Darkest Misery (24 page)

Finally, a chance to do some damage. Ignoring my bleeding arm, I ran to the nearest glyph before they could stop me and swept it with my foot.

Or tried to. My foot collided with an invisible wall, and the force of the impact sent me bouncing back. What in the world? I kicked out a second time to no avail.

My heart seemed to beat in my throat. Frantically, I tried once more, and once more my foot smacked into some kind of magical shield. I pressed my hands against the area, banged on it with my fist.

I got nowhere. My lungs gasped for air, but there was no shortage. I only felt like I couldn't breathe because panic was setting in. I was trapped, and I screamed with rage.

Raj's face was all amusement. He smirked as I pounded on the barrier between us. “Be glad you're not frozen.”

I spun around in time to see Mitch carried into a similar spot across from me. The fury pulled off the curse once Mitch was inside the trap. Released from his paralysis, he made the same mistake I did. He wailed against the walls holding him. I yelled his name, but Mitch didn't seem to hear me.

Raj shook his head. “Don't bother. Or, well, bother if you must, but all you're going to do is give the rest of us a headache, and it won't dissuade us from our purpose. Although you might get a sore throat.”

“Fuck you.” I threw myself at the barrier, though I knew it was pointless. For my useless rage, all I got was a banged-up shoulder.

“You become most inarticulate when you're angry.”

“I said, fuck you.”

Raj signaled to someone behind me. “I heard you the first time, but go on. You're adorable when you lose your shit. Did Lucen ever tell you that?”

My hands clenched into fists. Every muscle within me was contracting. “I'm going to kill you when I get out of here.”

“And you'll fail, but I'll enjoy your attempt.”

I felt it this time. A sharp sensation in my skull. A red-hot poker to my soul.

I screamed again as Raj's magic tried working its way into me. This wasn't like a sylph's cold, slithering breach of my defenses or Claudius's seductive, magical warmth. This was an incandescent sledgehammer to my brain.

So that's what Raj had been doing all this time. Goading me. Working me up to this moment. My instinct was to resist, to fight him, and all the protective glyphs the Gryphons had drawn on me activated at the thought. I could feel them heating up like brands on my skin, claiming me.

But why? Wasn't this what I'd told Mitch would be our advantage? This was what we needed to do. I had to let myself go, let Raj into my head. He was no Claudius, after all, though he was likely far more powerful than any other pred I'd tried my trick on. Nonetheless, I was confident I could take control of him. And he'd built this cage, or parts of it. With his power in my grasp, maybe I could break free.

Calm, I willed myself. I took a deep breath and stopped resisting. Pressed against the magical wall, I closed my eyes and welcomed Raj's power inside. Immediately, the hammer to my brain stopped. He flowed in smoothly. Hot and irritable, yes, but far more controlled than I'd have expected.

And for a second, it occurred to me to wonder why. I mean, Raj should know better. He'd even told me he'd seen what I did at the Match. Thus Raj should know the perils of making me his addict. So why risk it now?

The question vanished in a tidal wave of power that dropped me to my knees. My muscles relaxed, and my body swelled with it. The head rush left me dizzy, and oh God—the head rush.

I tried to stand, but my legs couldn't hold me. The room swayed in my vision. Raj's power didn't tingle on my skin. It crawled and sparked so heavily that I swore I could see it dancing along my arm hair. I was drunk. I was lost as though hit with a disorientation curse. I was high and yet knocked on my ass.

I tried to funnel the power into something I could grasp, to channel it and maintain my grip on my body, but I flailed and failed. I was on the cold floor, yelling before I knew what happened to me. Caught somewhere between ecstasy and pain.

And Raj's voice was there with me, in my head, and I couldn't toss him out because I couldn't break the bond. I'd never been able to break it, only to convince the pred to do so.

But Raj was not convinced.

“You know what goes into spells, Jessica?” His voice was between my ears, a disembodied intruder. My mind reeled, and I clawed at my hair, wanting to shove him out. My own will had never felt so violated, not even when Claudius had worked his mojo on me.

