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“He killed his mother with Hellfire.”
God knows what was and wasn’t true. The Thornber faithful probably told similar stories about Bren. And considering that the most popular rumour of all was that Gabriel’s mother was some sort of literal demon, the idea that he’d killed her seemed both far-fetched and not necessarily a bad thing.
“What the hell are you doing?” Chrissie yelled out the question. The rest of us were unable to speak.
“Your brother was playing with things he shouldn’t have been,” Gabriel replied. “Trying to extend the Dome. I’m evening the score.”
Trying to extend the Dome?Through my panic, I could barely make sense of the extraordinary claim. It was something the family had talked about attempting for generations, but no one had known where to start. Bren was undoubtedly an impressive practitioner, but surely he couldn’t have had any chance of doing something like that alone?
“Stop. You’re draining him.” Now that she’d had a few seconds to compose herself, Chrissie’s voice took on the mature edge of the trained empath who saw and felt all things, making her sound decades older than her twenty-two years.
“He can’t be trusted with this much power,” Gabriel said.
I couldn’t stop staring. It was dark out on the driveway, but his magic lit him up from the inside. He really was as gorgeous as people at school claimed.
I shook my head to drive the thought away.He’s torturing your brother. This is no time to admire his narrow hips and broad shoulders. Or those strikingly delicate facial features.It was like I’d been bewitched myself. Which was basically impossible. Whatever those rumours claimed.
Chrissie glanced at me, and I snapped out of it. I closed my eyes and focused on the sense of my sister by my side, Liam beyond her, and Bren writhing on the floor, his screams as agonised as ever but growing less frequent. Invisible strings flowed from Gabriel to Bren. Energy pulsed in both directions: Gabriel’s will going one way, Bren’s power going the other. It made no sense that Bren couldn’t break free. He was incredibly powerful himself.
My father screamed out a torrent of words, half incantation, half obscenities, threw both arms into the air and poured out two parallel streams of power, one directed at the bond, one at Gabriel. I sensed the intensity. Dad was giving it everything he had—and that was a lot. Surely the draining spell ought to break? And surely, Gabriel ought to collapse, or at least have to focus all his energy on putting up shields and firing back, which would force him to leave Bren alone. But somehow, the only effect was that Bren’s screams intensified.
I reached my hand out, too. It was unlikely I could achieve something that was out of my dad’s reach, but I’d been getting stronger, and I had to try. I’d have liked to just throw my hands in the air, will Bren to be free, and have it be so. But panic was making my magic unstable, so I went back to basics. I made a slicing gesture with one hand while I visualised the dual bond falling away. And I held the other hand flat and pushed air in the direction of Gabriel, imagining him being shoved away. My head ached and my hands burned, but nothing else changed.
“He’s burnt himself out working that spell on the Dome,” Gabriel said, as though he’d read my mind and understood my puzzlement. “And I’ve linked my magic with his. It’s like he’s draining himself. You won’t be able to break the connection or harm me without killing him.”
I let my hands drop to my sides, trying to understand how that would work. I’d never heard of a spell done that way before.
Liam took a few steps forward, fists raised.
“The protection of the bond applies to physical attacks as well as magical ones,” Gabriel said, staring at him. “So don’t even think about trying to put those famous boxing skills to use.”
“Stop, please,” my mum cried. She was a powerful practitioner herself, albeit not quite on the level of Dad and Bren, and she rarely showed weakness. But at that moment, she sounded like any frail human mother terrified for her child. She lifted her hands as though about to attempt a spell, then let them drop as Gabriel’s warning sank in.
“What he did is utterly unacceptable. The Dome can’t be expanded. He needs to pay the price.”
Gabriel sounded completely calm. How could he hold a conversation while working such complex and deadly magic on someone so powerful in their own right? Not only were there none of the hand signals or chanting you might expect, there seemed to be no conscious effort at all, as though the magic in the air couldn’t wait to do his bidding.
I couldn’t understand his strength of feeling on the matter of the Dome. In the unlikely event that Bren had pulled it off, surely that was cause for celebration, not fury? Inside the Dome, all was peaceful and prosperous, while outside, people suffered. If itcouldbe extended, wasn’t that the only moral thing to do? Sure, the process of maintaining the Dome was rumoured to be messy, but it was worth it for the greater good.
Bren screamed again. He wasn’t truly conscious anymore. What I could sense of his mind was nothing but pain and panic with an underlying fury and frustration at his inability to break free. I was going to be sick.
“Or else, someone needs to pay the price on his behalf.” Gabriel’s voice was almost hypnotic. If it weren’t for our own powers protecting us, it probably would have beenliterallyhypnotic. “There are less painful ways to siphon off magic.”
He released his mental grip on Bren, just a little. My brother was still utterly in his grasp and beyond our reach, but at least the flow of magic out of his body had stopped for the moment.
My father was the sort of man who could be provoked to anger by someone cutting in front of him at the bar—not that there were many people stupid enough to do such a thing in this town. The sight of his beloved eldest son in pain and at someone else’s mercy must have required every inch of his small level of self-control to stop him lashing out, whether with his magic or with his fists. But he was smart enough to know he couldn’t risk attacking Gabriel while he was connected to Brendan. Hurt one and they’d both go down.
“You mean sex?” Chrissie demanded. “You’re not really my type, but I can handle that. Put Bren down, I’ll come back to yours, and you can take some of my power in the heat of the moment. Job done.”
Sex had never seemed to be a big deal for Chrissie. She got a real kick out of seduction. Sometimes it was about ego. Sometimes about fun. Sometimes, she liked to take a hint of their life force if they were human, a hint of their magic if they were practitioners. Never enough that either party thought it an unfair deal. Even so, I shivered at the thought of her giving herself to an enemy of the family, to someone capable of this sort of cruelty.
“Or me,” Liam added desperately.
As our nan never tired of telling us, as part of her wider lectures on practitioner lore, our kind had traditionally only cared about people’s souls and auras, not, in her inimitable words, “their naughty bits”. By which she meant there had tended to be little to no gender preference amongst practitioners. In this, as in most things, Gabriel Thornber followed the Old Ways.
“Good to see a bit of good old-fashioned family loyalty from you both,” he said, smiling at Chrissie and Liam in turn, without letting his onslaught on Bren drop. “But no. If we’re doing this, I want her.” He pointed at me and locked his eyes on mine. “Strongest magic, prettiest face, most likely to make the whole damned Sadler family feel like Brendan’s been well and truly punished.”
All the blood in my body rushed to my head. Surely he couldn’t mean it?
