Biting Cold (11 page)

“Ethan!” My heart skipped a beat in the split second before he looked up at Tate. Blood ran down the side of his face from a gash on his head, and it took him much longer than usual to stand up again, but he did stand up.

I started forward to go to him, but his eyes widened.

“Behind you!” he called out.

I looked back. Mallory had gathered together a ball of magic that now glowed between her hands. The bluish light reflected unflatteringly up and across her face, like a flashlight held beneath the chin of a schoolchild. And then, as if I were a stranger—a threat instead of a longtime friend—she pitched that magic directly at me.

My first instinct was to duck. After all, I’d taken an orb or two and the sparks from a dozen others when I hadn’t been fast enough in training. I assumed those had contained only low-grade magic, but they still hurt, leaving ugly burns that took a few days to fade, even on a quick-healing vampire.

Honestly, that instinct kicked in pretty quickly, and I dodged and wove around two or three orbs that shattered against the walls behind me.

But as I dodged, I also wondered…

Catcher hadn’t let me use my sword during magical dodgeball. I’d assumed he hadn’t wanted to risk damaging my antique katana. But what if the issue wasn’t damage to the sword—but damage to the orb?

That possibility was, I thought, worth a little experiment. And so, instead of continuing to avoid Mallory’s magic, I decided to stare it down.

I gripped the handle of my sword in both hands and raised the sword in front of me…just like a bat.

Going,
I thought to myself.

Mallory slung the orb into the air like a major league pitch, its flight straight and true and aimed for my heart. I wiggled my fingers around the handle…and when the moment was right, I swung.

Going.

The vibration of pure magic and magical steel—steel I had tempered with my own vampiric blood all those moons ago—nearly wrenched off my arm. But I kept my fingers tight around the leather and ray-skin handle…and watched the orb shatter into a million blue sparks.

“Gone,” I murmured, watching the fireworks until the sparks dissipated, then sliding my gaze back to Mallory, eyebrow arched in a perfect imitation of Ethan. “Got anything else?”

She apparently took my sarcasm as a challenge. One orb after another flew in my direction, each one spicier—more magically potent—than the last. She worked with the effort—teeth gritted, forehead damp even in the November chill.

And she made me work, too. I pulled out every move and maneuver I’d ever practiced, or seen Catcher or Ethan execute, or watched on Wrigley Field. I slashed forward, backward, and from both sides. I flipped backward to avoid a pale blue orb, then flew to the floor to avoid a shot aimed at my head.

It missed me by more than it should have. Mallory was getting tired.

Normally, she’d have been smart enough to think through her
actions, to plan a couple of steps ahead. But tonight, if she was already tired, maybe I could bait her one more time.

I stood up again and crooked a finger in her direction, as Ethan had done so many times for me. “You want me? Come and get me.”

She bared her teeth, then began to spin her fingers and pull together another ball of magic from the ether.

I opened my arms. “You think you can hit me, witch? Right in the chest?”

She wound up and threw her pitch.

I let every vampire sensibility loose—sight, sound, taste, smell. The world exploded into sensations, but events around me seemed to slow down because of it. I watched the orb of blue light inch toward me; in slow motion, its surface was a pitted swirl of energy, and it sought out a landing spot, a home.

I fully intended to give it one.

Before she could reload or move out of the way, I pulled up my sword—not to bat the orb into a thousand pieces…but to reflect it. I held the katana directly in front of me, the cutting edge to the side, and the mirrorlike steel toward Mallory.

The orb hit the blade with enough force to rattle the steel. But tempered and honed, it did its job. The orb bounced right off and flew back toward Mallory. Slower on the return trip, but its direction true. It hit her square in the chest and sent her flying across the room. She hit the wall and then the floor, thudding down with a bounce that probably broke a few of her ribs, too.

At least she couldn’t hurt anyone else, or herself, for a little while. One bad guy down…Now back to the other one.

And the other one was engaged in his own fierce battle. Tate, who could manipulate a car right off the road with magic, had apparently wanted a different kind of challenge. He’d produced a
sword of his own, a gigantic two-handed blade with complicated engravings that caught the light as it shifted. A katana was intended to slice; this thing looked like it was intended to pummel.

Ethan had his sword, and there was no denying he was good at wielding it. But Tate was a man with an agenda, and he wouldn’t be deterred. The smile on his face reminded me of a cat playing with a mouse just before the final snap of its jaws. Tate had every intention of finishing the fight—and finishing Ethan—but wanted to play with his food a bit first. Ethan’s jacket was ripped from several cuts already.

“Ow.”

I glanced at the other side of the room. Paige was sitting up, a hand to her bleeding head.

I rushed to her, hoping she could find a way to stop all of this, and went down on my knees beside her. “Are you okay?”

“He made me follow him out, then made me tell him where the book was.” Her lip trembled, tears hovering at the edge of her lashes.

“It’s okay. We all knew this was coming. He and Ethan are fighting. Is there anything you can do? Can you knock Tate out or something?”

She shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks, an ugly bruise beginning to surface on one. “He did something to me. I couldn’t stop him from coming here or making me tell him where it was.”