Was this what addicts had to deal with? Because holy shit. I'd never disparage one again. In fact, I'd smack Lucen myself if I learned he got into his addicts' heads this way.

“Dragon scales and sprite tears,” Raj continued, “and salamander fire and phoenix eggs. But it's not only the lesser creatures we use, is it? It's harpy spit and satyr sweat and goblin piss and the sylphs' finest hairs. We are magic, and did it never occur to you that you are too? You are a magic like none other, so rare because you're neither one thing nor another. You're a bridge between species, and bridges are paths by which other magic can travel. Watch them, Jessica. Look to your left and see what you can do.”

I didn't want to look, but Raj's presence or some sick masochism compelled me.

Three fury addicts huddled against the crumbling wall nearby. Two of the three had collapsed to their knees, and as I watched, the third fell on top of them. In the flickering candlelight, the shadows across their features grew long, and their skin turned dark and sallow. Their eyes seemed to sink into their heads, and their hair lost its color. The one in the middle's began to crumble and fall out.

“No.” I gasped for breath, forcing myself to sit. I didn't understand how this was happening, but what was happening—that much I could tell. Someone was draining these addicts, turning them to ghouls, and I had a very bad feeling that someone was me. Through my bond with Raj, the power he fed me wasn't his at all. It was the addicts'. “Stop it!”

Raj laughed, and as he did, more power surged into my body, overloading my nerve endings. I screamed again, unable to control the euphoria that sent me crashing back to the floor. “Not yet, but soon. Do you understand now, Jessica?”

I clutched my head, mentally kicking and punching Raj, for all the good it did. Once or twice, I swore I did see him flinch, but he recovered quickly. “I understand you're a murdering asshole.”

I slammed my feet into the barrier, and this time it gave but only a little. I felt it stretch around my boots, no longer a hard wall but a rubbery one. Hope swelled in my chest, and despite what my brain wanted, I sucked in harder on Raj's magic. Dizziness overwhelmed me, but once I regained my balance, I pressed my advantage.

The barrier stretched but didn't break. More power. Whatever the cost, I needed more.

“Magic and anti-magic cancel each other out,” Raj said. “But you're more like an anti-addict. I channel the power I get from my addicts into you, and it creates an explosion, a powerful burst of magic. Not as much, as say, what can be stored in a Vessel, but good enough.”

“Fuck. You.” I lashed out at the barrier again, my lungs expanding with another breath filled with power.

From the corner of my eye, the addicts toppled the rest of the way to the ground, though technically they were no longer addicts, but ghouls. Even I could see that from where I'd been trapped. They were empty shells, clinging to life.

“Just like that.” Raj closed his eyes as though my cursing and the addicts' pain gave him great pleasure. “You're the one killing them, you know. I only feed their power to you, and you've given us almost enough. You and Mitchell.”

I was in the middle of drawing a new breath, and I stopped, my blood turning cold. Horrified, I stared at the addict-ghouls a moment longer, then spun around and finally witnessed the activity in the rest of the room. Furies crowded around the Vessels, reciting words I couldn't hear, messing with the glyphs in ways I couldn't make out. And Mitch was curled on the stone floor, addicted like me, in agony like me.

This was my fault. I'd told him we could use the bond to our advantage, but we were being used again. Just like the furies had been using me all along. I still couldn't get the upper hand. I'd walked into yet another trap.

A scream ripped from my throat, and my mind tore into two. I wanted to expel Raj from my brain—I needed to before it was too late—but my impotent rage only fed his hold over me. While I pushed on him, he pushed right back. I flung my body over and over into the barrier. If I couldn't shake him, I could use him to fight back. But the next wave of power sent me hurtling across the invisible cell with the blowback. White light flashed before my eyes, and my nerves shrieked. My body felt as though it were flying apart.

Then everything disappeared.

