Immortal Beloved: Darkness Falls Part 21

"Stop," I whispered, so softly I could barely hear myself. I tried to clear my throat. "Stop." Incy ignored me. His chanting continued. He had been practicing this, planning this, for a long time. Probably since right after I'd disappeared. Maybe even before.

Katy watched the scene dully, her reactions coc.o.o.ned as well. Did she understand what was happening? I suddenly felt that as much as I had hung out with Katy, traveled with her, practically lived with her at times, I actually didn't know her all that well. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, what she would do if she could.

Incy's smooth tenor became stronger, harsher, his words sounding like bullets, like whips, filled with evil intent. Suddenly Boz seemed to awaken and started to struggle. His shoulders jerked; I heard his chains rattling and grinding against the wood column. His eyes flared, staring at Incy with disbelief.

"Stop!" I said, spitting out the word like a lump of clay. Once more I tried to free myself, with no result.

A sound tore from Boz's throat, an unintelligible animal sound of pain and fear. "Okay! Okay! Yes! Take it!" he cried, sobbing. "Take it! But stop!"

Incy smiled cruelly and kept singing.

Boz started screaming, the sound deadened and choppy. His eyes bugged out, the pupils filling the blue irises like a black oil stain. Horror filled me as I saw true evil stripping Boz away from himself. I remembered the sight of Reyn's brother being flayed by my mother, during the siege. Her words had been dark and terrible like this, her face almost unrecognizable. She'd raised her hand, snapped it out at the raider, and her amulet had seemed to glow with a frightening power. The raider's skin had burst from him, shredding through his clothes and leather armor, his chain-mail shirt. I'd watched dumbstruck as he'd stood there like an anatomical statue, raw muscle and sinew and bone, his eyes huge and surprised without their lids, without brows. It hadn't killed him, of course. Sigmundur had leaped forward and severed the raider's naked head, and that had killed him.

My mother's power had been as dark as this, as evil, though she was trying to save us, her children.

"Stop!" I said, the word sounding like a sob, and even that sapped my strength, made me feel like collapsing in the dust and pa.s.sing out for a hundred years.

Still Incy chanted, his voice victorious now, his face flushing with triumph and life, eyes glittering. The air felt polluted, defiled, as if I were breathing illness, breathing in wretchedness and despair.

Incy's voice rose in a crescendo of exhilaration. His hands pressed against Boz's face so hard that the skin glowed white around his fingertips. Tears ran out of my eyes and down my cheeks.

Boz's back arched. His voice was raw and strangled. Katy slowly turned her head toward him, watching him uncomprehendingly. Incy shouted his last few words, then jumped up, arms raised, standing like a matador who'd just killed a bull for the crowd.

Boz's voice broke off abruptly. Just ten feet away from me, his face... crumpled inward on itself, as if deflated. I gasped, my stomach heaving at the sight. Boz's shoulders folded in, his head sinking onto his chest in a grotesque, unnatural way. His skin was gray and powdery, withered and wrinkled beyond recognition. His body slumped forward, held only by the chains binding his reedy, stringlike hands. It was as if Incy had sucked Boz's actual soul out, leaving a desiccated, inhuman husk, a repulsive, empty skin that had once been my friend. Everything that Boz was, everything he had been, everything he had done in his life-it was all gone, forever.

I'd never seen an immortal die without having his head cut off. It was stunning, for some reason hitting me so much harder than the odd occasion when I'd seen a human die. I hadn't known it could be like this. Incy had known.

The air crackled with magick and darkness. It felt sharp, barbed, painful, and disgusting all at once, all around me. I tried not to breathe in the foulness, almost retching from its noxiousness. Incy was laughing, dancing around, so full of Boz's life and energy that he couldn't stand still.

"I am invincible!" Incy shouted, whirling and leaping near Katy and me. "I am invincible!"

I tried not to throw up with revulsion and dread. I looked over at Katy and behind her dull stillness I saw terror and comprehension. She knew beautiful, selfish, silly Boz was dead, knew that something unspeakable had just happened. And would happen to her and to me. Either way, one of us would have to watch it again.

