“The Amulet of Dominion. “ Dis’s shadows are pressing against the boundary of the circle from the inside, straining. “I lost it when I lost the throne.”
I process this in the half-second gap between attacks. “So who has it now?”
“I don’t know,” Dis says, and the honesty of that, the thin edge of something underneath it, lands like a stone.
An unknown enemy. Someone who took the amulet. Someone who sent Wraith here. I have absolutely no idea who or why or what they want, and this is not the moment to work it out because Wraith is between me and the door, and I’m running out of room.
“Come into the circle,” Dis orders imperiously.
I trip over something and my ungraceful scramble saves my ass as another blast of magic hisses right where my head should have been.
“Can’t,” I pant as I start another lap of the living room. “The wards absorbed the power from the attack. They won’t let anything in now.”
I had been, up until approximately one minute and thirty seconds ago, very proud of that particular bit of spell-weaving. A feedback loop. Any attack backfires and strengthens the barrier.
It had never occurred to me that I would ever want to join Dis in the circle. I don’t think it was a terrible oversight. Nobody could have foreseen this situation. That he… and I… and…
Suddenly, the window implodes inward.
Not a projectile. A flock of crows, black and enormous and deafening, pouring through the broken window in a rush of feathers and cold air. They fill the room instantly. They’re everywhere, swooping and circling and diving,and one of them catches me across the side of the head with a wing, and I stagger.
“Ouch! Motherfucker!”
“My apologies,” says Dis, from the circle, with great dignity.
I glance at him. The crows are still filling the room, swirling around Wraith, diving at him, buying me precious seconds while making everything utterly chaotic.
“These crows are YOU?” I yell.
“It is the best I can do from within the circle.” He sounds slightly defensive. “I have very limited reach.”
“You sent crows!”
“Yes, and they are working.”
They are, actually. Wraith is dealing with them, swatting them away, distracted, and it’s buying me time but not enough time, because I’ve backed myself into the corner by the window and Wraith is between me and every exit and the crows are thinning and I’ve run out of space and options in roughly equal measure.
I realise my towel has fallen off.
Of course it has.
I am stark naked in my living room being cornered by an ancient supernatural assassin, and this is apparently how I die, and if there’s an afterlife, I’m going to have serious words with whoever is responsible for the circumstances of my death, because this is undignified in ways that feel personal.
Wraith advances. He doesn’t hurry. He doesn’t need to. I’m cornered and out of room, and my magic is scraped thin from the protection charms I’ve been throwing, and he knows it. Those luminous mist-like eyes are fixed on mewith the blank, purposeful focus of something carrying out a task.
I throw the last protection charm I have left in me. It holds for about two seconds and then dissolves, and that’s it, that’s everything I’ve got.
Dis is at the boundary of his circle, pressing against the wards, and I can see what it’s costing him, the effort of it, and he still can’t get through.
“Felix,” he says, and his voice has lost every bit of its composure. Just my name. Just that.
Wraith raises his hand.
The front door comes off its hinges.
Hex fills the doorway. Not metaphorically. Hex is not a small person and the doorway is not a large doorway and the combination of them, plus the red eyes blazing and the shadows rising and the sheer concentrated weight of his presence when he stops moderating himself for human company, is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Wraith turns.
