Hex Appeal Page 3

  Boom!

  The third bolt singed Adam’s neck.

  The nearest pole careened with a tortured creak and crashed down, taking the fence with it.

  Adam spun, like a hammer thrower, and hurled the tree at the house. It cleared the ward in a flash of blue and smashed into the roof guard post. Boards exploded.

  A bolt bit into his thigh, a gift from the south tower.

  He was completely exposed now. The next bolt would hit him where it counted. Adam braced himself. He couldn’t dodge a bolt, but he could turn into it. Better take one in the shoulder than one in the gut.

  The guard tower stood silent and still. No bolts sliced his flesh. He grasped the shaft of the bolt protruding from his thigh and wrenched it out. It hurt like hell, but it would heal. It always did.

  The tower’s door slid open, and Siroun emerged. Behind her, a camouflaged figure fell to the floor, its arms slack. Siroun leaped onto the green shoot feeding the ward and dashed along its length as if it were a wide path on solid ground.

  So graceful.

  Siroun reached the end of the shoot, crouched, and struck in the same smooth movement, slashing the roots. Pale liquid oozed from the cuts. She cut again, lightning fast. The ward trembled and vanished, and she dropped to the ground softly.

  Adam sprinted to the house. When he got going, he was impossible to stop. His shoulder smashed into the reinforced door. It flew open with a pitiful screech of snapped bolts and shattered boards. Adam stumbled in, glimpsed the sharp end of the crossbow bolt staring at him from six feet away, and dodged to the left. The bow twanged, and the bolt fell at his feet sliced in half. Siroun leaped forward, swung her curved knives, and the guard’s head rolled to the floor. Blood spurted in a thin spray from the stump of the neck, painting the wall crimson. The body took a step forward and tumbled down.

  Adam exhaled.

  “Death number one,” Siroun whispered.

  * * *

  The house stank of unclean magic. Siroun ran down the hallway, light on her feet. Adam’s hulking form moved next to her. It always amazed her how fast he could move. You’d expect a man of his size to shamble, but he was surprisingly agile, the way giant bears were sometimes surprisingly agile just before their claws caught you.

  They had been making their way toward the center of the house, where Chang’s blueprint indicated a stairway. They’d run into the guards. Both times, she avoided casualties. Now the bloodlust sang through her, slithering its way through her veins like a starving, enraged serpent. She needed a release.

  Somewhere deep within the house, a knot of foul magic smoldered. It brushed against her when she stepped through the door and recoiled, but not fast enough, not before she caught the taint of its magic. It felt old, primitive, and starved, gnawed by the same hunger inside her that longed for blood and severed lives.

  A faint red sheen blocked the hallway ahead. Another ward, weaker and simpler than the first. Still, it would take time.

  Adam moved toward the ward, casually bumping the fey lantern on the ceiling with his hand. The hallway drowned in darkness.

  She ran up to the ward on her toes and swept her palm over its surface, close but never touching. Thin streaks of yellow lightning snaked through the red, trailing the heat of her hand. Past it, down the hall, she saw another translucent red wall.

  Three men burst from the side room on their left. Adam barreled into them like a battering ram. The two front guards flew several feet and crashed to the ground in a heap of cracked bones. Siroun snapped a kick, connecting with the third guard’s jaw. He went down with a low moan.

  Adam bent over the fallen female guard. The woman jerked back when she saw his face. He probed her side. “You have a broken rib,” he informed the woman. “Don’t move.”

  She glared at him with remarkably blue eyes. “Go fuck yourself.”

  Siroun pulled the duct tape from her pack. Six seconds, and the guards lay trussed up on the floor. Adam spun toward the ward. Siroun touched his arm and pointed to the side room. He understood and charged into it. His shoulder hit the wall. The wooden boards exploded, and she followed him into the next room, bypassing the ward.

  Another wall, another crash, another ragged hole in the wood. The sheer power he could unleash was shocking.

  They broke through the next wall. A foul stench hit her, the lingering, heavy odor of a greasy roast burned by an open flame. Bile rose in a stinging flood in Siroun’s throat.