She started crying then. Her shoulders, pulled back so painfully and awkwardly, shook. She choked on her tears, gagging like I was, and at one point seemed to pa.s.s out. Then her head rose again, tears streaking the dirt on her face. Her mouth opened but closed without saying anything. I'd seen her drunk before, and sick; laughing hysterically, crying with shared emotion as people all around us whooped in the streets on V-Day. I'd never seen her like this, disheveled, dirty, dopey, well past fear, well past terror. I wished I could comfort her.

Still Incy danced around us, vibrant with power, alive with Terv magick, laughing maniacally, rubbing his hands together.

Finally he whirled to a stop in front of me, looking unholy with a terrible, unnatural beauty. "Nastasya-you're next. Give me your power, like ol' Boz here, and Katy won't have to buy the farm. Deal?"

I stared at him. Did he mean it? Could I save her? But... what would he do with my power? Nothing good. What a choice. What would River want me to do?

CHAPTER 24.

New Year's Eve felt like hundreds of years ago. I had danced in a circle with everyone at River's Edge, danced around a fire and felt magick rise in me like a fountain, like a sunrise. I had tried to cast darkness out of me.

Afterward Reyn had waited for me. In the snowy woods I had reached for him and he had kissed me. He'd been so warm, so strong. He'd told me what he wanted-me-and asked if I wanted him, too. I'd been an idiot, a scared idiot. I had learned so much there, but it had come at me like unrelated bits and pieces: crystals here, herbs there, stars, names for things, spellcraft, oils, and moon phases. I'd been so stupid that none of it had fit together; none of the pieces had been made into a stained-gla.s.s window of understanding. If I could try one more time...

"What do you say, my love?" Incy's face was glowing, as perfect and eternal as that painting I'd seen in the Met, full of stolen life and energy.

His voice snapped me back to the appalling present, with my muscles seizing and cramping, my brain lit and frantic, this unnerving binding spell wrapping me tightly in victim cords. I stared up at Incy, focused on his face. A word floated into my consciousness, indistinctly at first and then forming more completely: fjordaz. Fyore-dish. It was an ancient word for what Incy was stealing-somehow, instantly, I knew that. He'd taken Boz's fjordaz.

Where had I heard that before? My mother? Yes. It had been a word in the song she sang to call her power to her. I remembered her strong, lovely voice singing, and the word fjordaz being woven in. Was she calling on her own power? Trying to subvert someone else's? I closed my eyes, trying to think.

"Fine!" Incy shouted. My eyes popped open as he pulled out an old sword, its blade inscribed with symbols that made my flesh crawl. The metal glinted in the candlelight as Incy hefted it. "Did you know there's more than one way to skin a cat?"

My brain struggled to follow his thoughts.

"With Boz, I actually ripped his power away while he was alive, just to see if I could." Incy smiled, showing teeth. "And it was incredible. I hope it was good for you." He did a few dance steps, tapping the sword on the ground like a cane. "But if I just whack Katy's head off, I'll be able to grab her power out of the air. So, easier, eh?"

"Wait!" I got out. I'd been kneeling all this time on the cold floor, and my knees burned and throbbed with pain. "Wait!"

"Wait? You want to think about it? No." Incy bounded over to Katy and raised the sword above her head. She blinked several times, looking up at him, and I saw her try to move, try to stand. It all seemed surreal, a bleary recollection of a nightmare that I would soon wake from.

"No!" I couldn't shriek, but I made my voice as loud as I could. It was garbled, like I was yelling through a tunnel of felt. "No, Incy, wait!"

Katy was gagging, unable to sob. Her eyes were wide, still disbelieving.

Incy looked at me. "You are making me do this," he said clearly, and brought the sword down.

"Katy!" I choked out, even as I heard the unexpectedly loud thwack. Everything in me bolted forward until the deadly chains yanked me back. Katy's inarticulate shriek stopped.

My mouth hung open as I saw Katy's head drop to the floor and roll slightly, facing me. Her eyes looked at me, slowly blinked once, and then glazed over, like sc.u.m forming on old milk. A gush of blood, vivid red, erupted from her neck and pulsed outward several times with her heartbeats. In a split second I was back to the night when my entire family was slaughtered. There had been so much blood then, too. I had walked through it, my felted wool slippers squishing in the soaked carpet. Now I stared as Katy's blood, red and shining on the old warehouse floor, flowed toward me, making rivulets through the dust. The heavy, coppery smell hit my nose, filled my mouth.

My guts heaved. I leaned sideways and hurled, my stomach convulsing over and over. The drinks I'd consumed just hours ago burned with bile at the back of my throat.

