Dianne Salerni - The Eighth Day

Evangeline was looking really worried now, and Jax didn’t like the way the conversation was going. Time to use this spell . He edged his way around the men to get a good view of Wylit, fighting a reluctance he couldn’t explain. This has to be the moment, he thought. But for some reason, he seemed to have two left feet. He stumbled and lost his balance. Balin turned and gave him an annoyed look.

“ I’ve brought a sacrifice,” Wylit said. “Something lovely and valuable and full of life, given to me by my most trusted vassal.”

Tegan shrieked as two men grabbed her under the arms and carried her forward. Jax was thrust out of the way by an elbow to his temple that sent him staggering backward, his head spinning. “Dad!” Tegan screamed at the top of her lungs. “Dad, help me!”

Holy crap, they were going to sacrifice Tegan! Jax staggered upright, shaking his head and trying to make his lips form the words of Evangeline’s spell. But one of Wylit’s men wrapped an arm around his throat and held him tightly.

Tegan fought while her captors tied her hands. Finally one of the men clocked her so hard, she fell over on the stony surface of the pyramid and lay still.

“You can’t do this!” Evangeline shouted at Wylit. “She’s just a girl!”

“She is just a girl,” Wylit agreed. “Not enough of a sacrifice for this ritual. You must give up something, too. Perhaps a boy to go with my girl?”

Jax was dragged forward and forced to his knees beside Tegan. “Sorry, boy,” Balin said from across the summit. Jax heard Evangeline scream at Wylit to let him go, but all he could think as they wound the twine around his wrists was how he’d blown his chance. Evangeline had given him one weapon to use, planted it in his head like an itch he couldn’t scratch. It would take only a few words and a hand gesture to release it, and now his hands were tied behind his back.

The Balin brothers, meanwhile, had taken hold of Evangeline. “Did you think I didn’t know your plans?” Wylit snarled at her. “I see the future. All possible futures, and in every single one, you are a traitor to your race.” The older Balin wrapped Evangeline’s right wrist in twine, binding it to the iron filigree of the table, while the younger one held her other hand for the same treatment.

“You’re insane!” Evangeline screamed. “You deserve to be imprisoned here.” She started to shout something Jax didn’t understand, something in another language, but John Balin stuffed a cloth into her mouth and secured it with a long strip torn from a hotel bedsheet.

“You’ll cast the spells I want you to cast and no others,” Wylit warned her. “I know what you planned, and who you planned it with.” He hauled up the skirt of Evangeline’s dress, uncovering Riley’s dagger sheathed against her leg. “Another Pendragon blade!” he crowed, drawing it out. He laid the dagger on the altar beside Excalibur and turned to Evangeline. “Do you think that’s enough to invoke the Pendragon bloodline for this spell? You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there’s more on the way.”

A car horn rose above Wylit’s voice. Jax turned his head to look over the side of the pyramid.

A black Land Rover with its high beams on careened down the Avenue of the Dead and screeched to a halt. The driver’s door flew open, and a man with black hair except for one white patch on the side of his head leaped out.

“I’ve seen this already in my dreams,” Wylit said, staring at the sky and not bothering to look. “A devastating betrayal by a broken and bitter man—and a gift for me.”

Miller Owens threw open the back door of the car and immediately had to duck. A pair of legs kicked at him viciously. Miller warded off the blows and backed away. Some of Wylit’s men on the ground ran to assist, grabbing the occupant of the backseat by his feet and hauling him out so roughly, his head hit the bottom of the car and then the road.

Even at this great distance, Jax had no problem seeing it was Riley, bound and gagged and delivered to his enemies by his friend.

JAX PRAYEDit was a ruse, but when they finally dragged Riley to the top of the pyramid, his hopes faded. Riley was bound with his hands behind his back and a cloth rag in his mouth. He was bleeding from the nose and a cut over one eye.

Miller mounted the summit behind him, looking winded and sweaty in a different concert T-shirt and the same cargo pants. Wylit’s men took their hands off the prisoner for just a second, and Riley launched himself at Miller with a growl. They sprawled across the cobblestones, but Miller threw him off and climbed to his feet. “Not such a hotshot without your voice, are you?” Miller snarled, kicking Riley in the gut.

“That’s enough, Owens.” John Balin checked the prisoner’s bindings to make sure he was secure. Miller’s kick had knocked the wind out of Riley, and Balin didn’t have any trouble hauling him over beside Jax. “Go keep an eye out below,” Balin snapped at his brother. He looked nervous to have so many men jammed on the platform.

Angus and several others retreated to the lower level, leaving Balin and one other man, plus Miller, who bowed to Wylit. “My lord,” he said. “I bring you the last of the Pendragons.”

Wylit gripped Evangeline’s chin and forced her to look at Riley. “An even more fitting sacrifice than your vassal, don’t you think?”

“We can spare the boy, then.” Balin lifted Jax to his feet and pulled him backward. Jax felt dizzied by this sudden reversal. An ally had delivered Riley to be slaughtered, and an enemy was trying to save Jax’s life.

Seeing Jax get a reprieve, Tegan tried to stand up. Miller glanced at Jax, then grabbed Tegan by her tied hands and the top of her head and shoved her down beside Riley. “You stay where you are. Sacrificing a pretty girl is traditional.” Tegan shuddered at his touch and sank into a heap. Jax glared at Miller, hating him more than ever.

“We have assembled in this place of desolation,” Wylit shouted, raising his arms to the sky, “to defy the eighth-day prison! Hear the words of Myrddin Wylit and heed my will!” He drew Excalibur across the palm of his hand. “My blood comes from an ancient line of sorcerers.”

Without warning, he slashed Evangeline’s left arm. Jax’s hands clenched, and Riley jerked in reaction, but Evangeline didn’t flinch. She stared at Wylit with fury.

Wylit smeared his hand across her wound, then raised it to the sky. “This is the blood of a direct descendant of the spell caster who wrought this prison. The power of our blood will push the walls of this time outward until it is a prison no more. At our command, the eighth day will swell until it consumes all the time on earth. The eighth day will be the only day.”

Evangeline shook her head. Although her mouth was gagged and her wrists were tied, she made a rude gesture with both hands. Jax almost laughed. It wasn’t something he would’ve expected from Evangeline. But Wylit whirled around and swung Excalibur down so quickly, she barely got her fingers out of the way. “Interfere with my spell,” Wylit hissed, “and I’ll chop off the bits of you I don’t need.”

She wasn’t just being defiant, Jax realized. Melinda had told him that intentions and symbols were important in magic, and Evangeline had said something similar in the hotel when she lit a candle in front of a mirror to work her spell. Evangeline’s gesture was meant to oppose Wylit’s statements. She was working against him in every small way she could.

Wylit held the iron blade aloft. “I also bear the blade of King Arthur Pendragon, named Excalibur, on which he bound this spell fifteen hundred years ago.”