Magic Binds (14 page)

I pressed my back against the bark. I'd only get one shot at this.

The sounds of snapping wood and brush came from the west.

I held my breath.

Closer.

Closer.

A sapling snapped with a loud crack.

Now. I lunged out from behind the tree just as she passed me and sliced across her gullet.

The skin pouch tore open under Sarrat's merciless edge. Holland tumbled out, covered in slime, and drew a hoarse breath.

I had no time to check if he was in one piece. I reversed the blade and thrust it deep between her ribs. Sarrat slid into her flesh with a satisfying hiss, its blade smoking. I twisted sharply to the right. Blood gushed from the wound around the blade.

The monster screamed, her fury shaking the brush.

I pulled my saber free.

The monster whipped around, the skin on her throat hanging like a punctured balloon, and snapped her teeth, trying to bite me in half. I danced back, behind the tree. She followed, crawling up the side of the oak with sickening quickness, her teeth snapping like a bear trap closing. I backpedaled through the brush, trying not to trip on the forest floor. If her insides matched a human's, I'd sliced her liver and cut the hepatic vein or artery, likely both. If I ran her around enough, she would bleed out.

Ascanio burst out of the woods, speeding up toward us.

The old lady grabbed at me. I sliced at her fingers. She kept coming, oblivious to pain, her face an ugly mask. She was hurting, but killing me was all that mattered.

Ascanio tore into her side, but she ignored him, her gaze fastened on me. I sliced again and again. A moment too slow and she'd grip me into her clawed fist. Strike, strike, strike. This was too much fun.

Derek landed onto Jene's back and thrust a young tree through her. The
old lady thrashed, like a pinned bug. Derek ripped into her from above, while Ascanio tore at her from the side.

I ducked in as she thrashed. Her arm passed over me, clawed fingers stretched, and I sliced the inside of her biceps and moved back. One arm down. One to go.
Patience is a virtue . . .

With a howl, Holland burst from the brush, charged past me, and buried his blade in her neck. She tried to jerk away but the stake held her fast. He hacked at her neck like she was a tree, his sword rising and falling in swift frenzy. Her head sagged to the side, lolled, hanging for a moment by a thread of skin and muscle, then fell and rolled clear. The body crashed into the brush, blood pouring from the stump.

Okay. That's one way to do it.

Holland stared at me, his eyes wild, his body dripping slime and blood.

“You're okay,” I told him. “You're cool. Everything is okay.”

“I quit.”

“You're okay. It's shock.”

“No. I'm done.” He waved his sword at me. “She swallowed me! I was inside her!”

Ascanio cracked up, showing way too many hyena teeth. I gave him the look of death and he clamped his mouth shut.

“I quit!” Holland threw his sword down.

“Okay,” Derek said.

“Look, be reasonable,” Ascanio said. “We've all been there. One time there was this hungry wendigo . . .”

“Redundant,” Derek said.

Ascanio rolled his eyes. “The point is, weird shit happened. Weird shit happens a lot. It's traumatic. Look, she rolled onto me. You don't even want to know what gross things were pressed against my face.”

Holland's face jerked.

“Too soon,” Derek said. “The man says he quits, let him quit. Here, I'll carry your sword for you.”

“What are you doing?” Ascanio said. “He's clearly in shock. Beau assigned him to babysit us. We are difficult to babysit, so Beau must have a lot of respect for the deputy, which in turn means Deputy Holland is good at his job.”

“So?” Derek asked.

The magic wave hit, flooding us. The two shapeshifters paused for a moment, acknowledging it, and kept going.

Ascanio shook his furry head. “His entire identity is probably wrapped up in being a deputy. You can't let one incident destroy his sense of self. He needs to be talked off this cliff.”

Holland stared at the werewolf, then at the bouda.

Ascanio's mother, Martina, was one of the Pack's counselors. I had no idea he'd picked up that much from her.

“You're not doing a good job of it,” Derek said.

“I'd be doing a lot better if you'd stop helping him take the plunge.”

