The Problem With Black Magic (22 page)

When she woke up, she was lying down across several of the leather seats in an airport terminal. Sam was pacing in front of her, not unlike a guard dog determined not to let anyone through a gate. With his wet, windblown hair and tattered, bloodstained clothes, he looked a little frightening even with his disguise spell back up. Before she’d even completely regained consciousness, she noticed that the other travelers were giving him a very wide berth.

It occurred to her that he must have carried her inside from the car, and briefly she wondered if he’d carried her in front of him, princess-style, or just threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She couldn’t help smiling at the thought that it was probably the latter.

She sat up slowly, still feeling groggy. She did a double take when she recognized the terminal.

“Heathrow Airport!” she exclaimed. “Why did you take us here? We should have gone to a smaller airport…somewhere they wouldn’t expect…” she said, thinking of the way
Cordley had snuck her out of the States by driving all the way to Albany. Granted, there may not be anywhere in Britain as singularly undesirable as Albany, but there had to be some backwoods airport where the thugs from the Eastern Court would be less likely to look.

Sam continued pacing, scanning the room for threats. “A smaller airport would have fewer flights going out, meaning we could be stuck there for several hours, giving them time to track us down. There was risk either way.”

She rubbed her temples; if she ever got home, she was going to take about five painkillers, and she didn’t care if the box only advised taking two. She had a massive headache, and she was a bit worried that she couldn’t remember when it started. A few rows ahead of her, a boy was bouncing a small glow-ball-- the kind you got from vending machines-- up and down, and every time it bounced, the sound reverberated in her head unpleasantly.

“When does our flight leave?” she asked.

“Twenty minutes.”

She nodded,
not caring to ask how Sam had got them on a flight without their passports, money, or any of the usual necessities. Just because he couldn’t compel people (or so he said) didn’t mean he couldn’t scare them into doing what he wanted.

She
took off her black heels one at a time and dumped them on the floor. He stopped pacing and fixed her with a quizzical look.

“They hurt, and if we have to do any
more running tonight, I’m better off without them.”

He gave her a tired smile.
“Women and your stupid high-heeled shoes.”

“Men and you’re stupid penguin-suits…hey, where’s your tie?” she said, noticing his shirt was open at the collar.

He shrugged. “It hurt.”

Before she could drive home the fact that men obviously made stupid decisions in the name of fashion too, suddenly she felt a frigid chill. When she s
aw the glow ball the boy had been bouncing paused in mid-air above his seat, she realized someone had frozen time. “Oh no.”

Apparently their pursuers were coming from behind her chair, because Sam pushed her down before he headed off in that direction. “Stay down! Don’t move from there until I say!”

Cassie gritted her teeth, her face against the leather. She saw the wisdom of staying down during the fight, but it was going to be hell to have to listen and not know what was happening. She felt a strange sensation, like her skin was stretching, and she realized Sam had split his barrier between the two of them. This way, he could leave her side and they were both protected.

She heard the hammering of several pairs of feet against the tile floor, and a bunch of screamed curses she couldn’t identify; the air seemed to sing with magic. Her nervous system revolted with a pins-and-needles sensation that seemed to cover her whole body, taking her attention away from the sounds of the fight momentarily.

They can’t hurt him, he’s a full-blooded demon and they’re half-breeds. He’s a much bigger monster than they are…and he’s my monster...they can’t hurt him….

When she recovered her ability to focus, she grimaced as her ears popped, over and over again. Quickly, she realized that the popping was synchronized to the screams of the demons, and realized that Sam was breaking through his opponents’ barriers. They had all tapped into their familiars to get enough white magic to create protective barriers, but while Sam’s
barrier may have been inexpertly crafted, it was thick; their barriers were paper-thin. They would have to find a lucky shot to find a weakness in Sam’s barrier, whereas his spells were punching through their shields like bullets through a sheet of paper.

Someone fell right behind her row of chairs, and she heard them gasp for air painfully. Unable to stand it anymore, she peeked over the back of her seat, still trying to keep her head as low as possible.

The young man in front of her was holding his throat, thrashing in the panic of not being able to breathe. When she looked around the room, she saw several other men in the same position. The dozens of frozen travelers standing around them seemed incredibly out of place, like store mannequins that had somehow ended up in a warzone.

Other than the fact that he was still favoring his left side, Sam looked unharmed
. To Cassie, there was something interesting about the fact that Celeste, the human guard, had come far closer to killing him than half a dozen demons. He caught her eye and to her surprise, didn’t snap at her for disobeying his order to stay down. “I didn’t kill them. They only think they can’t breathe. Once they’re unconscious, they’ll start breathing normally.”

Cassie nodded, feeling numb. “Is that it? Are there more
coming?”

“No idea,” he said
, keeping one hand out as though waiting to hurl a curse at the next person to enter the room, while the other protected his abdomen. “They must be using an amulet to freeze time; otherwise, the spell would have worn off once I got the caster. Who knows where that damn thing is.”

Listening to the derision in his voice, Cassie realized she had the answer to a question she had wanted to know weeks ago; why Sam had been so dismissive when
Serenus had first suggested crafting the protection amulets.

“Real demons cast from their own power, they don’t use
no sissy-man amulets,” she said, walking over to him. She had started to feel feverish, and the surface of the tiled floor felt delightfully cool on the bottoms of her shoeless feet. “Am I right?”

“The sad thing is, so much of demon culture really is about macho crap like that,” said a familiar voice behind them.

Sam turned to hurl a curse in the direction of the voice, only to freeze when he saw that Cordley was pointing a gun at his chest. Cassie looked at her captor, trying to figure out how he’d gotten behind them. The only thing that made sense was that he’d entered the terminal through some unknown back entrance while the demons Sam had cursed kept him distracted.