  Adam halted.

  A barrier rose before them. Flesh-colored and transparent, almost gel-like, it cleaved the room in half, stretching from the left wall to the right. Long, thick veins, pulsing with deep purple, pierced the gel, branching into smaller vessels and finally into hair-thin capillaries. Between the veins, clusters of pale yellow globules formed long membranes, folded and pleated into pockets. A loose network of dark red filaments bound it all into one revolting whole. Adam stared at it in horrified fascination.

  Tiny gas bubbles broke free of the capillaries and slid to the surface of the barrier to pop open. Here and there, small spherical vesicles of the yellow substance floated through the lattice of the filaments and veins, pushed by the invisible currents, bending and swiveling when they came to an obstacle.

  It lived. It was a very primitive kind of life, but a life.

  Her gaze traveled to the far left, drawn to the source of the vesicles, and found a gross, misshapen thickening of the yellow membranes, a bulging sack, tinged with carmine filaments. Globules of yellow matter detached from the surface of the sack and fluttered away one by one. She focused on it and found an outline of a human hand within the sack, complete with outstretched fingers. Another vesicle slid from the sack’s top, allowing for a glimpse of a swollen blue-black thumb. As Adam watched, the nail broke free from the bloated digit and spun away, caught by a current.

  Adam gagged and retched, spilling sour vomit onto the expensive rug.

  Siroun took a step forward. She knew this intimately well. This was witch magic: not the balanced, measured magic of the regular covens, but a darker, twisted kind, born of complete subjugation to the primal things. Most witches withdrew at the first hint of their presence. This witch had embraced it, and it had gifted her with this ward.

  The foul magic hissed and boiled around her, sparking off her skin. That’s right. Look but do not touch.

  Siroun thrust her hand into the barrier.

  The filaments trembled.

  The yellow membranes shivered as if in anticipation. Folds slid and unfolded, streaming toward Siroun’s hand.

  Adam moved, probably determined to pull her from the thing before it stripped the flesh from her bones.

  She let the thing inside her off the chain. Blue fire burst from her skin. The pink gel around her hand shriveled and melted in a plume of acrid smoke. Adam coughed. The fire grew brighter, biting chunks from the barrier in a greedy fury. The membranes tried to sliver away, the filaments collapsed and curled, but the fire chased them, farther and farther, until nothing was left. A swollen, blue corpse crashed to the floor, one arm stretched upward. Its stomach ruptured and a thick brown liquid drenched the rug. The stench of decomposition flooded the room.

  The last glowing droplets of the gel dissipated. The blue fire calmed to mere lambency, clothing her hand like a glove. She turned her hand back and forth, watching the glow. Funny how the mind tends to trick you. She never forgot that she was cursed. The constant bloodlust that burned inside her would never let her delude herself. But most of the time she managed to put that knowledge aside, skirt it somehow in the deep recesses of her mind, until she stood there with her hand on fire. Adam was looking at her, and she didn’t want to look back, not sure what she would find on his face.

  Siroun blew on the flames. The fire vanished.

  She stepped through the ward. Pale glyphs ignited on the floor, wheels of strange arcane signs. Siroun glanced back at Adam over her shoulder. She knew bloodred fire filled her eyes, but Adam didn’t flinch.
For that she was grateful.

  “Witch magic?” he asked.

  “Yes and no. Sometimes, when a witch is very troubled, she breaks away from the coven and begins to worship on her own. She becomes a priestess of the old gods. This thing was very old, Adam. Older than your blood.”

  “Why is it here?”

  “Because this house has been hexed. But I can tell you that it wasn’t meant for us.” She pointed at the door at the end of the room. The door stood ajar, betraying a hint of the stairs going down. “It was meant to keep in whoever came up these stairs.”

  “It sealed Sobanto underground?”

  She nodded and padded to the stairs. “Don’t step on the glyphs.”