I felt a tendril of magic reaching through the woods, delicate, hesitant, searching for something, probing. The magic brushed me and withdrew with elastic quickness.

Hello, there. And who would you be?

“Derek, shut up for a second.” Ascanio turned to Holland. “Deputy Holland, weird awful crap happened to us today. Because you endured it, that weird awful crap won't be happening to anyone else. Nobody will get eaten. You swore an oath, you upheld your oath. That was a noble thing.”

“I don't care,” Holland said.

I studied the woods across the river.
Where are you . . . ?

“It doesn't matter.” Derek picked up the old woman's head by the hair and hoisted it up. It was nearly four feet high from chin to the hairline. “Let's talk about this later. We need to take the head to Beau before it starts to smell.”

“Why?” Ascanio said.

“She was part of the community,” I said without turning. “We need to show proof that we had no choice but to kill her.”

A woman stepped out of the woods on the other side of the river, a gauzy dark purple scarf wrapped around her head, hiding the bottom half of her face. She pulled it off slowly, so it hung from her shoulder. About my size and my age, with dark eyes and dark hair pulled into a high ponytail. She wore black pants, soft black boots, and a black coat trimmed with purple and split in the center to allow for quick movement. A black leather gorget shielded her neck, extending into a chest plate of supple black leather
that covered her left breast. The chest plate wouldn't stop a sword thrust. It wasn't meant to. It existed to provide her just enough protection so that if she miscalculated by half an inch when she avoided a cut, the graze of the opponent's blade wouldn't draw blood. A katana hung from her belt.

Black and purple again. At least no human leather this time.

The woman looked directly at me and walked to the bridge.

Ah. I see.

Ascanio opened his mouth.

“Quiet,” Derek told him.

I strode through the grass toward the bridge, Sarrat in my hand.

We stepped onto the boards at the same time.

The woman stopped. So did I.

She bowed, keeping her eyes on my face.

“The scent from the old lady's house,” Derek said behind me.

The scent he'd smelled in Roland's castle and then again in Jene's backyard. Figured.

“I've come for the head,” she said, her voice colored with an accent I couldn't place.

Sienna's words came back to me.
The head is important.

I pondered for a moment. My father wanted the head. Why? It was completely inert. I felt no magic emanating from it.

“No,” Holland said.

I glanced over my shoulder. He drew himself straight. “That head is evidence in an ongoing investigation by Milton County. It belongs to the people of Milton County.”

I turned back to the woman. “You heard the deputy.”

“My orders are to secure the head,” she said.

There would be violence. The air was ripe with it.

“You'll have to go through me,” I told her.

“So be it.”

“Walk away,” I told her. “My father isn't worth your life.”

“If you kill me, I'll be slain by Sharrim in battle. If I kill you, I'll be slain by Sharrum in his grief. My entire life culminates here. My passage to the afterlife is assured. I'm at peace.”

“How about door number three? Turn around and go live a nice life somewhere else.”

“You do me a great honor, Sharrim. Defend yourself.”

She opened her mouth. A torrent of magic smashed into me. My ears recognized the fact that there must've been a sound, but I didn't hear it, I felt it. It crashed into me, instantly freezing every muscle in my body. It was as if my very cells turned solid. The world slowed to a crawl. I couldn't move.

She'd used a power word against me.

I saw her lunge at a glacial speed, her katana swinging in a glittering beautiful arc, slow, but impossible to stop. Classic attack, two hands, devastating power, born from strength, speed, and precise movement perfected over countless generations.

The sword was coming toward me and I was standing there like an idiot.

I reached deep inside myself and pulled on my magic. Straining was agony. Summoning the power was like grasping my own veins and pulling them out of my body.

The sword reached the highest point and began its inevitable descent.

I
pulled
. Move or die. There was no third choice.

The sword carved its path through the air.

I forced my lips to open a mere crack. The power word was a whisper, a faint breath that escaped my mouth almost on its own.

“Dair.” Release.

