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“Please. Please listen. I’m sorry for what happened to your family. But you can’t—”
I broke off as he reached for his belt and gripped the hilt of a large knife. With one smooth movement, he pulled it free from its sheath. The edge of the blade shone wickedly sharp in the flickering firelight, and my pulse ratcheted up a notch.
“What are you—”
He chanted louder, refusing to meet my eyes as he approached, reaching out to seize my arm in one of his callused hands. I tried to pull away, but it was like the invisible net around me cinched tighter. “Hey, what the hell do you—ow!”
The blade scored my inner arm, just below my elbow. Ichor, thick and black, welled and dripped into the flames. The fire roared, spitting angry sparks toward the sky. I hissed as Julian dragged his fingers across the wound before dropping my arm. It fell, limp and motionless, against my side. Julian’s chanting grew louder as he stepped back, and I struggled, desperately straining to break free of the spell that bound me. I could do nothing but watch as he crouched low and pressed his hand, coated with the ichor of my veins, into the symbol he had traced in the dirt.
My hands and arms began to tingle, then ache, as though I was trying to bring forth a flame like none I’d ever conjured before. There was a great surge of energy, gathering inside me, growing and roiling. Julian was shouting now, his bloodied hands lifted to the sky. The energy flooded through me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, letting out a roar of agony.
“Animarum furati sunt revertetur!”
With this last shout, the energy burst forth, radiating out from the center of my being in an invisible blast. My head fell against my chest, and if the bonds had not held me in place, I surely would have collapsed. I could do nothing but pull in air as I watched Julian turn hopeful eyes to the fresh graves of his family.
But the night was still, the silence only broken by the crackling flames and the lone call of an owl. The ritual had failed.