  * * *

  The stairs brought them to another door. Siroun paused, listening. Heartbeats, one, two, three, four. She raised four fingers. Adam pulled a small cloth bag from one of his pockets. The spicy scent of herbs filled the air. A sleep bomb, very small, with a tiny radius of impact. Once released, the magic inside it would explode the herbs, and anything that breathed within the room would instantly fall asleep.

  Adam passed her the bag. Siroun held her breath.

  Three, two …

  He smashed his fist into the door, knocking a melon-sized hole in the wood. She tossed the sleep bomb into the opening, and both of them sprinted upstairs.

  A muffled cough, followed by a weak scream, echoed from the room. The sound of running feet, a dull thud, a throat-scraping hack, and everything fell silent. They sat together on the stairs, waiting for the power to dissipate. One minute. Two.

  “Do you think our client was a witch?” Adam asked.

  “That seems the only likely explanation.” Siroun leaned forward, looking down the stairs. The less he saw of her face, the better.

  “I thought witches didn’t work on their own.”

  “They don’t. Being in a coven is like being … in a place where you belong. It’s like being with your family. The other witches might judge you, they might fight with you, and you might even dislike some of them, but they will be there when you need them most.”

  Unless they betray you. Allie’s face swung into her mind’s view. “I’m your sister,” the phantom voice murmured from her memories. “Don’t be afraid. I would never do anything to hurt you.” But she did. They all did.

  “If you’re a witch with power, you become aware of things,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Do you know the history of the shifts?”

  Adam nodded. “Thousands of years ago, magic and technology existed in a balance. Then humans used magic to lift themselves from barbarism. Extensive use of magic created an imbalance, causing the first shift, when technology began flooding the world in waves. This began the technological age that lasted roughly for six thousand years. Now we have overdeveloped technology, and the world seesawed again—the magic has returned and wiped out our civilization once again.”

  Siroun nodded. “Before the shifts, before the imbalance, humans worshipped things. If it frightened them, and they couldn’t kill it, they called it a god. Faith has a lot of power, Adam. Their faith influenced these entities, nurturing them, granting them powers. They are very simple creatures because the people who worshipped them were simple. Now the magic has awakened, and these things are waking up with it. Witches stand closer to nature than most magic users. They seek balance, and sometimes they come across an old presence. These old ones, they are hungry. We molded them into gods, and they want their meal of magic and lives. For whatever reason, Linda Sobanto broke away from her coven and became a priestess to one of those things.”

  “What drove her, do you think?”

  “Anger.” That was what drove her. Anger at being violated, anger at the ultimate betrayal. “The glyphs on the floor upstairs. They are a prayer.”

  “To whom?”

  Siroun shook her head. “I don’t know. But I know that what she asked of it cost her. Dealing with gods, even simple gods, never comes without a price tag. Never. They don’t gift. They barter.”

  “How do you know all this?” he asked.

  Because my sister did the same, and I paid the price. “I’ve seen a hex like this before,” she said, choosing the words very carefully. “I once handled the case of a child. A girl. She was ten years old.”

  She wished she hadn’t started this, but now it was too late.

  “What happened to the little girl?” Adam asked.

  “Her sister was a witch. Their coven was inexperienced but powerful. They came across an old god, and they tried to barter for more power. The god needed a flesh form to exist, so during a really strong magic wave, they gave the little girl to the god. The symbols used were nearly identical.” She kept talking, holding the memories at bay, keeping her voice flat. “The child proved to be more gifted than anticipated. She fought the god off until technology came and ripped it out of her body for good.”

  “But she was never the same,” Adam murmured.

  “No.”

  Siroun read concern in his eyes. Not for Sobanto, for herself. That was the last thing she wanted.

  Siroun pushed to her feet. “Time is up.”

  They trotted down the stairs. Adam kicked the door, splintering it. Four Red Guards lay on the carpet. She only heard three hearts beating. “Damn it.”

  Adam turned the closest man over, picked him up, and gently lowered him on the couch. “Dead.”

  “How?”

  “Probably an allergic reaction. It happens occasionally.”

  She gritted her teeth.

  “There is nothing to be done about it now.”

  Pointless fury boiled inside her. He wasn’t supposed to die. Why the hell did he die? So stupid …

  “We move on,” Adam said.

