Every Which Way But Dead (24 page)

A scream of pain ripped from me as Al tapped a line, sending its strength thundering into me. My muscles jerked and a spasm shook me until my face hit the pavement. I was on fire, and I clenched into a fetal position, hands over my ears. Scream upon scream beat upon me. I couldn't block them out. They hammered at me, the only thing that was real besides the agony in my head. Like an explosion, the force of the line ran through me, settling into my center, spilling over to set my limbs on fire. My brain felt as if it had been dipped in acid, and all the time, that awful screaming racked my ears. I was on fire. I was burning.

I suddenly realized the screaming was coming from me. Huge, racking sobs took their place as I managed to stop. An eerie, keening wail rose, and I managed to stop that, too. Panting, I opened my eyes. My hands were pale and shaking in the light from the car. They weren't charred. The scent of burnt amber wasn't my skin peeling away. It was all in my head.

Oh God. My head felt like it was three places at once.
I was hearing everything twice, smelling everything twice, and having no thoughts that weren't my own. Al knew everything I was feeling, everything I was thinking. I could only pray that I hadn't done this to Nick.

“Better?” Al said, and I jerked as if whipped, hearing his voice in my head as well as my ears. “Not bad,” he said, yanking me unresisting to my feet. “Ceri passed out with only half that much, and it took her three months to stop making that awful noise.”

Numb, I felt spittle slip from me. I couldn't remember how to wipe it away. My throat hurt and the cold air I sucked into me seemed to burn. I could hear dogs barking and a car engine. The light from its headlamps wasn't moving, and the snow sparkled. I hung loose in Al's grip, feet trying to move as he began walking again. He dragged me out from in front of the car, and in a slippery squeak of snow and ice, it sped away.

“Come along, Rachel, love,” Al said in the new darkness, clearly in a good mood as he pulled me over a snowplowed hill and onto the shoveled walk. “Your wolf has given up, and unless you submit to me, we have a good bit of city to walk before I can get you to a ley line.”

Stumbling, I lurched after Al, my feet in my socks long cold and unresponsive. His hand gripped my wrist in a shackle stronger than any metal. Al's shadow stretched behind us to where David panted, shaking his head as if to clear it. I could do nothing, feeling nothing as David's lips pulled back from his muzzle. Silently, he lunged. Numb and uncaring, I watched as if from a distance. Al, though, was very much aware.

“Celero fervefacio!”
he exclaimed, angry, and I screamed as the curse burned through me. The force of Al's magic exploded from his outstretched hand and struck David. In a flash, the snow melted underneath the Were, and he writhed on the black circle of pavement. I screamed from the agony, catching it—smothering it—hearing it trail into the keen of a banshee.

“Please…no more,” I whispered, spit falling from me to melt a spot of snow. I stared at the dirty white, thinking it was my soul, pitted and sullied, paying for Al's black magic. I couldn't think. The pain burned through me still, becoming a familiar hurt.

The sound of frightened people pulled my bleary gaze up. The neighborhood was watching from doors and windows. I'd probably make the news. A sharp bang drew my attention to the house we had passed, an elegant snow castle with turrets and towers gracing one corner of the yard. The light from the open door spilled over the trampled snow, falling almost to Al and me. I caught my breath at Ceri standing in the threshold, Ivy's crucifix about her neck. Her nightgown flowed to the porch, white and billowy. Her unbound hair floated about her, coming almost to her waist. Her posture was stiff with anger. “You,” she said, her voice ringing clear over the snow.

From behind me came a warning yip, and I felt a tug of a pull. Through Al's knowledge, I instinctively knew that Ceri had set a circle around Al and me. A futile sob escaped me, but I fastened on the feeling like a hungry cur on trash. I had felt something that wasn't from Al. The demon's own emotion of annoyance was quick behind my depression, covering it up until I forgot what I felt like. From Al, I knew the circle was useless. You can make a circle without drawing it first, but only a drawn circle is strong enough to hold a demon.

Al didn't even bother to slow down, dragging me into the sheet of ever-after.