“Keep your hands down,” said
Cordley, and Sam complied. It sounded odd to Cassie, but she realized almost immediately why he’d changed it from the typical “Put your hands up” command at gunpoint; demons used their arms to direct spells. Telling Sam to put his hands in a position where he could easily point at the man holding a gun at him was a really bad idea. “I can see your barrier, but it’s been through a war; I wouldn’t trust it to repel a charmed bullet at this point if I were you.”

Sam made an irritated sound;
Cordley could be lying about the bullets being charmed, but Sam couldn’t take the risk. Even Cassie could sense that his barrier was much patchier now than when he’d cast it.

“Cassandra, start walking towards me slowly.”

“You could have shot me in the back and ran off with Cassie, but you didn’t. I’m assuming you must have a reason.” said Sam, his eyes trained on Cordley’s gun.

From the expression on
Cordley’s face, if he wasn’t holding someone at gunpoint, he probably would have shrugged. “I’m a doctor; killing people goes against everything I believe in. I simply want Cassandra to leave with me.”

“It’s
useless, I’ll come back for her.”

“No, you won’t. Now that she’s been formally accepted into the Eastern Court as our property, attempting to kidnap her from us may as well be an act of war. The Westerners won’t risk it. Start walking, Cassie.”

Slowly, Cassie started walking towards him, trying to stall without making it obvious. It seemed ridiculous to her that Sam could be stopped with something as mundane as a handgun, but then again, it all came down to the fact that demons weren’t gifted with white magic; no half-demon could afford to take a bullet to the chest, because unless they were lucky enough to have one of Serenus’ magical potions, which Cassie was sure were incredibly hard to come by, there was no coming back from it.

“Really?
If this were an ‘act of war’, the court would have sent more than six demons after us. I bet they don’t even know she’s gone yet,” and though her back was turned to him, Cassie could hear the smile in Sam’s voice, “because you didn’t tell them. You came to get her yourself, because you didn’t want them to know you lost her.”

“I haven’t lost her yet,” said
Cordley, as Cassie approached. “And I’m afraid if you’re expecting me to stay and chat for another half hour, Mr. Andrews, you’ll be disappointed; I have seen a Bond movie or two. We’re done here.”

“Dr.
Cordley, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “I promise you, I’ll heal your daughter. I don’t care what the Court says, I won’t let them control me.”

At that,
Cordley’s eyes left Sam for the first time and shifted to hers, though his gun was still pointed at Sam’s heart. “My daughter? My daughter’s dead.”

Cassie stopped in her tracks.
Oh my God, I’m wearing a dead girl’s sweatshirt.

“It was for my daughter that I began this insane ques
t, it’s true. Now it’s my niece. Two girls in the same family, the same prognosis. I would say we’re cursed, but your Examiner has assured me we are not; just bloody unlucky.” He laughed, a hoarse sound that held more pain than mirth.

“I swear
, I’ll heal your niece! There’s no need for you to do this, I want to help you. I’ll learn how to bring your daughter back from the dead, if I can.” she exclaimed.

At that,
Cordley’s attention was riveted to her; it was like he had forgotten Sam was even in the building. In his face, she could see him struggle to suppress a faint hope, so long buried.

Of course, that lapse in attention was all Sam needed to hit him with
a curse. Cassie didn’t realize what had happened until Cordley reached for his throat with his free hand, struggling to keep his grip on the gun with his right. It was only a second before he too had crumpled to the floor.

Cassie looked away; it was hard to watch the dignified man struggle for breath. “He only thinks he can’t breathe, right?”

With a smile like the cat that had just swallowed the canary, Sam approached Cordley’s thrashing form. “No, that was a true black curse, just for him. He’ll die no matter what he thinks about it, the bastard.” Using the tip of his foot, he examined the struggling man’s ribs, his smile widening as he did so.

Cassie looked at him in horror, and felt a chill run down her spine as she realized something about him for the first time: that, whether it was his demonic nature or simple human cruelty, he enjoyed making people suffer. She could see no trace of empathy in his face, just satisfaction.

“I was telling the truth! Make this stop!”

He looked at her in confusion. “You were? I thought you were just…”

“Break the curse!” she screamed, as Cordley’s gasping became hoarser, like his throat was full of sandpaper.

“I’m sorry, I can’t…it doesn’t work that way…
.”

“God, you suck!” she yelled, dropping to her knees. This was wrong;
Cordley was flawed, but he was at the core a good man broken by tragedy. He didn’t deserve to die in agony on the floor of an airport terminal.

“Wait, I
- Don’t!”

Sam reached out to her, but it was too late; she had paid attention to what it felt like when demons tapped her, so she knew how to pour her magic into
someone else. She didn’t know how to heal yet, but she could try to push enough white magic into his body to stop the curse from killing him.

Now that she was connected to
Cordley, she found she could see the black curse, like a puddle of black oil over his body. It was thick; Sam must have saved up all the pure black magic he could muster after his summoning, just in the hopes he would get to use it on Cordley. She thought she could sense rage in the curse, like Sam was livid that Cordley had deceived him, had taken from him.

How dare you,
the curse hissed.
This is what happens to those who take what’s mine. I’ll see you die before you touch her. Anyone who touches her can burn alive from the inside out...No one else can touch…how dare you….

She shook her head, trying to clear it of the curse’s influence; for a second, she was afraid the black magic would ooze into her as well, but it didn’t. Though the opening was there, all the black oil stayed firmly on
Cordley’s side of the connection. Perhaps the curse itself recognized her as Sam’s familiar.