  She snarled. He took a step toward her.

  “We move on,” Adam repeated.

  She spun on her foot, walked out of the room, and stopped. The floor of the hallway was filled with glowing glyphs.

  * * *

  Adam watched Siroun as she crouched, hugging the floor. Her face had this odd look, a disturbing mix of sadness, almost sympathy, as if she were at a funeral, comforting a friend. Around her, arcane patterns on the floor emitted glowing tendrils of vapor. The colored fog stretched upward a couple of feet before gently fading.

  “It took her months to do this,” she whispered.

  The entire length of the hallway floor shimmered with magic. It was oddly beautiful.

  Siroun reached out and touched a congealed dark drop on the floor. “Blood,” she whispered. Her nostrils fluttered. The orange fire in her irises darkened once again to near red. “Her blood.”

  She rose and pointed to the middle of the hallway, where red glyphs bloomed, like poppies. “That’s where he killed her.”

  “What’s the purpose of all this?” he asked.

  “An illusion.” The fire in Siroun’s eyes died to almost nothing. Her voice held profound sadness. “Give me your hand, Adam.”

  He offered her his palm and watched as her slender fingers were swallowed by his huge hand. Siroun reached out with her other hand. Her thumbnail flicked across her index finger. A single drop of blood dropped from her hand into the glyphs. The glow vanished like a snuffed-out candle. The hallways went completely dark. A single tiny spark flared at the far end and expanded into a figure of a small boy. He stood on a stool, barefoot, large eyes opened wide. A chain hung from his throat. His mouth opened, and the high voice of a young child echoed through the hallway. “Please let me go, Mommy. Please let me go. I’ll be good…”

  The stool shot out from under the boy’s feet, as if knocked aside by someone’s brutal kick. The child hung, on the chain, choking, his eyes bulging.

  Adam lunged forward and stopped, pulled back by Siroun’s hand.

  “It’s not real,” she told him. “It’s only an illusion.”

  The child struggled. They watched him kick and die. Slowly, one by one, the glyphs ignited. The body, the chain, and the s
tool faded.

  Adam remembered to breathe. His chest refused to expand, as if someone had dropped an anvil on it.

  “She made her husband think she had killed their son,” Siroun said. “And then he killed her. She sacrificed herself. Whatever dark thing she prayed to now inhabits her body. She made a bargain, you see? Her body for revenge on her husband.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. We have to keep going. We’ll find answers when we find Sobanto.” She pulled him gently, and he followed.

  * * *

  The last door loomed in front of Adam. Wood reinforced with steel. No matter. He crashed into it, and it burst open, unlocked. Adam stumbled forward, into the huge chamber. He had barely enough time to take in the domed ceiling, half-lost in the gloom, the bare walls, and the lonely figure sitting motionless under a column of blue light; and then heat seared his left hip. He saw nothing, felt nothing save for that brief fiery slice, but his leg gave, and he crashed to the floor, catching himself on his bent arms and rolling onto his side to diminish the impact.

  A dark stain spread across the leg of his pants. He still felt no pain. Adam pulled back the sliced fabric, revealing a slash across his muscle. The edges of the wound fit so tightly together, it might have been made by a razor blade.

  Numbness claimed his hip. He took a deep breath, and, suddenly, he couldn’t feel his legs.

  Poison. He was cut by a poisoned blade, coated with some sort of paralyzing agent, probably containing anticoagulant. Adam froze. His body regenerated at an accelerated rate. It would overcome most poisons, given time. But time was in short supply. The less he moved, the faster he’d heal, but prone like this, he presented too good a target.

  Come on. Take a shot. I’ll snap your neck like a toothpick.

  Adam scanned the chamber.

  Nothing. Only the gloom and a man seated in a metal chair. John Sobanto, wearing the slack expression of a man caught in some sort of spell. A ring of small pale stones surrounded his chair. He knew this spell. If he could remove the stones, the ward would disappear.

  A hint of movement made him glance right. Siroun stood next to him. Her eyes glowed like two rubies.