God's Eye (47 page)

Sitting at her dining table with her back to the kitchen, she looked out at her darkened living room and took a deep breath. She agreed with Margot; the laminated pieces looked like they’d hold up to a binding better, and besides, they were the ones that were whole–no nicked off hands or feet.

After one deep breath, she forced herself to start. She picked up the inky black demon drawing first and began the chant. “I bind you–”

But she came up short. She didn’t know what to say. Which one was it? She needed the picture for the spell to work, but could she just say “I bind you” and not use a name? It seemed the spell was linked to the name and the picture.

She breathed deep and started again. Katharine folded the white ribbon around the demon drawing and tucked the loose end in. Then, as she wound it round and round, she chanted. “I bind you, Zachary, from doing harm against me and others. I bind you, Allistair, from doing harm against me and others, I bind you …”

She felt silly, but she kept going. Maybe it would work. The protection spell had seemed to. Zachary had commented on it. Or he had seen them doing it and wanted to mess with her. Sadly, that was entirely possible.

The ribbon was long enough to get tangled, and she stopped winding for a moment to free the knots, thinking she could have cut it shorter. But she kept up the chant.

She was getting the first knot out when she heard the footstep. She faltered in her chant as she heard another. The sound had come from right in front of her, on the other side of the dining table. After the third footstep brought the sound around near the end of the table, she struggled to make her shaking hands and voice work again.

Katharine spoke a little louder this time. “I bind you, Allistair, from doing harm …”

The steps continued, though she couldn’t see anything. She strained to see behind her as they passed just beyond the kitchen countertop. The sound of her own voice blocked some of the footfalls, but it sounded as if it walked right up to the kitchen sink and passed clean through the half-wall that separated the kitchen and dining area.

As she chanted, the footfalls came around behind her, beyond the wall just on her right. A little faster and heavier now, they completed a counterclockwise loop around her and kept going.

Becoming more afraid as she went, she raised her voice just a touch, and her determination more. The steps kept getting louder and faster and began to be intermingled with the sound of a deep and raspy breath.

The shaking in her hands tangled the stupid ribbon again, and the trembling in her fingers made it that much harder to get the twists out. But she didn’t stop. Even when she finished the binding, she merely picked up the picture of the silvery creature, trying not to wince at the mouthful of fang-like teeth it too sported. She tucked in the ribbon and started over with the winding, even though her words continued on the same, both names interlaced in the spell because she had no idea who was who.

But she did believe it was the demon moving in ever-tightening, counterclockwise circles around her. And she wondered if the circles were some kind of spell of their own.

The ribbon tangled more as she went, rather than less. The breathing turned into growls, and it kept circling. She no longer turned as it passed behind her, just kept her head down and her eyes on the mass of ribbon that had obscured the little picture about fifteen loops ago.

Now the demon was passing through the table where she worked. Still she couldn’t see it, but the surface rocked a little as it went by, making the flame dance just a tiny bit. She felt the air move as it passed, and any doubt about where it was had been eliminated; the growling noise had turned into something that sounded like the earth opening up to swallow her.

She was nearing the last small bit of ribbon, the end unbearably short now. What was she going to do when it was done?

She kept up the chant, partly so she could block the sounds from all around her now. It took three tries to tuck in the stray end. When it was tight, she stopped at the end of the phrase.

The demon was right behind her.

She didn’t dare turn, too afraid of what she might see.

The noise, like the bowels of hell were yawning open, came from just in back of her head. Only this time her hair moved with its breath.

Though she sat very still, clutching the tiny, silk-bound pictures, tears escaped from each eye and rolled in fat, desperate silence down her cheeks.

The noise became deafening, and her hair blew forward with it, and she knew she was likely living her last moments. Thoughts of Mary Wayne’s shredded corpse froze her from any action.

And just like that, it stopped.

The roar moved backward at a tremendous speed, though it still howled in anger. Another sound moved with it, overlaying the depth with a keening pitch. She finally moved–dropped the bindings and clapped her hands to her ears–but the sound didn’t fade. She wasn’t hearing it through her ears at all.

For several minutes, screams of pain and bellows of rage came from all around her. The building shook, tiny tremors that California residents wouldn’t even consider an issue. Though she knew it was useless, her body turned toward the sound each time it moved–a quicksilver reflex for protection against things of her own realm.

Eventually, the noises faded, but she stood behind her table shaking like a leaf. Several of the chairs had been overturned, but when, she didn’t know. She hadn’t
seen
anything, and that was probably good. The knowing alone had been petrifying.

Katharine didn’t know how long she stood like a zombie in her own home, only that when she came around to being cogent again, she had scrambled to gather the bound images. The spells said to keep them in a safe place. But she knew of nowhere that she could hide them from the creatures she’d bound. Keeping them with her at all times seemed the only option, and she carefully tucked one into each back pocket.

She needed a drink. A good stiff … something. But the last thing she needed was dulled senses and the chance of being caught unaware or slow. And she didn’t dare risk the possibility that the alcohol would open some of her senses, making it easier to see things in the reflections or make sense of the swirling shadows in her life. Water was probably all she could handle right now.

She had turned, weak legs finding some strength to carry her the last stretch into the kitchen, when she heard a new noise.

Crackling and popping sounds came from behind her, across the living room. She didn’t dare look, but her body was wired to jerk around at this new perceived threat. It turned, regardless of the message from her brain.