Incy had been chanting during this, but now he stepped back quickly to avoid getting the spreading blood on his shoes. He was breathing hard, little puffs of smoke visible in the weak moonlight. His eyes shone when he looked at me, and he seemed amazed, impressed, giddy that he had actually done such a heinous, ruinous thing.

"Are you happy now?" he asked. Blood dripped off the sword that dangled from one hand. "You see what you made me do? That's your fault!" He gestured at Katy. "She didn't have to die! You could have saved her! But your selfishness killed her!" His words would have stung even more if he hadn't looked so exhilarated.

That was when my hatred of him began to override his binding spell, just a bit.

"I hate you!" I said, my tongue still feeling thick but my voice stronger than before. Incy reeled back in shock, whether from my words or my ability to say them, I didn't know. But it was pouring out of me now, the way Katy's blood had poured out of her.

"I hate you! I hate everything about you! You're crazy! Evil! Drunk on power!" I was going to die anyway-might as well let it rip. I put all the coldness and loathing into my voice that I could summon.

Incy's face contorted with rage. "Shut up! You're the dark one! You're evil, all the way down to your shriveled little soul!"

"I used to think so. Used to fear it," I spit. Speaking was still difficult, not fluid, and required effort, but I could get words out. "Everything was going wrong, and I thought it was me! But it wasn't! I'm fine! It was you, all along! You're the dark one!" I wanted to sob with relief at that realization-a.s.suming it was true-but since I was about to die, there wasn't much point.

"Shut up!" Incy yelled again, waving the b.l.o.o.d.y sword at me. "You don't know what you're saying! You love me! I've done everything for you!"

I gaped. "Love you? Are you insane? Look around! Look what you've done! Look what you're doing to me!" My chains rattled and sc.r.a.ped against my post. I felt the sharp sting of wooden splinters digging into my wrists.

Incy did look around, and a moment of confusion crossed his dark, handsome face.

I shook my head. "I can hardly imagine the Incy of the past, my friend," I said. "Every memory I have of you is spoiled, uglier than I remembered. I want to erase you from my past, erase every single thing about you." I spoke these true, hurtful words more calmly, and it pushed Incy over the edge.

Two bright blotches of anger rose on his face. "You don't mean that!"

I nodded, my head feeling like it weighed about fifty pounds. "Oh, trust me, I do, Incy."

"Yeah?" With an enraged bellow, he leaped at me, swinging the sword. I could barely flinch the slightest bit, snapped my eyes shut for the blow. Instead the sword hit my post with great force, shaking it, sending stinging reverberations through my hands.

It took him a second to dislodge the sharp blade, and I wished so much that I could swing my feet out and knock him down. I pictured hitting him, over and over, pictured picking up the sword....

He got the blade free, stepped back, and pointed it right at my face. He held the tip, still slick with Katy's blood, a few inches from my eyes. "You hate me, huh? Then I won't even pretend to feel guilty about taking your power."

My chin lifted. "You can't have it! I won't let you."

Incy giggled, his laugh becoming disturbing, highpitched. "Like you can stop me."

"I can!" I bluffed, but Incy wasn't fooled.

He pointed his finger at me and said a few words, and with the next breath I sagged heavily, barely able to move even my eyes. He'd strengthened the binding spell, and I wanted to howl with frustration and rage. My eyes stung with tears again and I couldn't believe that he would win this way, that I couldn't fix this.

"It would be better if you were giving me your power," Incy said conversationally. Using his hand, he stooped over and began to trace Katy's blood into the shape of a big circle around us. Apparently taking my power required more of a setup, more preparation than for Boz or Katy or a regular person. The horrible tang of blood, plus the stench of alcohol and vomit, made my stomach heave again. "But I'm sure I can take it, even against your wishes. In fact, it will be an interesting challenge."

I wanted to scream, but my jaw felt rubbery and too big for my face.

Before Incy closed the circle, he put four large chunks of hemat.i.te at the four corners of the compa.s.s. Then he took more blood and drew a large, upside-down star in the middle of the circle, making a pentacle. I'd seen Anne use one in healing rituals. Like everything else, it wasn't dark in and of itself. Everything can go both ways, light and dark. It depends on the user's intention.

