Circle of Death (33 page)

Pain rose, and she closed her eyes. God, he was going to be so angry at her for doing this! But what other choice did she have? She couldn’t be responsible for his death. She couldn’t live with that on top of everything else.

She continued on. Ahead in the darkness, light beckoned. Someone was humming—a happy tune that set her teeth on edge.

She rounded a corner and stopped. A fire burned within a circle of stone, but its flames were an unnatural purple and green and cast sick shadows across the darkness. A tripod had been set up over it, and from this hung a steaming kettle. To the right of this was a black stone table. On it lay Trina. Even from where she stood, she could see the rise and fall of the other woman’s chest. Relief swept through her. At least she wasn’t too late to stop this madness.

A woman swept in from the darkness. She had sharp features, short brown hair, and a lanky, almost boyish body. Mariel. She hadn’t changed all that much since Kirby had last seen her. She’d gained some height, but other than that, she could still have been the child that had chased them with dead bugs. Kirby flexed her fingers, needing to move, to hide. But the minute she did either, the witch would spot her. All she could do was remain still and hope fate was on her side for a change.

It wasn’t.

Mariel bent over the fire, grasping the kettle with a gloved hand. Then she hesitated and looked up. Kirby met her gaze and saw only madness.

“Well, well, this is a nice surprise,” Mariel murmured. Her voice, unlike her gaze, was warm and pleasant, her tone that of a friend rather than a foe. “Please, do come down. I’ve just made a cup of coffee, if you’d like to share it.”

“Thanks, but I’m comfortable right where I am.” Kirby flexed her fingers, trying to ease the tension knotting her muscles. The energy that danced across her fingers shot fiery sparks across the darkness.

If Mariel noticed, she gave no indication. “Maybe
so, but I prefer you to come closer—and you will do so, or the tramp on the table shall suffer the consequences.”

She raised a hand and a knife appeared from nowhere, hovering above Trina’s stomach. Kirby drew a deep breath. If she didn’t do what Mariel wanted, if she tried to retreat or attack, it would be Trina who suffered, not her. She stepped into the circle of light provided by the fire and stopped.

“One wrong move and that knife will taste blood,” Mariel said, then bent and poured some water in her mug. “You sure you don’t want a cup?”

Kirby nodded, fingers clenched by her sides. Thunder rumbled, closer and sharper than before. But would it be able to help her this far underground? Or didn’t that matter, given that Helen hadn’t been just a storm witch, but the air elemental?

“Must be a storm brewing,” Mariel commented, holding the mug in two hands, as if warming them. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Kirby shook her head, watching her cautiously. It felt as if she’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. The last thing she’d expected to be doing right now was standing here having a semi-normal conversation with the fiend who’d murdered her friend—
her sister.

Mariel considered her for a second. The firelight cast shadows of green and purple across her features, making her face look gaunt, almost skeletal. She seemed in no great hurry to do anything more than talk, and that in itself was worrying.

“How did you find me?” Mariel asked, eventually.

“Does it matter?” Kirby glanced across at the black stone table. The knife still hovered above Trina’s midriff, rotating rapidly, as if it were a drill barely held in check. Attack Mariel, and the knife would drop. Attack the knife, and Mariel would use the moment to attack
her.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, wanting—
needing
—to move, to do something to end this impasse. Every second she delayed bought them a second closer to night and to the witch gaining full strength. Yet right now, she had no other option than to play this Mariel’s way.

“I guess it doesn’t.” Mariel sipped her coffee, watching her steadily, her blue eyes filled with a mix of hate and madness.

It was the hate Kirby couldn’t understand. What had they ever done to Mariel to deserve such depth of feeling? Yes, they’d killed her best friend, but that had been an accident, and Mariel herself had been the fire elemental … Her thoughts stuttered to a stop. If Camille was right, it wasn’t just Mariel who stood before her now, but Felicity—or at least, Felicity’s spirit. A spirit that may well have been dragged from the depths of hell. “Tell me, when did you raise Felicity’s spirit? And why?”

Mariel raised an eyebrow. “You are well informed, aren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes it pays to know what you’re up against.”

Mariel nodded serenely. “Yes, I guess it does.” She sipped her coffee again, then tilted her head, her gaze narrowing a little.

