Sacrificial Magic (44 page)

Monica stumbled back, gasping. She wheeled around, hands crossed over her chest as if she was trying to pull away an imaginary cord. Aros grabbed her, held her.

Time to work fast.

Chess pulled her psychopomp from her bag, untangled it from its silk shroud, and set it on the floor.

She didn’t bother with her stang or anything else. What was the point? She didn’t have a circle. Didn’t have anything but hope to keep her psychopomp from killing them all, which meant their chances of getting through this alive—especially her own chances—were about as good as her chances of discovering she was the long-lost daughter of some millionaire who couldn’t wait to have her back. Hope wasn’t something she’d ever had much of.

But that part way down deep inside her, the part that had been buried, the part she thought might have grown, even a tiny bit, over the last month … it was there, and she took what she could from it.

And she hoped.

Hoped Terrible would finish with Slobag’s men soon and take care of Monica and Aros. Hoped the tingling and burning of her tattoos, the itching, stronger than anything she’d ever felt, so strong she thought she might go crazy from it and wanted to shed her skin like a snake, didn’t mean the earth’s power was fading to the point that ghosts were starting to appear.

Hoped that she could do what needed to be done, that
she could be good enough to do it, even for just that one moment.

The cement cold beneath her knees. Pain in her nose, her left eye swollen. Pain in her scalp, her arms, her legs—hell, pain everywhere. She pushed it all aside, cleared her head as much as she could.

One second of listening to her heartbeat, her breath in her chest. Concentrate. Silence.

The power around her still battered at her, that dark promise she’d refused before. Now she accepted it. Opened herself to it, let it wash through her.

She’d been right. Oh, fuck, she’d been right, it was everything, it felt like everything, every drug she’d ever taken and then some, every high, every orgasm, every rush of power wiping her clean.

It swept through her, taking the fear still clenching her chest. It took the memories—they disappeared, they were gone. It took the shame, the sadness, the pain, the blame, all of those things, every bad thing she’d ever felt. It took her deepest and most horrible Truth, the one she’d had all of her life, her knowledge that she was nothing, deserved nothing, meant nothing. That all disappeared, gone in the space of a single breath.

She wasn’t Chess anymore, not entirely. She was someone else, someone with all of her power, all of her skills, someone whose life began the day she stepped into Church for her first day of training and for whom the cold hellish years before didn’t exist.

A Chess who didn’t need pills to get through the day. A Chess who lived on-grounds with everyone else, who could be part of that life because she didn’t sweat and shake at the idea of letting others know her, the thought of not having space of her own, or of not having privacy and distance because she needed it so bad. A Chess who was confident, happy, strong, who had lifelong friends
and made new ones easily. A Chess who let herself be loved.

That Chess opened herself more, let more of that power into herself—hell, she didn’t let it in, she sucked it in, she pulled on it the way the old Chess inhaled Dream in the pipe room—until she blazed with it. She was a live wire humming there in the gloom, a shining golden light so bright it would blind them all, proud before the black hole opening between her world and the other side, before the endless sea of ghosts moving across the shore.

And she wasn’t even worried. Wasn’t even scared.

Instead of Aros’s knife she grabbed her own from her pocket—she’d been given it, hadn’t she? Who gave that to her? That had been the other life, the one she didn’t know anymore—and sliced the point, deadly sharp, across her left pinky, where earlier wounds had barely closed.

Droplets of blood fell on the skull. “I call on the escorts of the land of the dead. By my blood and by my power I call you. By my blood and by my power I command you. Take these spirits back to their place of silence, take them back to their place of rest.”

The skull began to vibrate. Somewhere behind her, noises, grunts and scrapes and yelps. A fight. She didn’t—couldn’t—care.

“I offer a sacrifice to the escorts for their aid.” More blood, faster now. The air before her rippled like heat rising off pavement. Wider and wider, taller and taller. The gateway opening.

“Let my power be pure,” she cried, and took the energy inside her, that immense incredible energy, and threw it into the gate. Fed it into the skull.

The gate exploded into being. The dog did the same, leaping off the floor, bones and skin and fur growing
from it to form a body. Its eyes glowed green just like they were supposed to; it was silent just like it was supposed to be. Everything was working; everything would always work for this new Chess, who smiled with confidence as magic rolled from her fingertips, who kept smiling as she stepped back from the gateway.

The immensely powerful gateway. She was a conduit, and the power ran from the hole through her into the gate.

The dog bounded ahead, exactly where she wanted it to go. Too much life in her, too much power in her, and as it moved she realized she could control it. That psychopomp was
her
psychopomp; her blood and power had created it and she could make it do anything she wanted to.

It wasn’t even hard. It was like bending her fingers, so simple a child could do it.

She sent the dog after Slobag, considered sending it after Aros and Monica as well. No, it would be too hard to keep hold of one ghost while pulling a soul from a still-living body. The psychopomp might get confused.

So how to end that spell?

Monica and Aros had created a totem to hold their ghosts to the earth. But they’d used that totem in their ritual, had had it there because they were trying to direct the energy to it, and to Lucy as well as themselves. It was still there.

Where was it, what was it? What would they have that belonged to a young girl, a girl who dated lots of boys, who maybe even dated a teacher, what could be personal enough?

Jia and Maia had been holding a book that day when Old Chess had found them outside the school. A used-looking book with a cracked cover. A diary, a school notebook, whatever it was. That was it. That was the totem.

She turned her head, scanned the floor for it. Aros and Monica were digging around in a backpack; that could not be good.

But it was too late for them. They were going to lose, they’d already lost, because when people went up against New Chess that’s what happened to them. She ran toward them.

