Daddy had shouted to Angie, “Do it! Use all you got. I know you can.” Big strong Daddy had wanted Angie to take care of them. Daddy had known Angie could.
He had glanced over his shoulder.
Daddy blew a long, piercing note full of magic on his flute, creating a personal ward for Mama, a strangehedgeEJ hadnever heard before, notes like metal clashing. Wrapping Mama in thehedge, he tried to protect her from the attack coming from outside the house, loud booms, and clangs in the night, just up the dead-tree-covered hill.
Daddy was red-faced and breathless. Mama was panting. Fear crawled up EJ like poison ivy vines, like brown snakes, like spider-nightmares in the dark.
Using her hands, Angie pulled the bindings off EJ’s magic, removing their parents’ protective shackles. As his magic was freed, it sounded like water falling in the stream near the house. The music of his energies splashed around his sister, coating her fingers.
Released from the ties, free for the first time ever, EJ’s magic sang like wood flutes on the wind, hollow sticks tapping against a log, soft and clear, the sighing of the wind, all at once. “Ohhh,” he said. “That feels good.”
Daddy stumbled. His face and red beard sparkled with sweat. Daddy’s magic sputtered as he started a personal ward for himself.
To EJ, Angie said, “I learned how to do this in magic camp. You trust me?”
Always!
EJ had tackled Angie, his arms around her waist. They fell, tripping over George, their Basset Hound. All the outside magic gonged and sang and hummed and buzzed, too loud, no melody, no rhythm. It hurt his ears. But Angie’s magic combined with his was a melody that made his heart race with joy.
The attack from the hill increased.
Angie looped and twisted her magic with EJ’s. Angel magic sang in the middle, high and piercing, ringing like silver bells, more magic than he had ever heard before.
Angie did…something.
The gonging attack was so loud EJ screamed, his head in her middle. Their magics snapped into place.
They were safe.Safe. As long as their magic was connected, maybe they would always be safe.
EJ hummed softly, taking a few of the angel’s notes into himself, and then he hummed another note, adding his own loop of magic with Angie’s.Forever. And he had never told her.
In the middle of the ice-covered street, EJ let that soft note of claiming hum through his mind again. He sang it softly. And poured himself and his magic into her.
“Ohhhh,” Angie said softly, a note of grief in the word. “Little Evan. What did you do…?”
Little Evan.The name so many in the family had called him when he was a child—Big Evan was their father. A soft smile pulling through him, he sang the note again, and their energies stabilized, the way concrete hardened over rebar.
Angie stood firmer, her staff towering.
Demons, clanging broken notes like cracked brass bells, rushed into the tip of her staff. It was the sound of a freight train, twisting steel, no harmonics, no rhythm, no grace or life purpose to the noise.But…small demons. Why such a large collection vessel?
Minutes went by. Angie’s breath labored. Her heart beat too fast, too hard, her body reacting to the horrible dissonance of demon power rushing up the staff and into the pocket universe beneath the trigger.
He pushed more power into her. His own energies, draining.
Angie was tiring. Quivering. Her breath was shallow, harsh, fast, her chest shaking.
With a soft note activating all thehealingamulets on him, EJ sent healing into her, shunting the cold away. But unless the demons were nearly gone, it wasn’t going to be enough. And…
Something is coming. For the first time, their magics entwined, hefeltit through Angie’s precog.
“This is why the vessel is so effing big,” he whispered to her.
Over comms, he heard Walter scream.
“Ojos. Show me Walter,” EJ said. A view opened on his face shield. A close-up of Walter’s face. Beneath him was a rug, deep reds and blues and greens. The rug at the foot of Walter’s bed. The view pulled back enough for EJ to see a stake in his belly. He should be paralyzed, yet he moved, ungainly, like a puppet in the hands of a novice, struggling.
With his magics tied to Angie’s, EJ saw the brand on Walter’s face the way she might. The initials on fire, burning, burning,burning, black, red, and orange. A curse in his flesh, branded for running away. Walter roared, fangs down, eyes open, fully vamped out.