The sense of danger leapt tenfold, squeezing her throat
so tightly that Kirby could barely breathe. Yet Mariel hadn’t moved, hadn’t done anything beyond change her expression.
I’m out of my league
, Kirby thought, and flexed her hands, her fingers aching with the energy that burned across them. The sparks danced in jagged lines across the darkness, clashing with the dirty light of the fire. Mariel glanced down briefly, a slight smile touching her lips.

“The power of air,” she said. “I’m keen to see how well it stands up to fire and water.”

Kirby wasn’t. The only thing she was keen to do was get the hell out of here. But that wasn’t an option—not yet, and not without Trina. Then she blinked. Mariel had said
she
was air—did that mean she wasn’t aware that
she’d
been the binder, not Helen? “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Didn’t I? How remiss of me.”

Her smile was cold, cruel. It whispered of death, of a darkness so deep Kirby felt the chill of it clear through to her soul.

“Do you know how hard it is to find information about raising the dead? It took me five years to find anything decent on the subject. Five years is a long time in hell, you know.”

Her hands clenched around the cup, shattering it. Shards of china clattered over the concrete, a brittle sound that sawed at Kirby’s nerves. “Then you were sixteen when you raised her. So why wait until now to go after us?”

“You really don’t know anything about magic, do you?” Mariel snorted and shook her hand. Blood splayed across the concrete and into the flames. They
hissed and recoiled. “It takes time to learn the craft, time to gain strength and knowledge. And time to find what the government had scattered.”

So, it was true. In trying to track down their origins, Helen and the other girls had led a killer to their door. Kirby rubbed her arms, showering herself with sparks that did little to ease the chill from her bones.

“Why? Answer me that. It can’t be all about revenge.” Surely no one, no matter how mad, would go through all this for something as simple as revenge.

“I thought you would know the answer to that.” Mariel hesitated, then shook her head, as if in disbelief. “You felt the power we all raised. How could you not want to feel all that again?”

Kirby stared at her. Was that what this was all about—the need to control? The need to be the most dominant force? Mariel had never been entirely sane. Anyone who raised dead bugs for the sheer fun of terrorizing other children could never be described as sane. But that night, when they’d joined hands and raised a force that had shaken the very foundations of the world around them, they’d obviously destroyed what little rationality she’d had. For one brief moment, Mariel had had a glimpse of the absolute power she’d craved—only it wasn’t hers to control. It would never be hers to control.

Unless she destroyed the circle and sucked its powers into her own being.

“So you went after Helen?” Kirby said, keeping her voice low. Right now, the last thing she wanted was to antagonize the bitch and force her into action. But she needed time to think—to plan. And she needed to know what assumptions Mariel had made.

“At first, I thought Helen controlled the powers of air. But when I killed her and there were no powers there to steal, I knew I had been wrong. Then I knew that she was the binder, and you controlled the air.” Mariel sniffed. “The two of you always were a bit interchangeable, so it’s no wonder I got confused.”

But Kirby could see the sudden flare of rage in her eyes, and knew this was the reason why Helen had been torn apart so brutally; Mariel never had liked being made to look the fool.

“And you didn’t care about her powers of binding?” Kirby hazarded.

Mariel wrinkled her nose. “Why should I? What use are the powers of binding when I will have all four bound within
me
?” She gave a short, brutal laugh. “I already control two of the four elements. And now I have the final two here, awaiting my gift of darkness.”

Tension ran through Kirby. Her fists were clenched so tight her nails were cutting into her palms. No wonder her name hadn’t been on Camille’s list; she had become a victim in Mariel’s twisted mind only after Helen’s murder.

But Kirby did suspect that Mariel’s assumptions were wrong in one important way. She had bound together the power of four elementals on that one fateful night. She had felt how her powers changed and magnified what was already present. To gain the powers she wanted, Mariel
would
need the powers of binding—but if Mariel succeeded in killing Kirby, she’d not only get Helen’s power, but become the binder as well. And all the Circle’s worst nightmares would come true.

“I must say,” Mariel continued serenely, and absently
waved a hand, “that you’ve caught me by surprise. I was expecting to have to pry you away from the hands of that damn shifter.” She hesitated, smiling again. It was a picture of maliciousness itself. “I set a trap for him, you know. Just how well do you think a shifter can survive a bomb?”

