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“Is Destiny still alive?” she asked.
“Technically.” The magic controlling Destiny lifted her hands over her head as if stretching. “I had need of her body.”
“You’re the miasma, aren’t you?”
The arms spread wide. “There is no name that can capture my splendor. Not since the awakening.”
Awakening? Peri continued to weave her magic as she considered the strange word. Was the miasma referring to the moment it became self-aware? That seemed the most logical interpretation.
“How did you… awaken?” Peri forced herself to ask. She genuinely wanted to know how the magic had gone from a puddle of evil to a walking, talking, threatening-the-world sort of evil. But more importantly, she needed to keep the magic from launching an attack before she was ready.
“It was slow. For a long time I only knew that I was buried deep in the earth, and that I was surrounded by magic. It pulsed against me like a heartbeat, piercing the vessel that held me captive.” Destiny—or at least the thing controlling her—shuddered in ecstasy at the memory. “Eventually it sparked the understanding that I was more than raw emotion. I could think and reason. And plot for the day I was released from my prison.”
Peri cursed. What mage thought it would be a smart idea to imprison the miasma, and then instead of destroying it, bury it deep in one of the most powerful Gyres in the world? Although each Gyre was rumored to be an ancient dragon lair, they possessed their own level of power. The Gyre that Valen controlled maintained an impressive amount of magic, but nowhere could compare to Greece.
She could only assume they’d buried it so deep they never expected it to be dug up.
But it had been, and it’d been brought to New Orleans, where it’d managed to gain control over the poor fool who had no idea of his danger.
“Richard Pascal released you?” she demanded, sweat beading on her brow. Creating a protection spell was simple enough, but she was attempting to create one layer on top of another. Like building a brick wall. The concentration it demanded was straining her ability to pay more than vague attention to the miasma.
“Only a trickle of my magic was allowed to escape, but it was enough to take control of his mind.” Destiny’s lips were pulled into a creepy smile. “Humans are so easily manipulated, aren’t they? I encouraged him to hide the vessels that contained my essence until I could discover someone with the power to fully liberate me.”
“My mother?”
The crimson eyes flared. “I couldn’t believe when she passed by me. I hadn’t felt that sort of magic since the dragons retreated from this world.” She licked her lips, as if trying to taste the memory. “Wild magic.”
That explained Richard’s strange reaction on the security video when Brenda Sanguis had strolled past him. Still, Peri was confused.
“My mother was a witch, not a mage,” she said, pointing out the obvious. “She didn’t have wild magic.”
“So I discovered after I’d transferred my power to her.” A red mist danced around Destiny’s body. She was clearly still pissed that she’d been deceived.
“And then you forced my mother to return to the Masque Salon to kill Richard?”
She shrugged. “He’d served his purpose.”
“So why go to the ranch?”
Destiny pursed her lips. “I was disappointed to discover that the power I thought would be mine was an illusion. It meant that I needed the combined power of the entire coven to escape my vessel.” Her head swiveled toward the statues glowing at the back of the room. “Or at least a portion of me.”
“That’s when you infected Destiny?”
“I still sensed the wild magic,” the miasma confessed, “but now it was connected to the surviving witch.”
Peri frowned. Her mother had been a powerful witch who’d honed her skills over several years. Next to her, Destiny was a rank amateur.
“Destiny?”
The woman’s features twisted into an expression of self-disgust. “It wasn’t until I had chosen her as my host that I could pinpoint the source of the magic.” She held up her hand to reveal the dagger she was clutching. “It was this. The blade that she’d taken off your mother’s corpse.”
Peri gasped. Okay. That was a plot twist that she hadn’t been expecting. With an effort, she studied the long knife. Not easy when she remembered what had happened the last time someone waved that dagger around her.
“Because it can absorb magic?” she forced herself to ask. As far as she knew, the knife wasn’t any more powerful than any other artifact her mother had collected over the years.
“No, because it hasyourmagic.”
“My magic? That’s impossible.” Peri’s breath abruptly hissed between her clenched teeth. Maybe it wasn’t impossible. After her mother had stabbed her in the chest, she’d managed to drain a large portion of Peri’s essence before the wild magic had exploded out of her. She pressed her hand against the scar that suddenly throbbed. “Oh.”
