David Coe - His Father's eyes

The expression on my father’s face nearly stopped me: disapproval, fright, even disgust. “Justis, what are you doing?” But I saw no other way to stop them.

Seven elements: the glow of the moon brightening the eastern horizon, the shape and color of it as it would appear in mere seconds, the land beneath my feet, my mind, my magic, a shield against the phasing, and my blood.

Magic prickled painfully on my arms and neck and down my spine. The blood on my arm was wiped away, and a weight I hadn’t known was there lifted from my mind, like haze blown away by a clean desert wind. Everything was clearer: my vision, my thoughts, my emotions.

“Very good, Jay,” Patty called to me. “You see it now, don’t you? The power of blood magic. It’s like nothing you’ve experienced before, right?”

“You think I’m one of you now.” I shook my head. “You’re wrong. When have you ever used your own blood for a spell? When have you accepted that the power you want demands a cost that you have to pay on your own, without taking it from others?”

More blood seeped from the cut on my arm.

My fist, her face, my blood.

The spell smashed through whatever wardings she had conjured. She staggered back, falling onto her rear. I had aimed the blow with care; didn’t want her using a bloodied nose to strengthen spells of her own.

I saw Paco, Rolon, and Luis cut themselves and cast. Hain and Witcombe went down. Jacinto didn’t draw blood. I couldn’t read his expression, but I guessed that he felt as my dad did about what I had done. That was all right with me.

Patty clambered to her feet again. There was something in her hand, and I wondered for the span of a heartbeat if it was a pistol. Only when she mashed it down on the head of the man next to her did I understand that it was a rock. The man fell to the ground, and she followed him down, her blade flashing with the last rays of the sun.

She laid the knife blade along his throat.

“I’ll kill him,” she said. “You think your own blood is more powerful than someone else’s. Maybe it is. But do you know how much blood I can take from one man? And do you know what I can do with it when my magic is enhanced by the pull of the moon?”

“How many people are you going to kill, Patty?”

“As many as I have to! You think you’ve found some secret formula, don’t you? But your spell won’t last long. You think you’re the first weremyste to use blood against the phasing? You’re not. The spell Saorla put on us is more powerful by far than what you’ve done. You’ve bought yourself a few minutes, that’s all.”

I wanted to argue with her, but already I could feel the weight of the moon pressing down on me once more. She was right. I’d won a moment’s reprieve. The moon wasn’t even up yet and my spell was failing. I suppose a runecrafter could keep the moon at bay all night long, if he was willing to bleed himself to death.

“I can cast again,” I said. “I can keep myself sane long enough to destroy you.”

She shook her head. “You can’t. I’ll bleed this one, and then bleed your friends. I’ll bleed my friends if I have to. Saorla and I have plans. Nothing else matters.” Her gaze flicked in Jacinto’s direction.

Saorla and I have plans. Once more I thought of Patty’s comment about not needing Witcombe’s money for much longer. She was the competition Amaya had been talking about at his house. I doubt that he knew this, but I was sure of it. And though I wanted to laugh away the possibility-Patty Hesslan, a crime boss? A rival to Jacinto Amaya?-seeing her holding a knife to the throat of a man who was ostensibly her ally in this fight made the possibility seem all too real.

She gave a shrill whistle. The coyote-Hacker-lifted his ears at the sound and trotted back to her.

Patty grinned. “More blood.” She eyed my dad and me, and then looked over at Jacinto and the others. “Are you willing to kill him to save yourselves?”

“So you’ll kill anyone you have to. Just like you killed Heather Royce.”

Witcombe was on her feet again, seeming unsteady and uncertain, her gaze flicking back and forth between Patty and me.

“How do you feel about that, Missus Witcombe? Are you ready to help Patty kill again, like she killed Heather?”

“She did what she had to,” Witcombe said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“So you approve of what she did to Heather? It didn’t seem like it that night.”

“I was upset. What happened was regrettable. But . . . but I understand now.”

I nodded. “You heard?” I called.

“We heard.”

Witcombe whirled. Patty turned her head sharply, searching for the source of that voice.

Three elements: the camouflage spell, an end to the conjuring, and Kona and Kevin, who had been hidden by it.

They were warded already, and had been since our conversation in the parking garage. A spell from Witcombe forced them back a step, but did no damage. Kona raised her pistol and fired.

“No, Kona!”

The shot rebounded back at her but missed. She ducked belatedly.

But while Patty and Witcombe were still distracted, I cut myself and cast again.

Patty cried out, dropped the knife, which I had heated, and watched as it melted into the desert dirt.

The moon peeked over a ridge of distant mountains, blood red and huge. I felt my thoughts slipping away, slick, like they were coated in oil. I cast the shielding spell again and knew another moment of clarity. But I was more clouded than I had been, and I knew that even this moment of relative sanity wouldn’t last long.

But I saw as well that Patty and Witcombe weren’t doing much more than staring at that rising moon.

“What have you done?” Saorla demanded.

I thought she was talking to me, but she wasn’t. She was facing Namid and the other runemystes.

“We have removed your spell,” Namid said. “Blood of the innocent should not be used to help others escape the laws of magic. Your weremancers will experience the phasing as they are meant to. At least for this night. Take them and go.”

“No!” I said, the word ripped from my chest.

This time they all looked at me.

“Patty and Hain and Witcombe-they’re all guilty of murder. They need to . . . to . . .” I was having trouble keeping my thoughts on track. I could barely remember what I had just said. And I had cast a spell. It was supposed to help in some way. “They’re murderers.” I stared past the woman in the green dress, to two people who were walking toward us. Kona. One of them was Kona.

“He’s right,” she said. “The two women are wanted for the murder of Heather Royce, and the man is wanted in connection with a murder that took place a few nights ago in Sweetwater Park.”

“I will not give them up,” Saorla said. “Let me leave this place, Namid’skemu, with these three who serve me.” She indicated Hain, Witcombe, and Patty. “And I will allow the Fearsson men to live.”

“They’re not yours to bargain away,” Kona said to the runemyste, her voice so cold I wondered if Namid would ice over.

“Perhaps not,” Namid said. “But with Saorla’s help they are too powerful for your jails to hold.”

Kona aimed her weapon at Patty. “There are ways around that.”

“She’s still warded,” I said. “They all are.”

Kona kept her weapon trained on Patty, but she pursed her lips, clearly unsure of where that left her. I hated to admit that Saorla and her weremancers had us beaten. But it was true: They were warded-against bullets, against magic, and, no doubt, against a host of other assaults as well.

But, as it happened, not against everything.

I had forgotten about Hacker. It seemed as though everyone had after Patty called for him. He remained in coyote form, his yellow eyes gleaming with moonlight, his fur tinged with red in the rich light of the setting sun. Now, with a snarl that came from deep in his chest, he leaped at Hain, who was still on his knees, and who, long ago, had spelled Hacker, robbing him of his freedom, making him little more than a slave to the moon and to magic.