Next Incy set up eight black candles and four purple candles and lit them all with a regular silver cigarette lighter. The additional candles made the whole tableau even more sickening: Katy's blood was now a brighter red, Boz's crumpled, dried-apple face looked faintly greenish. The lights cast deep shadows into the corners of the huge warehouse. I wished a traffic chopper would go by overhead; the crew could report a suspected vandalism, and the cops would come....

"All that lovely power," Incy was crooning. "Nas's lovely, lovely power. Mine, all mine. I'll be so strong. Miss Edna will be amazed. Miss Edna might even be scared." He cackled.

"Who's Miss Edna?" My tongue was swollen in my mouth, reluctant to form words. I felt both hyperaware and still coc.o.o.ned. Each second was taking forever to get through, but I couldn't move, couldn't even feel my hands anymore.

"It will be delicious." Incy's voice was singsongy, childish. "Delicious and nutritious." He straightened and looked at me. "Miss Edna. Miss Edna is... very old. Very powerful. But not as old and powerful as her master." He waved a hand around. "In fact, this warehouse belongs to her master."

Holy s.h.i.t. "Her master?" Did we even have stuff like that?

Incy giggled again and went back to preparing his dark spell.

"Who's her master?" My tongue still felt thick; it was still hard to speak.

Frowning, Incy shook a finger at me. "None of your concern! Now shut up!"

A master?

"I will be so strong, so strong," Incy sang. He stopped at each piece of hemat.i.te and said words over it, words that sounded full of oozing greed and perverted desire.

I would be dead soon. That was an odd realization. There were times during my 459 years that I had wished I were dead, definitely. But it was only now-this year, this month, this day-that I even knew what it meant to be alive. That I even had a purpose in living. I had seen the future as a huge, gaping maw of time, stretching pointlessly, endlessly forward. Now my entire future would be wrapped up within the next hour. It was... so unexpected.

If only River- Then a thought slammed into my head, ripping through the fog. River was incredibly strong because she was of the Genoa house of immortals. Also because she was really old and had studied magick deeply for centuries. But a lot of it was just being born into that house. I had been born into the Iceland house of immortals. I was just like River. Potentially just as strong as River. Of course, I was completely untrained, completely lacking in knowledge, and a total ignorant screwup besides. But. I was the sole survivor of the House of lfur the Wolf. My power was why Incy had wanted me in the first place. If he could access my power, why couldn't I?

The idea was stunning, as if I'd just had champagne thrown in my face. Thoughts started firing with organized clarity for the first time since Incy had kidnapped me. With great effort I put aside my grief and disgust over Boz's and Katy's deaths, and instead I looked at Incy. He was going from candle to candle, singing a short verse over each one. He looked solemn and self-important and deeply happy. Uncharacteristically focused and determined. He'd never wanted anything this much in his entire life.

I was strong. Superstrong. Unnaturally strong. I thought back to Helgar. I'd worked for her as a housemaid in Reykjavik when I was in my early twenties and already a widow. It had been Helgar who had recognized me as immortal, and told me so, to my astonishment. She had told me about our magick, how we were born in darkness and lived in darkness, and that was how it was. That had been my truth for four and a half centuries. Now, at this advanced age, I was clinging to a new truth: that we can choose to be light or dark, good or evil. It was such an astonishing truth, with so many implications. I wanted to have days just to think about it instead of just minutes to regret being so long unenlightened.

Helgar had described our magick as a black snake, coiled inside us always. When we made magick, we opened our mouths and called on the snake.

I knew only a few basic spells, and I couldn't even remember them. My black snake was sleeping.

Incy closed the circle, looked at me intently, then knelt in the center. He put his hands over his eyes and started to chant.

I am superstrong. I have huge power, like River.

I opened my mouth.

That was the extent of my plan. I let my eyes unfocus and thought about my power, the few tiny spells I knew, the cla.s.ses I'd taken. I thought about my moonstone and realized with shock that it was in my pants pocket. I'd put it in there automatically out of habit. I thought about my moonstone, how much I loved it, how it felt like a part of me.

Okay, black snake, I thought for the first time in my life. Calling you now. Then I thought, Black snake, yuck. Make it a white snake. No. It was my power, and it was going to be... a dove, a white dove for me, dammit. Okay, white dove, white dove, white dove... come to me.

