Walter sliced the branded, scarred flesh from his cheek. Leaving a hole.
Green sprites flowed from Willim’s bleeding stump.
A voice screamed, “No!”
Nyoka.
Her eye color flowed into natural emerald green.
The demon energies pulsed out of Willim.
If it took Walter, he could control it. He had drank the elixir.
EJ hadn’t. He hadn’t been branded. Hadn’t been spelled. But the branding iron was ready.
Shiloh said, “Angie. We’re connected.” Our hands rippled through the witch circle. “Reach for the ley line, little cuz.Find it!Reach for it, you little wimp. Use that thread twined with your brother’s power.”
Shiloh knew about that thin band of our power. Cousin Wacko had to have opened aseeingworking. Eyes still on Walter, I spun the yellow line of EJ’s magic into Shiloh’s and mine andreachedwith our knotted and twisted power. Shoving the braided lines of Everhart magic deep into the earth, for the ley line.
On the floor, Walter saw the demon streaming from Willim toward EJ.
The demon light flaming in her eyes, Nyoka bent over EJ.
Ripped open his pockets until she found his palillos. The witch-vampire activated a set and dropped it into Willim’s blood.
Everything stopped. The sprite stopped, frozen in place.
I looked around. EJ out. Walter bemused. Nyoka staring atmy brother. The unit were all in protected positions, firing, throwing amulets.
Nothing was settled, finished, or safe.
Time was changing again, speeding. What had been milliseconds became half seconds. My head thrummed with each heartbeat. Perhaps ninety seconds since we came through the door.
Forever.
Shiloh screamed, “Ley line!”
I closed my eyes. Envisioned the deep earth, through the stone heart of the mountains that made up Chattanooga. My thread of magic pierced into the rock, along the energy pathway carved by the Everhart coven when they warded our building with ley line power.
When I found it, when I channeled the power there, it might burn me out, rip away my mind, cauterize my soul. Working the raw power of a ley line without the assistance of a full coven was utter idiocy.
I pulled on the pain, used it. Shoved through bedrock. Deeper. My blue-white magic, powered with Shiloh’s and EJ’s magicreached, as if it had a mind of its own. Lanced the glowing energies of the ley line.
Power. Clear, bright, translucent as melting glaciers. Frigid, icy as the far reaches of space. Heated as the center of the Earth’s core. All the power of the Earth. All power.All power. I touched it with that single bright strand of my magic.
Fast as the speed of light, ley line power rammed up, into my body. Into Shiloh.
She whimpered. Her legs gave way. I gripped her hand.
Following her descent to the floor, I slid down, sitting. Landed on my staff.When did I drop it?
EJ was looking at me, groggy and dazed. His magic wovewith mine, doing something…weird. Something slow. Something different from the way time changed when I looked at potential futures. This was…dreamy. Time slowed. Magic/not magic. Dreams and moonbows.
With a small, cordoned-off part of the braided magics, I placed my right hand onto the null staff. Numb fingers sought the trigger. My mind, my magic, buoyed by Shiloh, by the unimaginable power of the ley line, moved faster. Beneath the blue tigereye, buried in the staff’s wood, I saw the tiny nugget ofotherthat I had stolen as a child, that small bit of queen’s magic, of The Glob, inside my staff.
The place of theotherlooked different, suspended between the staff and the ley line. It was an opening. Not a different place itself, but an opening into such a place. A tunnel of nothingness. At the end was a universe of emptiness. No energy existed there. No matter. Not even space as I understood it.
Except at the entrance, where EEBs—demons—waited, trapped. Entombed, wailing and gnashing their teeth.
