Stacia Kane - Unholy Magic

Excellent. “Okay. Oliver, get them all marked. I’m going to start the cast, okay?”

“How bout I go along, me?” Lex had his knife out and ready; beneath his shirt she saw the bulge of a gun.

Terrible snorted, turned away. Chess ignored him.

“Yeah, okay. But no talking. I need to focus.”

She set up her stang facing east on the pavement, fixing the iron base and placing the candles on either side.

Something was wrong here. She didn’t know what, but something was definitely not right, and it was more than the fear creeping up her spine or the misery over what had happened with Terrible—shit, did she really think he was going to just forgive her, after what she’d done to him?—or simple sadness over the deaths of so many people.

No. Something was wrong, and she didn’t know what it was. But she had a distinct feeling she was about to find out.

The bag of salt she’d brought, big and heavy as it was, still wouldn’t be big enough to cast as thick a line as she would like all the way around the building, and the intermittent breeze wouldn’t help. She’d have to drop it thin and hope she could power it enough to hold.

Another psychopomp would have been nice, too. Oh well. Nothing could ever be easy—

The shouts behind her hit her ears at the same time her other senses rang angry alarms through her entire body. Too easy. It was too easy, wasn’t it, to assume that one sigil was enough? To assume that whatever enchantment hung in the air around this place would be dispelled with one stupid sigil?

Yeah, it totally was. Her upper body twisted, and she saw the fight begin.

Men. The men standing in line, going from docile lust zombies to angry mob in the space of a second. Men in robes like the one worn by Kemp at the Crematorium poured from the doorway of the building. Not so many, maybe five or six in all, but their power hit her like a fist in the stomach. They were all hosting, all of them, given superior strength by the spirits sharing their bodies. And fuck, when they died, those spirits would rise—

She couldn’t help. Couldn’t do anything but cast the circle as fast as she could in order to get to work. Without the circle, the psychopomp could escape, could run loose in the city and take whatever souls it wanted. Could do murder—murder for which she’d be liable when they caught the psychopomp and discovered it was hers.

“Septikosh, septikosh,” she murmured, wanting to stay quiet and keep herself out of their focus as long as possible. Beside her Lex pulled out his gun, caught her eye; she nodded and kept moving, letting the salt trickle from her fingers.

They rounded the corner, Chess keeping her mind focused as much as she could on her circle, on the words of power spilling from her tight throat. Energy stood her hair on end. The power in this place, oh shit …

Every step she took felt like a step toward her own death. Her vision darkened around the edges; it wasn’t just the strength of the magic here, it was the sheer filthy malevolence of it. Protections were all over the damn place, no surprise there—that was what set the men out front off, wasn’t it, they probably had an alarm set for unfamiliar magic—and she wasn’t sure how easily they’d break, if they would break at all.

She’d have to deal with the protections or wards when they came up. If she made it that far. She still didn’t know who was inside watching, where Kemp and Vanita were.

Around the next corner, to the back of the building. No lights here, and the moon hid somewhere in the broken concrete skyline. Shadows threatened and beckoned along the patchy bricks on the ground, turning the mundane shapes into looming hulks waiting to leap out at her.

Her hair brushed against her face, and she paused just long enough to yank a ponytail holder out of her pocket and use it. The movement shifted her gaze to the right … to the high-wheeled Dumpster against the wall … to the arm hanging out of it.

She’d seen a Dumpster like this by the Crematorium, hadn’t she? Of course. Those missing bodies had to go somewhere, right? And she’d wondered herself why the killers hadn’t taken the prostitutes there. They were too busy dumping the men, it appeared. Their Dumpster was full.

With that macabre realization came the faint stench of decay, one with which she’d become way too familiar a few months before. She tried to ignore it and kept going, her steps slow and steady, her voice still calm. Behind her the line coalesced. Her luck and her salt were both holding out for the moment.

Lex moved constantly at her side, scanning the area, staying alert. It reassured her. She let herself focus on the magic and forget the rest.

It was coming, growing inside her and in the air around them. Sweat broke out on her skin. Her heart pounded, her body itched like she’d gone too long between doses. If there’d been any food in her stomach, she probably would have brought it back up; every step was like walking through deep slime sucking at her legs, trying to pull her down.

Faintly over the beat of her heart and her own voice came shouts, the men fighting in front of the building. Another problem to ignore, at least until she finally left the alley and walked back into the meager light.

Bodies in front of her, surging and tumbling, anger and violence heavy in the air. It forced its choking way into her, sent adrenaline pounding through her veins. Not good. Magic required calm, required focus, and showing any sort of emotion around ghosts was a bad idea. Especially fear.

And ghosts there were. Either some of the house guards were dead, or they’d summoned more ghosts to fight with them, or both. Translucent forms flitted in and out of the crowd, appearing and disappearing.

Not for the first time she was thankful Oliver was there. Without him … Without him everyone might have died. Would have died, because of her and her lack of foresight. She’d given him some graveyard dirt and asafetida, but it hadn’t occurred to her to hand it out to the others. That was what too much emotion could do. Kill people.

Lex tensed. The gun cocked. Chess held out her hand, caught his eye, and shook her head. Not until they were seen.

Which would be in about ten seconds. No getting out of it; to finish the cast she needed to walk awfully close to the fight.

Blue light sparked from her fingers as she etched a quick sigil into the air, an attempt at rendering Lex and herself unobtrusive. Whether it worked she couldn’t tell, not with so much energy pounding through her already.

They made it within a few feet before they were spotted. One of the guards spun around, his mouth opening, hands already rising. In one of them a dagger caught the edge of the moon.

Her left hand was still full of salt. With her right she grabbed some graveyard dirt.

The gun went off. The sound barely hit her ears when a hole appeared in the guard’s forehead, his features below it fixed in surprise.

The entity he hosted slipped from his falling body, rage blasting from it like cold from a high-octane freezer. Chess forced herself to stand still, to wait, until it got close enough for her to hit it with the dirt.

The respite only lasted a second. If their mere presence hadn’t been enough to attract attention, the gunshot certainly was. The fighters turned en masse and came at them, and only the knowledge that if she gave up now, she’d only have to come back later kept her from running away.