The magic's hold shattered. I shied back. The point of the katana slashed across my face, right to left, drawing a hair-thin line of pain. She struck again, overhead, left to right, too fast to see. I batted her blade aside. Steel rang. She cut at me a third time and I caught her sword on Sarrat. Our blades locked. She threw her entire weight at me, pushing.

My arms shook from the strain. The blades vibrated. Strong.

She grunted, squeezing more pressure. Very strong.

Not strong enough.

I jerked my arms up, throwing her blade and her arms upward. She brought it down, aiming for another devastating cut, but I sliced across her torso, left to right. Sarrat bit deep, cutting across her stomach and coming free, blood flying from its blade.

She fell to her knees and sank down, curling on the ground. So much skill. So much training wasted. Years of practice and study for three seconds of battle and for what? Because my father told her to fetch the head at any cost. She hadn't questioned it. She obeyed.

“Was it worth it?”

She was gulping air in shallow breaths.

I crouched by her.

“Was your life worth this? Can you see the afterlife? Is it everything my father told you it would be? Or is it darkness and nothing?”

She was staring at me, her eyes wide with fear.

I should kill her and send her head to my father on a fucking pike. Her presence in my land was an insult.

Drops of blood slid from my wounded face, falling into the gash on her stomach. They landed in the pool of her blood, drops of pure fire falling into cooling water, and then something within her blood answered. Her body clutched onto my blood, receptive and eager. Her magic recognized mine. My father had done something to her. The imprint of his power burned within her. He owned her and he had sealed his ownership with magic. I'd felt something similar before on people who were cursed. She was a slave.

No. She's in my domain. You don't get to keep this one. This one is now mine.

I dragged my hand over my wound and let my blood fall into her. Commanding her to be released wouldn't do it. I had to supplant his ownership.

“Hesaad.” Mine.

Her body shook. My father's seal held. I gritted my teeth, pouring magic into her. It pulled her from the brink of death, but she was still his.

“I swore an oath, Sharrim . . .” she whispered. “He's Sharrum . . .”

“He isn't here. This is my domain. Here I'm Sharratum. Here I rule. My word is the only word that matters.”

The pressure of my power had ground the seal to almost nothing, but couldn't pierce it. It needed to be broken from within. I needed movement or words, some sort of indication, some specific action I could make her do. If she acknowledged and obeyed, it would shatter the seal like the strike of a dagger.

“Rise.”

She screamed.

“Rise.”

Convulsions gripped her. She needed help. She'd lost too much blood.

I put my hand above her chest, the surface of my palm a prism through which I focused on the blood inside her. It felt . . . right. I sensed her heart beating and my blood spreading through her like fire. It pumped and each pulse set the intricate net of her capillaries aglow.

Magic bubbled up from somewhere deep within me and flowed out into her. Her body straightened, pulled by my power.

“Rise.”

The seal shattered in an explosion of power. She rolled to her feet and stood.

Her voice came out strained, in tortured gasps.
“My life . . . for you, Sharratum.”

She swayed, but stayed upright. Blood soaked the entire front of her coat. I could seal her and she would be completely mine. The groundwork was already there.

No. Curran wouldn't like that.

“Your life is your own. I don't want it. You're no longer a slave.”

I let go. She collapsed on the bridge.

I turned around. Derek stood completely motionless four feet away from me. I'd been concentrating on her so hard, I hadn't heard him walk over. Behind him Ascanio stared at me, his face shocked even in half-form. Holland gripped his sword, watching me like I was rabid.

Damn it. I did it again. I let the magic drag me under. How the hell did it even happen . . . ?

“Sharrim,” the woman on the ground whispered. “Let me serve you, Sharrim. My life is yours. My will is yours. Kill me.”

Oh crap. Crap.

“Everything I am is yours. All I ask is a good death.”

“Why do you keep doing this?” Derek snarled.

“I haven't done anything.”

His eyes glowed bright yellow. He bared his teeth, his muzzle wrinkling in an ugly snarl. The fur on his back rose. “Do you think it's fucking easy
for Julie? She never forgets that you can override her will with one word. She feels you. Always! Every fucking second of every day.”