Chapter Thirty

Awareness returned to me all at once. I was awake. I was alive, and I was fucking terrified.

I was also back in the room from earlier, the one where I'd found Mitch. Breathing hard, I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling my eerily fast heartbeat. The open window gaped before me, and the night was dark, though brighter than the room. I had to get up, had to do something, but I took a moment to breathe in and out, trying to calm down.

Finally, my pulse slowed to something approximating normal, and my brain began to sort through what had happened. The blinding light. The rush of power that was more like being run over by a tractor trailer than anything else.

The Pit had opened. I was certain of it. Hell, when I closed my eyes, I could swear the air felt different, as though an electric charge coursed through it. It was how the air sometimes felt during a storm.

So why was the night so quiet? The death and destruction I expected—where were they?

I shoved these thoughts aside. I knew I wasn't wrong about the spell's success, and dwelling on it only increased my anxiety. Whatever the reason for the stillness beyond my window, I'd be thankful. In the meantime, I had to recover and get out of here so I could warn people.

I had to recover? I lifted my hands from my chest and stared at the spot where Raj had sliced me open, but the wound had healed near completely. In fact, I felt fine.

It made no sense. I'd lost consciousness. I should probably have a headache or dizziness or something to indicate what I'd gone through, but instead I felt good. Better than good—I felt like I could run a marathon. I felt, well, an awful lot like I'd expected to feel once Raj addicted me and I'd reversed the bond.

Like a freaking demigod.

I sprang to my feet, testing whether my emotional state was related to my physical one, and I was pleased to do so effortlessly. I had energy, and tons of it.

Yet Raj was no longer in my head. No bond remained between us. I waved my arms around, power tingling as it flowed through my limbs. It had to be some kind of residual effect. He'd pumped so much magic into me that whatever he'd done with it hadn't used it all up.

Whatever he'd done. I bit my lip, parsing through his words. He'd used me to create some kind of magical explosion. Somehow I could channel massive amounts of power and—do what? I was fairly sure I hadn't done anything myself, but perhaps that glyph of glyphs had. Just like the Vessels had done nothing but be a power receptacle, I'd been filled with magical juju, and the furies had extracted it.

I shivered at the thought. So this was why they'd wanted me alive. Had they known all along they wouldn't be able to get their hands on the five Vessels, or had they been keeping me as a backup plan?

And did it matter? They'd used me in so many ways. Since I'd failed to stop them, I had to make them pay. But that seemed even more impossible than stopping them had.

My head didn't hurt, but I could feel the pressure of these thoughts building inside me. I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting to keep a grip on my emotions. I was down, but not out. Not yet. For whatever reason, the furies still hadn't killed me. I would make them regret that.

Somehow. Eventually.

And I would not think about the Pit being open because it paralyzed me with fear when I did.

So I'd think about what I could control, like getting out of here. Warning the Gryphons. Finding out what had happened to Mitch and Devon. Killing Raj.

Yeah, that last one had moved to the top of my to-do list. If I didn't accomplish it before I left, when would I get another chance?

A bright light flashed outside the window, and I stuck my head out as a second one followed. Lightning. I gripped the windowsill, my stomach seeming to curl into a ball within me. The stars were gone, and the reddish light dancing across the sky was unlike any lightning I'd ever seen. I mean, for starters, it was red as though the clouds were bleeding. And while the flashes themselves appeared only sporadically, the overall ruddy glow remained, hovering over the grounds.

A new flash sent me ducking back inside the room, and I debated my options. Freaky as the red glow was, maybe I could use it to my advantage. Mitch had led me to believe it would be pitch-black outside, but instead I had light.

The euphoric part of me was tempted to just swing my legs over the windowsill and drop to the ground. It was entirely certain my muscles could stand it, but my better sense wasn't so sure. It was a long drop, and if I landed wrong, I could break bones. Magically sober Jess would think attempting it was crazy.

I was, however, buzzing with power and no small amount of panic.

Bad Jess. Try the door first.