“Where’s the totem?” Her voice sounded so light and confident and cheerful. Almost not even like hers. Happy. It was weird, but only for a second. Then it was awesome, the voice she was meant to have.

Monica lunged for her. This time her skin didn’t burn, this time it didn’t hurt to touch her. This time Chess was the stronger one, the more powerful one, and she ducked Monica’s swing with slow calm ease, her voice still cheerful. “Where is it?”

Monica, in contrast, sounded like something about to be run over for the tenth time as she swung again. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Chess caught her hand. All the power in her body, all that energy … she could sting Monica with it, let it hit her, and she did. Monica’s face paled in a way that would have pleased the old Chess. The new Chess didn’t want to hurt anyone.

“Yes, you do. Look, it’s over. Give me the totem, and I can end this, and you get to live.” For a while, anyway. But she didn’t say that. Monica didn’t need to know she’d be executed. “It’s that book, right? The flowered one, the journal, the diary? Where is it?”

“You can’t have it.”

“Where is it, Monica?”

Monica didn’t answer, but Chess didn’t need her to. While she’d been talking, Aros had started slinking off to her right, back to the remains of his circle where the book clearly sat beneath his firedish. How Chess had
missed it when she was in that circle she didn’t know, but she hadn’t been herself then, had she? She’d been that old Chess. The losery junkie one.

A bark from behind her. The psychopomp had Slobag. It sat at the gate, looking at her. Of course. He was probably bound by the totem as well, since he’d been created in the circle. In fact, the spell might be bound to the totem, she might be able to end that spell by destroying it.

She was almost done. She practically flew over to where the circle had been; the book lay just around the corner of the post.

Monica shrieked. Yes! Heck yeah, that was it, she had it, time to clean up this mess.

Over to the gate, that glowing strong gate so wide and ready like a starving mouth about to be fed a gourmet meal. It was ready, the dog was ready.

Slobag was ready. She saw his face, saw him looking at the two people, the man and the woman, standing on the ramp watching him. Funny, she didn’t see hatred in his eyes, or the violence she’d normally see from a ghost. Perhaps because of the talisman, the spell’s power, maybe it had helped him hold onto some vestige of humanity. Chess didn’t know.

But she did know that when she threw that talisman into the gate, he would follow it. He had to, because he was bound to it.

The old Chess might have worried or wondered if it would work. Now she knew it would.

With one confident stroke she flung the book through the gate.

Monica’s scream hurt her ears. Monica’s body slammed hers into the cement. Monica’s fingers curled in her hair, yanked her head up. Oh no, Chess braced herself, stiffened her neck to keep Monica from driving
her face into the cement. She needed to flip over. She’d still be beneath Monica, but if she could flip over she could at least hit back.

Slobag and the psychopomp disappeared through the gate. The skull fell to the ground before it. Chess felt the gate shiver, felt it react. The gate had her power and was connected to her, and she felt it do its job. Some of the earth energy from the spell started seeping into it, going back to where it came from, so slowly.

Too slowly for her. She felt so … good. So great, and she didn’t want to waste a second. Once she got this finished she could leave, leave this stinky place and head back to Church, where she belonged. Where she could be happy—could keep being happy, of course she was happy, why wouldn’t she be?

Monica’s palms slapping her, the back of her head, her back. “You fucking asshole, let me go, I’ll kill you—”

Chess ignored those hands, and those uncouth words. With one mighty shove she flipped herself over, catching Monica’s face with her open palm and knocking her to the floor.

That spell had to stop, that energy had to stop cycling. Chess felt the gate again, reached for it in her head, reached for it with her power, and pushed more into it. It was strong, it was big, but it needed to be stronger. It needed to pull. She twisted it a little, tweaked it somehow, and the vacuum increased. Yes!

Stronger and stronger. The energy followed the book. The hole was strong, the gate was strong, and all of that was connected to Chess. She was the strongest.

Monica jumped up. Her scream pierced Chess’s ears. “Lucy!”

She started running, running toward the gate, and Chess reached for her even though she knew she was too far away. “Monica! No, don’t—”

Monica ran through the gate.

Light. Blinding, searing light, brighter than the fire outside. Chess bent over, shielded her eyes. The heat of it warmed her chilled skin.

But it wasn’t a good light. It was an impact, a back-draft, and the heat faded and she opened her eyes and saw blood everywhere, blood and hair and bits of things she didn’t even want to know what they were, scraps of horrible fabric.

Monica had exploded. She’d crossed the line into the gate, and she’d exploded.

The thought barely had time to skip through Chess’s mind before it happened. The power. The power of the hole, the magic of it. The hole wasn’t closing, hadn’t closed yet. Instead it was feeding from the gate, they were feeding off each other, forming a circuit of magic. A circuit that ran right through her.

The power wasn’t leaving anymore. She assumed that meant the spell’s connection to the talisman had disappeared, which was a reasonable assumption to make. And probably correct. She knew how magic worked, after all. She’d been doing this job a long time.

But being right didn’t always mean being glad about it, and in this case she didn’t think she was. The power was equal, running through her, and the energy didn’t have to go anywhere as long as both were open, and the spell wasn’t ending.

It needed to end, and she needed to end it.

She reversed the circuit through herself. Took from the hole to give back to the gate, more and more. Watched it shrink.

A disturbance in the power behind her. Aros. Aros limp-shuffling like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, his bloody knife—the one he’d used to stab Slobag—dangling from his hand. Hatred blazed in his eyes, hatred
aimed at her. Darn it, she didn’t want to have to fight with him, too.