My breath hissed in as the force Ceri had put in the circle flowed into me. I screamed as a new wave of fire coated my skin. It ran from where I first touched the field, flowing like liquid to cover me. Pain searched for my center. It found it, and I screamed again, twisting out of Al's grip as it found my chi full and bursting. The ever-after rebounded, scouring through me to settle in the only place it could force room: my head. Sooner or later it would be too much and I'd go insane.

I clenched into myself. The rough sidewalk scraped my thigh and shoulder as I convulsed. Slowly it became bearable, and I was able to stop screaming. The last one trailed off into a moan that silenced the dogs.
Oh God, I was dying. I was dying from the inside out.

“Please,” I begged Ceri, knowing she couldn't hear me. “Don't do that again.”

Al yanked me upright. “You're an
excellent
familiar,” he encouraged, his face split in a wide grin. “I'm so proud of you. You managed to stop screaming again. I think I'll make you a cup of tea when we get home and let you nap before I show you off to my friends.”

“No…” I whispered, and Al chuckled at my defiance even before the word escaped me. I could have no thoughts without him knowing them first. Now I realized why Ceri had numbed her emotion, preferring to have none rather than share them with Al.

“Wait,” Ceri said, her voice ringing clear over the snow as she ran down the porch steps, past the chain-link fence, and into the yard before us.

I sagged in Al's grip as he stopped to look at her. Her voice flowed over me, soothing my skin and mind alike. My eyes warmed at the hint of respite from the pain, and I almost sobbed in relief. She looked like a goddess. She granted release from pain.

“Ceri,” Al said warmly, his attention only half on David as he circled us, his hackles raised and a frightening savagery in his eyes. “You're looking well, love.” His eyes traveled over the elaborate castle of snow behind her. “Miss your homeland?”

“I am Ceridwen Merriam Dulciate,” she said, the command in her voice like a whip. “I'm not your familiar. I have a soul. Give me the respect that calls for.”

Al snickered. “I see you found your ego. How does it feel to be growing old again?”

I saw her stiffen. She came to stand before us, and I could see her guilt. “I don't fear it anymore,” she said softy, and I wondered if an unaging life was what Al had lured her into being his familiar with. “It's the way of the world. Let Rachel Mariana Morgan go.”

Al threw his head back and laughed, showing his thick, flat teeth to the cloudy sky. “She is mine. You're looking well. Care to come back? You could be sisters. How nice is that?”

Her mouth twitched. “She has a soul. You can't force her.”

Panting, I hung from where Al held me. If he got me into a line, whether I had a soul or not wouldn't matter. “Yes, I can,” Al said, cementing it into fact. His brow furrowed, and he jerked his attention to David. I had seen him circling us in a wide path, trying to make a physical circle with his footsteps with which he could bind Al. The demon's eyes narrowed.
“Detrudo,”
he said, gesturing.

I gasped, jerking as a thread of ever-after flowed from me to work Al's charm. Head erect, I choked back whatever awful sound was going to come out of my raw throat. I managed to keep silent as it raced from me, but all my efforts to stay quiet did no good when a wave of ever-after surged in from a line to replace what Al had used. Again fire immolated my center, overflowing and making my skin burn, finally settling in my thoughts. I couldn't think. There was nothing but hurt in me. I was burning. My very thoughts, my soul, were burning.

Shocked, I fell to my knees, the pain from the icy sidewalk going almost unnoticed as a cry of misery escaped me. My eyes were open, and Ceri cringed, standing barefoot before us in the snow. A shared pain was mirrored in her eyes, and I fastened on them, finding peace in their green depths. She had survived this. I could survive this. I would survive this.
God, help me find a way to survive this.

Al laughed as he felt my resolve. “Good,” he encouraged. “I appreciate your effort to be silent. You'll get there. Your god can't help you, but call for him anyway. I'd like to meet him.”

I took a shuddering breath. David was a shaking puddle of silky fur in the snow some distance from where he had been. I was screaming when the spell hit him and didn't see him knocked aside. Ceri went to him when he rose, grasping his muzzle in both hands and peering into his eyes. She looked dwarfed beside him, his absolute blackness looking dangerous and somehow right beside her frailty, dressed in flowing white. “Give this to me,” she whispered as she gazed unafraid into his eyes, and David's ears pricked.