The door. Of course. I spun around, utterly convinced that in my juiced-up state I could kick it down, and I tripped over something lying in front of it. Mitch.

I swore, bracing myself against the door to keep from falling over, but Mitch merely grunted. Kneeling, I poked him a couple times then checked his wrist when he didn't respond.

“Mitch?” His pulse was steady, but he was out cold. I patted his cheek then poked him harder, but he didn't stir again.

Shit. Well, I wasn't about to leave him here. Looping my arms around his shoulders, I dragged him away from the door. He seemed to weigh scarcely more than a feather. Convenient, but I suspected once this power surge wore off, I'd need to soak a week in a hot tub, followed by a good massage to get my muscles back in order. Especially if I had to carry a full-grown man out of this place, which was exactly what I was planning.

But first, I had to find out if I could actually leave.

Kicking down doors always looked so easy in movies, but I seriously doubted it would be easy in real life. And this door was solid, though the lock appeared cheap. Preparing myself for imminent pain, I envisioned directing my excess power into my leg.

Then I kicked. It was a damn good kick, maybe not in form, but in strength. The door agreed, and it shuddered as it flew open. I gaped at it for a moment, half shocked that my maneuver worked, half listening for the sound of pounding footsteps. An addict army on the way to shut me down.

I heard nothing. That in itself was creepy after everything that had happened.

Maybe the furies were busy with the next stage of their plans. And the addicts—wait. Many of the addicts were dead, or as good as. A pang of horror shuddered through me as I recalled how Raj had sacrificed three in whatever he'd done to me. Presumably, another three had died or turned to ghouls for Mitch. Just how many had been here to begin with?

Don't think. Just move.

Right. Of all the people who deserved to be mourned in this tragedy, six fury addicts weren't doing it for me. I'd say their deaths belonged on Raj and his co-conspirators' consciences, except I didn't believe for a second they had any.

I crouched down by Mitch, whispering his name, and he moaned this time. “Mitch, you there?”

One eye opened, then another. “Jess? What happened?” He darted up so suddenly our skulls collided.

I cursed, sitting back on my heels. “You're awake then? Good.”

Mitch rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, I feel strange.”

“But good and energetic, right?”

“Kind of. What happened?”

I bounded back to my feet. “I'll explain later, but we need to leave.”

Mitch climbed upright and flexed his limbs one at a time. “How did we get here? Where—?”

“Later. Promise. We need to go.”

“You really think we're going to walk out of here?”

Cautiously, I stepped into the hall and checked both directions. “Not entirely, but I don't have a better idea. And right now, I feel like I could take on a domus of furies, so I'm going to give it a shot.”

Mitch snorted. “Can't say I feel the same, although I am feeling crazily awake. Let's do this then.”

We did it, and we met with almost no obstacles. Mitch led the way. Though we stopped at every doorway and checked all our corners, the huge building appeared nearly empty. Mitch didn't seem to know quite what to do with his excess power, and he swore in amazement over and over again until I hushed him. He wasn't being loud, but he wasn't helping.

In the kitchen, we found two half-drunk addicts and easily got the jump on them. We took their guns, though they were largely useless against the furies. Then I paused, recognizing the path we'd been taken to get to the ritual space. It made no sense, but I had to see. To know for sure what had happened and what we were up against.

“Jess, what are you doing?” Mitch kept his voice low, but his tension was audible.

Overloaded as I was on magic, I barely noticed the taste of his anxiety. “Don't you want to see it?”

“Yes, but I don't need to go back there. What if the furies are hanging around? We're almost out. Come on.”

Mitch was making good, logical sense. Yet the closer I crept to the crumbling spell area, the more certain I was that I had to see this through. Like I was craving closure.

Voices drifted by on an air current and a spicy undertone with them. More power. The angry power of furies. I could smell it. They were still here, but doing what? I needed to know that too.