Electric currents arced and curved back in on each other, moving and changing as she watched. And while she looked on, frozen in place, a man emerged.

At last the cluster of small lightning strokes subsided and she could see him more clearly.

Her heart pulled her across the room, her mouth worked like a fish, but she couldn’t get any sound to come out.

Deep gashes marred him everywhere and bright red blood oozed from every cut.

His chest bore four deep symmetrical cuts, and his hands looked like he had given as good as he got. He looked her in the eye, and her heart leapt into her throat.

He swayed once … twice … before collapsing on her carpet.

Katharine found her voice as she rushed to him.

“Allistair!”

Allistair took a deep breath and looked up at her from where he lay crumpled in the middle of her living room.

Her instinct was to run to him, to put her arms around him and keep him safe.

But she didn’t do it for several reasons.

Katharine knew she couldn’t trust those same instincts: they were flat-out lying to her about at least one of the men, and possibly both.

So she stood for a moment, watching his naked form as he breathed. He had fallen to his hands and knees when he had come through to her living room, but in the moment after that he had crumpled forward. His weight rested on his right leg, which was curled under him at an awkward angle, and on his shoulder. It seemed he didn’t have the strength to even change his position. He was clearly in pain.

Though Katharine thought about helping him, she just stood and watched over him for any changes she might see. Besides, what could she possibly do to help him? He wasn’t mortal. She couldn’t tend his wounds, didn’t know what to tell him, and even just putting her arms around him would do nothing for him. No matter how much she wanted it to.

Still, she walked toward him. Blood was making small pools on her carpet where his cuts were oozing just fast enough to be dangerous.

But she reminded herself as she walked closer that though losing that much blood would be dangerous to a human man, no matter how much Allistair looked like a man, he was far from it.

Clearly exhausted, he breathed in deep and long and rolled over onto his back.

Vulnerable, he continued to look up at her, his hand resting on his chest as it heaved. For a moment, he looked like he was merely worn out at the end of a marathon. Katharine knew better and briefly considered grabbing one of her kitchen knives and pushing it through his ribs while he lay there.

“You wouldn’t.”

His voice was melodic and, though tired, confident in tone. Her body stiffened at the sound and for a moment she disbelieved her ears. “Wouldn’t what?”

“Hurt me.” The edges of his lips curled up in a half smile.

He could have guessed that,
she told herself.

Breaking her thoughts, he spoke again, dispelling her notion that he couldn’t see into her thoughts. “You wouldn’t get one of your kitchen knives and skewer me.”

“Don’t you look in my head!” In the snap of anger she felt, she yelled it loud enough for all the neighbors to hear. Would Zachary hear it?

With great effort, Allistair shook his head back and forth. “Not trying to. You’re projecting it loud and clear.” He took another slow breath in and she noticed that his wounds already looked a little better, though he still sounded winded. “I’m not really in any shape right now to shut you out. Sorry about that.”

Turning her back on him, she went to her hall closet. She would have explained rather than just walking away, but clearly he was listening in on her every thought. When she returned, she dropped the soft couch throw on him.

His breath hissed in this time and she felt it down to her bones. She didn’t like that she felt these things for him. Nor did she like that it soothed her somewhat that his feelings were seeping into her, too. Still, there was nothing she could do about it; she was linked to him. And he was even more firmly linked to her.

There were a thousand questions swimming indistinctly in her mind, but she didn’t ask any of them. In a few more minutes he’d be even stronger. She’d thrown him the blanket mainly because he was lying naked on her floor, not because he’d needed it. Though she wrestled with whether she should help him, she wondered if there was anything she could do.

Just as the thought passed through her mind, he smiled again.

“Water.”

Even as she fetched it for him, she considered the possibility that she was aiding a demon, helping the very creature that–as soon as it was well again–could conceivably drag her to hell.

She filled the glass with cold water, wondering if he would like it that way and then questioning why he didn’t respond to that last thought. He seemed to be reading all the others so clearly.

As she handed it down to him, he worked up the energy to lift an arm and say, “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

The next thought simply fell out of her mouth as soon as it passed through her head. “If I choose Zachary, will he really give me the Kingdom?”

“Yes.” He slowly pushed himself upright, being careful to not spill the water. For a moment Katharine found that disturbingly ironic given all the blood that he had already spilled onto her carpet. But she didn’t laugh as he struggled to sit up just enough to drink without sloshing it and pulled the blanket tighter around him as though he were cold. Not that he would feel that, would he?

But it was his answer that pushed through her clouded mind, still numb and reeling from the adrenaline overload of the spell and the circling demon.

Katharine had to reconsider everything Allistair said to her. Was he wounded because he had fought the demon for her? Or was he wounded because he was attacked? Was he exhausted because he’d been running circles around her?

Still she had to ask. “Why would you tell me something that would make me choose him? Then why would I choose you?”

He shook his head and slowly, painstakingly stretched before sitting all the way upright and taking another lingering drink from the glass. His long legs now had scabs and scars but were no longer bleeding.

She blinked. Of course he was getting better. It’s what they did. But still it was a shock to see that the blood that had started leaching through the blanket in small patches had stopped a while ago. His strength was returning and he smiled up at her, brown eyes laughing a little. “I’m sorry about your carpet.”