Kirby’s stomach churned, her mind snared by the sudden image of Doyle being caught in flames and imprisoned under a mountain of concrete. Fear rose, threatening to engulf her. She took a deep breath and thrust the images away. Doyle wasn’t dead. She’d know if he was.

She opened her mouth to reply, but the words froze in her throat. The wind stirred, caressing her cheeks. They were no longer alone. Something was creeping up behind her—something that smelled like death.

She spun and thrust out her hand. The pent-up energy surged from her fingers, lashing the darkness, thudding into the chest of the dead man behind her. Fingers of blue-white light webbed across his body, pinning him to the spot and burning him to a crisp in seconds flat. The smell of burnt flesh stung the air, and her stomach roiled.

He’s dead
, she reminded herself fiercely.
You can’t feel responsible about killing a man who is already dead.

The air behind her boiled with heat, reaching toward her with fiery fingers she felt rather than saw. She dropped, her hands and knees smacking painfully against the concrete. Heat seared across her back, burning her T-shirt but barely touching her skin. She rolled to smother the flames, then saw something glitter
out of the corner of her eye, and kept on rolling. Ice exploded against the floor, showering her with shards that tore at her skin and hair.

She flung out her hand, imagined fingers of air wrapping around the knife and flinging it back, deep into the darkness. There was a whoosh, and the knife disappeared. Without pausing, she shifted, this time aiming her net at Mariel. Energy cut through the darkness, momentarily highlighting the surprise on the witch’s face before she dove out of the way. The lightning exploded against the edge of the fire and scattered the ring of stones. With an odd sort of sucking sound, the purple flames died and darkness swept in—a black curtain she could almost touch.

“Now, that’s just plain nasty,” Mariel commented from the darkness to Kirby’s left. “Do you know how difficult it is to raise one of those fires?”

Trying to get around me
, Kirby thought. She slid off her shoes and edged barefoot toward the table. If she could just get Trina down …

Flames shot across the darkness and she cursed and dove away, hitting the concrete again and skinning her chin in the process. She wiped away the blood dribbling down her neck, then yelped as fiery fingers of heat licked toward the soles of her feet. But the flames never touched her, recoiling millimeters away from her feet before dying. She frowned and remembered Helen’s words
—she cannot hurt you with what is yours to command.
Did that mean the powers of fire could not be used against her? She fervently hoped so, if only because it gave her some sort of chance.

She pushed upright. Thunder rumbled again. The
storm was close, so close. She could feel the power of it beginning to thrum through her body, her soul.

Then the wind stirred again, whispering its secrets. Kirby spun, but far too late. Something hit the side of her head, and darkness closed in.

A
RING OF DEAD MEN SURROUNDED HIM
. D
OYLE HESITATED
in the parking garage’s entrance, studying the zombies for several heartbeats. There were six of the stinking things. At any other time, it wouldn’t have much mattered. These six didn’t possess the size or the brute strength of the zombie that had attacked him at Rachel Grant’s and, even though he was wounded, generally wouldn’t have caused him much of a problem.

But right now he couldn’t afford any kind of delay. Kirby’s fear was like a blanket, threatening to smother him. She was with the witch and in trouble. Any delay might have deadly consequences for them both.

The zombies lunged toward him. He sprang over their backs and shifted shape, then wrapped an arm around one of the creatures’ necks and twisted hard. Bone snapped, and the zombie went limp. He thrust it into the path of another one, then backpedaled as fast as his injured leg would allow as a third zombie lurched at him. He twisted away from its grasping fingers, and pain shot up his leg. He cursed and limped away, aware of the warmth dribbling down his thigh. The wound had obviously opened a little, but it was nowhere near as bad as before. The creatures formed a pack and ran at him as one. He shifted shape and leapt away, but the grasping fingers of a zombie on
the outskirts of the pack caught him, bringing him down before it jumped on top of him. He slashed at the creature’s face with his paws, cutting deep, then shifted back to human shape and smashed his fist into the face of the creature pinning him. Bone shattered, but the blow itself had little effect. Fingers grasped at his neck, seeking to choke him, while others grabbed his legs and feet and pulled, as if intent on ripping him apart. Agony burned through his body, and the rush of warmth from the wound became stronger.