lived.

“What spell do you wanna try now?” Janna asked, her voice low. “Not that it’s gonna work.” Her eyes met Ethan’s. “He’s too strong, Kaille.”

“Aye, I am,” Ramsey said. “And when all of you are dead, you and Gavin will join Patience among my army of shades. With the ghosts of five conjurers under my control, I’ll be able to do whatever I want. No other conjurers will be able to stand against me, and no spells will be beyond my abilities.” He smiled. “I’d enlist Gavin in my cause now, but as you know, the process is rather involved, and I doubt you’d grant me the opportunity.”

“What spell?” Janna asked again, with more urgency.

You should try something like this, Ramsey had said when he threw the first barrel at them. And he was right. Spells aimed at Ramsey wouldn’t work; he was warded. Sephira’s bullet hadn’t harmed him, which meant that barrels and crates might not even work. But something similar to Ramsey’s third detection spell could.

“The floor,” Ethan mouthed silently.

Comprehension crept over Janna’s face.

The three of them cut themselves. “ Aperi hiatum ex cruore evocatum. ” Open chasm, conjured from blood.

The rumble of their spell was swallowed by the rending of wood and stone as the floor and ground beneath Ramsey’s feet split open. The captain tried to leap to safety, but this once Ethan, Janna, and Mariz had caught him unawares, and the opening had formed too quickly. He teetered at the edge before falling in.

The opening was not deep, and the harbor lay beneath the warehouse and the wharf; the fall wouldn’t kill him. But Ethan hoped it would give them time to cast a second spell that would.

“Now close it!” Mariz said. “We can crush him, or drown him.”

“No!” Ethan shook his head. “Patience and the others! I don’t want them lost!”

“They’re lost already!” Janna said. “This is our one chance. He has to die, Kaille. There’s no other way.”

Ethan stared at her, his heart laboring. Had it been anyone else, he would have argued further. He had sworn that he would do all he could to help those whose graves had been violated. He had promised Ruth and Darcy that he would not allow any harm to come to Patience. But after watching what he had done to Gavin, he knew that there could be no reasoning with the man. Janna was right: This might well be their only chance to finish him.

“Very well,” he whispered, the words like shards of glass in his mouth.

They cut themselves again. “ Occlude hiatum ex cruore evocatum. ” Close chasm, conjured from blood.

Their spell pulsed, and the gap in the middle of the warehouse began to close, like a wound healing under a spellmaker’s touch.

Sephira and her men continued to battle Ramsey’s crew, but Ethan could see that the sailors were falling back. Even the shades had halted their advance. Without Ramsey to guide them-

Before Ethan could finish the thought, the building’s floor, which had almost mended itself, exploded. Ethan and his companions were tossed back and slammed to the ground. Splintered wood and jagged pieces of fill and rock rained down on them, and a cloud of dust billowed through the warehouse.

Ethan pushed himself to his feet. Through the haze of debris, he saw a blood-streaked arm emerge from the crater that had formed in the warehouse floor. A moment later a leg hooked itself over the lip of the hole.

Ethan stumbled to where Janna lay and tried to rouse her. There was a gash on her temple, and the wound on her chest had started to bleed again. She was covered with dust and splinters. He could see that she still breathed, but she didn’t stir. A short distance away, Mariz sat up and felt around for his spectacles. Finding them, he pushed them onto the bridge of his nose and looked around.

When he spotted Ethan and Janna, he asked, “Is she dead?”

“No. But I can’t wake her.”

A ragged cheer went up from Ramsey’s crew. Ethan knew why before he looked.

Ramsey stood beside the pit from which he had emerged, his fists clenched, his clothes soaked and ragged. An instant later, the blood vanished from his arm. Fire shot up out of the floor all around Ethan, the blaze building until it towered over his head. Flames licked at Janna as well. He pulled her away from the nearest of them, though in truth, the circle of fire was so tight that he couldn’t do much to protect her. The heat from the flames was almost unbearable.

“Kaille!” Mariz called.

“We’re all right. For now at least.”

“I cannot move,” Mariz said. “There is fire all around me.”

Of course. If they couldn’t see each other, they couldn’t conjure together and Ramsey would have nothing to fear from them. Ethan had actually allowed himself to believe that they had defeated the captain. He’d been a fool.

And yet, as bad as circumstances seemed, an instant later they grew far worse.

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye; a variation in the circle of flame within which he was trapped. An insubstantial hand. Then an arm. And soon the form of a shade had shuffled through the fire, seemingly unaffected by the heat. It advanced on him and on Janna, who still had not woken.