half-lich 02 - void weaver (28 page)

“Hello, Alice.”

She spun on her heel and saw a woman standing there; beautiful, pale-skinned, and young—barely into her twenties. An angry heat rose into Alice’s throat at the thought that Nyx had stolen another young life, but she kept herself under control. “Nyx,” Alice said.

“I see you’ve learned a couple of tricks.”

“I would say I’ve learned more than a couple.”

“Don’t you think it’s time you gave back what you took from me? Don’t you want to end this?”

“I do,” Alice said, “More than anything.”

CHAPTER 28

Transferrence

One day, she thought—maybe one day soon—Alice’s propensity to leap into something without thinking would get her killed. But she didn’t think today would be that day. Nyx’s young, slender body shifted to a side-stance. Her hands and arms crackled with the dark power of the Void, and now Alice’s did too. She was drawing on the necromantic energy of the graveyard, using whatever she could find to fuel her own magic, and it was working.

In her periphery, Alice noticed how the praetors were moving closer to the dueling ring Nyx’s Pain Children were creating by hovering in a circle as they were. Some of these floating specters shot down to attack the praetors, but the mages had gotten confident. Arcs of prismatic magic flew into the cloud of swirling, howling creatures, forcing some of them to withdraw. The Pain Children that were unable to fly created a tighter circle around Alice and Nyx, though they too were under attack—and by one of their own. The poltergeist was still under Alice’s control, and it was fighting its brothers with furious zeal.

However, none of them would be able to approach. Alice couldn’t
see
the protective wards Nyx had willed into existence, but she felt them. They were like invisible walls defining the perimeter their engagement would be confined to. As long as the wards were up, it was only Alice and Nyx, one on one, with no one to intervene.

Nyx made a sudden move and this stole Alice’s attention again. A whip of purple and black light came slicing through the air at Alice, but she put her hands up to protect herself and the whip seemed to strike an invisible barrier creating a buckshot blast of sound that echoed throughout the graveyard.

Alice looked at her hands, and then at Nyx.

“Impressive,” Nyx said, “But it isn’t enough.”

Another whip of dark light raced through the air. This time, instead of blocking it, Alice quickly spun on the spot, put her hand out, and grabbed the end of the whip as it came to strike her. The whip was cold and hot at the same time, and it bit into her palm like a razor blade, but she wrapped her hand around it and
pulled
, and Nyx staggered a couple of steps before releasing the phantom weapon she had conjured.

Alice opened her hand and let the whip fall to the earth where it dissolved. Her hand was bleeding, but wreathed in shifting light. Before her very eyes, she watched the wound knit together and close, leaving only a slightly visible scar—
like the ones on my back
, she thought. Again she turned her eyes toward Nyx, this time grinning.

Think like a mage
, Isaac had said. This wasn’t an easy feat and one that still required her to close her eyes and concentrate on what she wanted to occur, but the thought itself came quickly. When she opened her eyes they were shining bright and blue. Nyx cocked her head, regarding Alice curiously, and Alice opened herself to the place where her magic came from.

She thought of Trapper. Alice blinked, and in blinking created a blue flash of light as bright as a thunderbolt. All around her, the Pain Children howled and screamed. Nyx covered her face with her hands, but she too had been hurt by the flash. Alice blinked again and the cloud of Pain Children dispersed. Nyx threw her head back and let out a piercing scream as the skin on her arm turned black and began to split and crackle like meat on a grill.

The slighter woman staggered a couple of steps and Alice charged, shoulders first like an NFL player, colliding with Nyx’s mid-section and sending her sprawling to the floor with Alice on top of her. Nyx struggled for a moment, but Alice quickly overpowered her, grabbed her arms, and pinned them against the grass. Alice wasn’t particularly strong, but she was stronger than this frail body the supposed goddess of the night had chosen as a vessel.

“You should’ve picked a body capable of fighting back, bitch,” Alice said.

“I didn’t need to fight back,” Nyx said. Her arms suddenly transformed into tendrils of shadow, slipped through Alice’s grip, and rematerialized in a position to pin Alice’s arms to the grass. “I just had to get close.”