I closed my eyes and saw Reyn's face scowling at me. Don't be a pansy-a.s.s, he seemed to be saying. Just summon it already! Quit relying on everyone else to do stuff for you!

Incy now crossed his hands in front of his mouth. The timbre of his song changed. The air felt colder to me, more malevolent. Once again I was aware of dark magick seeping through the floorboards like foul, chitinous creatures, coming in the broken windows like an ill wind, slipping down through the rusted holes in the roof along with the innocent moonlight.

Hvtr dfa. White dove, in the language of my birthplace, the language of my parents. Hvtr dfa, come to me. Would it work if I wasn't calling it a black snake? I didn't know. I just knew that if I pictured a black snake coming out of my mouth, I would hurl again.

Hvtr dfa... come to me.

My thoughts broke up as if static was interfering. Incy's song was growing louder. What had I been doing? Why was I so cold? There was darkness everywhere, coming closer to me like waves, licking around the edges of the circle.

Oh, hvtr dfa. Think, Nas, keep it together. I started murmuring anything, whatever came into my mind. I hoped it was the chant I used to call my power, but I had no idea at this point. I was exhausted, my cobbled-together energy seeping from me.

I had my moonstone. My mother had had a moonstone. I forced myself to keep making sound, keep the image of a strong white dove in my head, but it was fading in and out and I wanted to cry.

The black fingers of darkness were getting closer, closer. Soon they would be tapping at my feet, my head, my hands, scratching me, worming their way under my skin. Soon I would feel them sidle up to my brain and begin to edge inside, begin to pry their way into my thoughts, my soul.

Once again I sang to call on my ancestral power. I let go of my physical pain, my emotional anguish. I was power. Breathe in, two, three, four.... Hvtr dfa... my dove. My dove. My white dove of power. My heritage, my birthright. My mother. My father. Iceland. Was I imagining things, or was my moonstone getting warmer? I kept murmuring, singing under my breath, keeping one eye on Incy. He was standing now, his arms out to his sides. His voice was strong, its smooth clarity debased by the evil intent of his song. The words were foul and ancient, had been used to wreak death and destruction for millennia. With barely controlled panic I felt the darkness around me gelling, thickening.

Incy was reaching a crescendo. His face was covered with sweat, his eyes were wild and unseeing, but his joy was evident. He raised his hands to the ceiling and slowly turned in a circle.

His spell touched me like glacial air off an arctic ocean. I shook with cold and closed my eyes, breathing out my chant of power, feeling that I would never be warm again. I was a conduit, a vessel to be filled by my family's heritage. I wasn't taking power from Incy, from the wooden floor, the night air. I was channeling it, letting it move through me. I would not give up. I wouldn't let him win without a fight. I wouldn't let him or anyone else take what was mine. My power would be mine forever. The cold was creeping over me like strangling vines. When I opened my eyes, my vision was blurring. Soon the darkness of Incy's mind would slide down my throat, go into my ears, my eyes, and it would all be over.

Haft, haft, efta gordil, efta alleg, I sang. The words had been ancient before my parents were born, crafted by some Old Ones at the beginning of magick. Hvtr dfa, eilil dag...myn hroja, myn gulfta... my white dove. I pictured it, pictured every feather, its eyes black like mine. It was my power. I controlled it. My power was boundless! It was in the wings of my dove, so strong and light, in the white feathers, fanned out like the sun's rays. My dove was coming at my call, as its different incarnations had come at the calls of my ancestors for centuries. It was so much stronger than Incy's patchwork, stolen fjordaz. This was mine, down to my bones, my blood.

Incy was shouting now, turning around and around. With each revolution, the dreadful coil around my neck grew tighter. I was going to faint. Suddenly Incy stamped his foot and stopped still. He brought his arms down hard, as if silencing an orchestra.

My vision faded. I could no longer see. A garrote of dark magick squeezed my throat....

Hvtr dfa, I release you! I release you! In my mind I pictured throwing my hands in the air, releasing the power of my clan... and then, to my shock, a huge surge of power shot through me, electrifying every cell in my body! My back arched violently, yanking my hands hard against the rough wooden post. As if I'd been hit by lightning, my hair stood on end, my skin burned and felt like it would split. My nose filled with blood, and a piercing pain in my ears made me cry out. I felt something leave me, something huge and tangible, as if I'd conjured an immense dust devil that was spinning away from me to do my bidding.