The low vibrations turned to a rumble, and I realized too late that the furies could likely sense my nervousness this close, but I'd already paused by the doorway. Mitch wasn't far behind, apparently as unwilling to flee without me as I had been without him.

Biting my lip, I crept to the corner and peeked around. Over a dozen furies—possibly all the furies that had gathered here—remained in the room with no roof. I saw Raj and the Vienna fury, the fury from Beijing, and the woman. I saw others I recognized too, but not a single one glanced in my direction. If they sensed me, not one let on. Possibly, the power coursing through my veins shielded me. But the furies were also deep in discussion among themselves, standing in the middle of their glyph, which glowed a faint red, reminiscent of the sky above.

The glyph had changed too. Some of the lines I remembered were missing, and the different ingredients used to create it had all turned the same eerie crimson. I could sense its power, and there was no denying the furies seemed pleased.

But if it worked, where were the original furies they'd unleashed?

Red lightning flashed overhead, as though in answer to my question, and a spike of fear shot through me, one strong enough that at last a couple heads turned my way. I snapped back around the wall, balling the fear into my gut.

“Time to go.” I grabbed Mitch's arm, and he followed without question.

No furies charged after us, so either I hadn't been seen or they didn't care. We met no more addicts either. When we burst outside, I wasn't sure whether I was more relieved or confused by their indifference.

The air was cooler and the glowing sky twice as creepy without a roof over my head. Mitch must not have noticed it before because he stopped in the middle of the grounds and gawked.

“I was wondering why everything looked so weird.” He swore a few times in a very religious manner, which would have been amusing under other circumstances.

“I don't think God's got anything to do with this. We need to hurry.” As I said it though, reluctance weighed on me. What if this was my last chance to go after Raj? Not just for what he did to me, but also for Olef. Damned if I was going to let that horned bastard get away with murdering my friend.

Mitch, meanwhile, had snapped out of his reverie and jogged toward the assorted cars parked along the circular drive. “We're not going anywhere without keys.”

“So you can't hot-wire a car either?” Of all the skills Tom had tried to teach me, that had never been one of them.

“Actually, I can. I come from a family of mechanics, and that was my plan, but these are very modern cars.” Mitch stopped in front of some fancy black sports car. “You can't hot-wire these things. It's all electronic.”

“Really?” Yet another trick the movies always made look easy. Although I had my license, I knew nothing about cars beyond how to drive an automatic. I'd never owned one, and had never been interested in doing so.

I glanced toward the massive stone building we'd managed to flee. Someone in there had keys. Quite possibly the addicts we'd tied up in the kitchen. If I went back to search them, there was always the chance I'd run into Raj.

Of course, if I ran into Raj, there was no guarantee I'd run away again. I had no weapons to use against him. The asshole had taken my knife.

I gritted my teeth. Though I strongly suspected my magical high was interfering with my common sense, I didn't much care. I was the same way when I drank too much. I'd do something stupid, knowing full well it was stupid and damning the consequences. Lucen would call me reckless as usual.

Reckless, scared shitless and really fucking pissed off. If I might not get a second attempt at Raj, no way was I fleeing like some little child. I'd go down swinging like I always did.

“I'm going back to find keys.”

“What?” Mitch turned sharply. “No. I say we take off down the road on foot.”

“We have no idea where we are. We could be hours from the nearest town. Do you see any signs of civilization?”

The quiet night was my answer. Somewhere in the trees something fluttered, and a pine-scented wind rustled the leaves, but those were the only sounds.

Mitch scowled, and I took that as my answer. “I'm going.”

“Fine. Fuck.” He caught up to me, and we ran to the door.

I could taste his fear once more, stronger than the first time. Briefly, I wondered if I was coming off the high and prayed not yet. Just in case, though, I needed to move fast.

“Someone's out there,” Mitch said suddenly. “In the trees.”

My heart leapt into my throat, and my mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was the furies—the real original furies, not Raj and company—but it was a ridiculous fear. The original ones were monster or demons, yet that didn't make them fairytale creatures who lurked in the woods.