There’s that déjà vu again,
Alice thought.

When Nyx’s hands solidified again, they were clasped on either side of Alice’s face. Nyx’s mouth opened and Alice saw, within her throat, the sweet blackness of oblivion. The darkness spread all around Nyx’s mouth in lines of crooked, wild, shadowy ink which seemed to spread to Alice’s face, creating a cold feeling like having ice water dripped over her head. Alice wanted to move, but couldn’t. She could hear Cameron yelling for her to get away, and in the corner of her eye thought she saw Logan—who hadn’t erected a shield—barreling down the hill to get to where she was, but these details seemed distant and insignificant.

Slowly, Alice felt a part of herself which had once been solid, like a wall of stone, melt away into liquid, and then evaporate into air—air that had started to leak out of Alice’s open mouth and fall into Nyx’s. She could feel the gap between her lips and Nyx’s close, and knew that as soon as their lips touched, it was over. Nyx would take whatever part of Alice she wanted and flee with it; or worse, Nyx would invade Alice’s body just as she had all of these other girls.

For a moment, for one fleeting instant, she wanted this. She was ready to give herself to the song and become one with a greater purpose, a higher power. These weren’t things she had wanted before tonight. Alice had never craved the warmth of a deity’s embrace, but she could hear Nyx’s song in her mind. She knew, in that instant, that everyone else here could hear it too; she knew that they were battling it just as strongly as she had been until now.

But the moment passed. Isaac, Cameron, Jim, they were all depending on her. They needed her. If Nyx was allowed to win, Isaac was all that stood in her way. To allow
this
to happen, to allow herself to be overcome, for the song to win, would be the worst mistake she ever made.

“No,” Alice said, gritting her teeth, “I won’t let you take me!” and she ripped herself away from Nyx with such force she toppled onto her back.

Nyx was the first to stand, rising to her feet with an almost fluid motion. Her cheeks and arms were scorched and black, but she seemed as steadfast and as confident as ever. “You will give me back what’s mine,” she said, “You stole my energy away, and now I am a
shadow
of what I once was. Do you have any idea what it is like to have to survive by devouring souls like a common parasite? I was once a goddess!”

“I do,” Alice said, “And you’ve always been a parasite.”

Alice’s leg shot out and struck Nyx on the kneecap. One of Nyx’s legs gave way with a loud crunch and she toppled to the grass, screaming. Alice crawled over to Nyx and wrapped her hands around her slender neck. Nyx reached up with her clawed hands to grab Alice’s face again, but succeeded in doing nothing more than scratching the skin in places. Alice thought she heard something—someone yelling, maybe—but the sound was distant and it didn’t register in her mind.

I’m going to kill her
, Alice thought,
I have to kill her.

The thought came prematurely. No sooner had it formed at the front of her mind than Alice was struck on the side of the head by something that sounded almost like a sonic boom. Alice didn’t topple this time; she went
flying
, coming to a stop many feet away, her head ringing, and her vision blurry. She struggled to see what was going on, but caught only a brief glimpse of… purple?

“What the fuck,” she said to her dazed self.

Alice shook her head to try and come back to her senses, but it was as if an explosion had gone off immediately next to her. Seeing the world was like looking through a camera lens, everything coming into and out of focus in pulses. Sounds were muted, as though she had been submerged in water, and she couldn’t feel her face. She struggled to push herself up, but her arms wobbled and she fell back to the wet earth with a thud.

Across from where she lay, she watched a woman rush up to Nyx and throw herself to her knees. Alice identified the woman as Sonia, one of the legionnaires, and wondered why she had just attacked Alice. Then the ringing in Alice’s ears cleared with a pop, and the sounds of the world came back to her in a mad rush. The howling Pain Children, the thundering magic of the praetors as they defended themselves from relentless attacks, and the thudding of her own heart in her chest were all around. But she heard something else, too—a single sound rising up above the wind of battle.

“Take me!” It was the legionnaire. Her arms were outstretched, she was on her knees, and looking at Nyx. “Take me! I want to be yours!”