Dropping his face, she paced forward until she was standing where David's footprints left off. Keasley joined her, buttoning his thick fabric coat as he moved from my right to halt beside her. He took her hand, murmuring, “It's yours,” before letting go, and they both stepped back.

I wanted to weep but didn't have the strength. They couldn't help me. I admired Ceri's confidence, her proud and impassioned stance, but it was misplaced. I might as well be dead.

“Demon,” she said, her voice chiming thorough the still air like a bell. “I bind you.”

Al jerked as a sheet of smokey blue ever-after blossomed over us, and his face reddened.
“Es scortum obscenus impurua!”
he shouted, letting me go. I stayed where I fell, knowing he wouldn't have released me if I could escape. “How dare you use what I taught you to bind me!”

Panting, I pulled my head up, only now realizing why she had touched David and then Keasley. David had started the circle, Ceri had made a second portion of it, and Keasley had made the third. They had given her permission to bind their paths together as one. The circle had been made; he was caught. And as I watched him pace to the edge of the bubble and a victorious Ceri, I thought it wouldn't take much for him to decide to kill me out of spite.

“Moecha putida!”
he shouted, hammering on the force between them. “Ceri, I will tear your soul from you again, I swear it!”

“Et de,”
she said, her narrow chin high and her eyes glinting, “
acervus excerementum
. You can jump to a line from here. Leave now before the sun rises so we can all go back to bed.”

Algaliarept took a slow breath, and I shuddered at the bound anger in the movement. “No,” he said. “I'm going to widen Rachel's horizons, and you will listen to her scream as she learns to take the full capacity of what I demand.”

He could draw more through me?
I thought, feeling my lungs press together as I temporarily lost the will to breathe.
There was worse than this?

Ceri's confidence faltered. “No,” she said. “She doesn't know how to store it properly. Any more, and her mind will bend. She'll be insane before you teach her how to make your tea.”

“You don't need to be sane to make tea or do my toast upon one side,” he snarled. Snatching my arm, he jerked me unresisting to my feet.

Ceri shook her head, standing in the snow as if it were summer. “You're being petty. You've lost her. She outsmarted you. You're a sore loser.”

Al pinched my shoulder, and I gritted my teeth, refusing to cry out. It was only pain. It was nothing compared to the steady burning of the ever-after he was forcing me to hold for him. “Sore loser!” he shouted, and I heard the cries of fear from the people in the shadows. “She can't hide on holy ground forever. If she tries, I'll find a way to use her through the lines.”

Ceri glanced at David, and I closed my eyes in despair. She thought he could do it. God help me. It was only a matter of time before he figured out how. My gamble to save my soul was going to fail. “Go away,” she said, pulling her attention from David. “Go back to the ever-after and leave Rachel Mariana Morgan in peace. No one here has called you.”

“You can't banish me, Ceri!” he raged, jerking me upright until I fell into him. “My familiar opened a summoning path for me to follow when she tapped a line. Break this circle and let me take her as is my right!”

Ceri took an exultant breath. “Rachel! He acknowledged you called him. Banish him!”

My eyes widened.

“No!” Algaliarept shouted, sending a flow of ever-after into me. I nearly passed out, the waves of pain washing through me building upon themselves until there was nothing left but agony. But I took a breath, smelling the stink of my burned soul.

“Algaliarept,” I choked out, my voice a ragged gasp. “Return to the ever-after.”

“You little bitch!” he snarled, backhanding me. The force of the blow picked me up, throwing me into Ceri's wall. I landed in a crumpled heap, unable to think. My head hurt and my throat was raw. The snow under me was cold. I snuggled into it, burning.

“Go away. Go away
now,
” I whispered.

The overwhelming ever-after energy humming through my brain vanished in a clock-tick. I moaned at its absence. I heard my heart beat, pause, and beat again. It was all I could do to keep breathing, empty with just my own thoughts in my head. It was gone. The fire was gone.

“Get her out of the snow,” I heard Ceri say urgently, her voice easing into me like ice water. I tried to open my eyes, failing. Someone picked me up, and there was the warmth of body heat. It was Keasley, a small part of me decided, as I recognized the smell of redwood and cheap coffee. My head thumped into him and my chin dropped to my chest. I felt small cool hands upon my forehead, and with Ceri singing to me, I felt myself shift into movement.