“No,” Alice thought, the words never forming on her lips. She planted her palm in the earth, and then the other one, and then hoisted her shoulders up.

Sonia leaned across Nyx’s face. Nyx reached for her head and pulled her close until the legionnaire’s lips found Nyx’s. For a second which seemed to last three hours, the girls kissed, and in a soft explosion of energy which sent ripples throughout the graveyard—ripples only Alice and Isaac could feel. Nyx transferred her essence into the body of the legionnaire, into the body of a
mage
.

The thin, pale girl went limp, her head dropping to the grass with an inaudible thud, and then the legionnaire—Nyx—drew herself up to stand.

“What did you do,” said a voice from across the hill. Logan was there, standing at the barrier of the invisible wards still in effect, his face red with fury and blood. “Sonia, what the hell did you do?”

Sonia snapped her head up to look at him. She flexed her fingers and they crackled with sinister, violet light. Logan roared and charged down the hill. A gleaming sword of red fire and smoke had appeared in his hand, and he raised it over his head as if to attack. In the moment before impact, Sonia’s hand flew up—lightning quick—and bolts of energy shot out of her fingertips and into Logan’s chest, killing every ounce of his momentum and dropping him to the floor

She touched him,
Alice thought, but she had to push it out of her mind. Alice also stood, turned her fists into balls, and approached.

“Powerful,” Nyx said, “Very powerful. I had no idea what a mage’s soul tasted like and never thought I would have the chance. But she gave herself willingly to me. She saw what the end of the world looked like and knew what side of the apocalypse she wanted to be on. I don’t think I need you anymore.”

Alice stopped dead in her tracks, her body cold, her heart hammering. “What?” she asked.

“That’s right. I don’t need you anymore.”

“Bullshit.”

“Think I’m lying? If I was lying, would I be able to do this?”

Nyx threw her hand up like a kid in class eager to ask a question. With her fingers extended, she began to make a swirling motion with her arm. She too had magic bangles on her wrist, although she wore many thin strands of metal instead of one larger bangle like Isaac’s, and they started to glow violet streaked with black. High above, the clouds began to churn and converge. Alice watched them circle each other, like a whirlpool in the sky, and felt the wind pick up. Wet leaves battered her face like flies.

Though it seemed as though the body she was in was fighting her, visible only as the occasional grimace manifested on her face, Nyx was showing no signs that this incredible display of power was weakening her in any way. The magic was coming, and it was coming from the Tempest—not the Void. It didn’t matter whether the performance she had just put on was possible. She had done it, so it must have been. Her skin was flushed and warm, her eyes were sharp and alive, and she had no black veins around her mouth. Had she been telling the truth? Did she truly no longer
need
Alice?

“I’m not going to let you do this,” Alice said, “Even if it kills me.”

“I’m hoping it doesn’t,” Nyx said. “I’m still not done with you. They, however, I couldn’t care less about.”

The eye of the whirlpool lit bright violet and spat out a streaking bolt of lightning headed straight for the praetors and the rest of the legionnaires. Alice wanted to act, but in that moment—and not for the first time in the last week—she was entirely powerless to stop what was about to happen. But the bolt never struck the shield on the ground. Instead, the crackling arc of violet light broke apart on an invisible shield placed much higher than the one on the ground, sending a shower of sparks in all directions.

Like a darkening sky, Nyx’s expression changed from one of delighted glee to one of pained frustration.

When Alice looked toward the top of the hill, she saw Isaac standing with his hands up and his bangle glowing brightly. He tilted his head to look at Nyx, and then slowly began to advance down the hill. The Pain Children immediately converged on him, but it was as if he had an invisible shield around him which they could not penetrate, much less approach.

She realized then that she could actually
see
someone standing next to him now. It wasn’t entirely a human form, more like the shadowy impression of someone tall with a long beak for a face, but it was there. Was this the Good Doctor? Isaac’s hands both came up, palms out, fingers stretched. He closed both palms, and Alice felt a rush of energy wash through her.
The wards
, she thought,
he’s torn them down!