It sounded like a violation by magic, a kind of psychic extortion used by Tate to get to the book. As if he needed any more reasons for me to detest him.

Chunks of concrete flew past us as Tate’s sword nipped a bit of the wall. Mallory was out, Tate was occupied, and Paige was injured. If she couldn’t use her magic, maybe I could at least get her
out of the room to keep her out of any more danger—or to keep Tate from using her for anything else.

“Do you think you can walk?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

I put an arm beneath her and helped her to her feet. But that plan didn’t last long.

“Merit!” Paige said. “Mallory! The book!”

I looked back. Mallory had awoken and was stretched full out on the floor of the vault, one hand stretched over the book, her lips moving as she continued her incantation.

The sounds of the scuffle stopped as Tate turned toward the sound of the ancient words. Ethan took advantage of the distraction and thrust his katana down.

The strike should have sliced Tate open from throat to stomach, but Tate put up a hand, and Ethan flew back against the wall again.

My heart nearly stopped again, but Ethan groaned and rolled over. Unfortunately, my relief was dwarfed by my shock at Tate’s power and the violence he threw around so casually.
What was he?

Undeterred by the violence around her, Mallory continued her chanting, words that were chunky and rhythmic like Latin, but with thicker consonants and a twist that sounded almost Russian.

With Ethan handled, Tate vaulted a table and reached out to grab the book.

“Mallory, stop!” I called out, but I was too late.

Tate stretched for the book, and just as his fingers made contact with its red leather cover, Mallory screamed out an incantation.
“Adnum malentium!”

A thunderous clap split the air, the energy pushing Mallory back…but not Tate.

The
Maleficium
exploded into a burst of bright blue light that
wrapped around Tate’s hand, still on the book, and up his arm like a snaking vine. Within seconds he was enveloped in light. Mallory had done something, finished something, and the
Maleficium
was reacting.

The light glowed around him like a visible aura, and for a moment he smiled, as if he’d achieved some part of his plan.

But his elation didn’t last long. The light around him began to shake, and the outline of his body along with it. He wobbled and quivered inside the cloud of light, and his expression grew pained. He opened his mouth to scream out, but no sound escaped the light, just the dull throbbing of the magic.

Within seconds, his vibrating form began to lurch up and down, and then his body began to widen. It didn’t grow bigger—it stretched horizontally as he howled out his displeasure.

The shield of magic grew as he did, and I scampered back to avoid the edge of it.

Suddenly, like a string of DNA dividing, double-wide Tate began to cleave in two. The split started at his head, and in sputtering stops and starts. Flashes lit the room like a sun-powered strobe, and then it was over.

A loud crack of magic crossed the room, and the lights in the silo flickered once, then twice.

When the room was calm again, Seth Tate stood in the middle of the room, sweating and rumpled.

And beside him stood another Seth Tate.

It took seconds for my mind to actually start working again—and even then I hadn’t managed to wrap my mind around what I’d seen.

Seth Tate, former mayor of Chicago, had become
two
Seth Tates.

The Tates looked at their hands and then each other, and then
both pushed out their chests. They screamed out—a sound wholly inhuman and ear-burstingly loud.

I hit the concrete on my knees, covering my ears against the sound. The entire structure vibrated, and I’d have sworn the concrete and steel warped from the energy they put out.

For a moment, there was silence.

And then they both shot upward, straight up the shaft of the missile silo. I ran beneath the opening and watched them ascend—twenty feet, forty feet, sixty feet, eighty feet—and then the metal doors of the missile bay burst open, sending a shower of dirt and roots and cornstalks into the silo. The Tates disappeared through the opening and into the night, supernatural missiles of unknown proportions.

The dirt cleared, and lights shone down through the hole in the sky. And all was quiet again on the midwestern front.

“W
hat the hell just happened?” Ethan asked, but given the silence that followed his answer, no one had any idea.

We stared up through the silo, as if the answer to our questions was somehow written in the Cold War–era walls.

“He split into two,” Ethan said, glancing back at Paige. “How is that possible?”

She grimaced and hobbled over to the table, where he leaned against it. “I have no idea.”

We looked back at the
Maleficium
, which still sat on the floor beside Mallory. It had been reduced to little more than a book-shaped chunk of charcoal. A few hints of yellowed pages were visible, but mostly the book was a cinder that seemed like it might blow away if someone breathed too heavily on it.

But if the
Maleficium
—the vessel—was destroyed, what had happened to all that it contained? “Paige, what about the dark magic? The evil?”

She shook her head. “I’m not really—”

“It’s gone.”

Mallory’s voice was quiet, and there was a melancholic thread of surprise in it.

We all looked at her. She was on the ground, still on her knees, staring at her hands. They were still chapped and raw, and they shook like she was an addict in withdrawal. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared into the distance, maybe ruing the fact that things hadn’t turned out the way she’d intended.

“Gone?” Ethan asked.

Slowly, she turned her gaze on him. “It was in the book, and the book is gone. So it’s gone, too.”

“How do you know?” I asked, but I realized I didn’t need her answer.

It was clear in her face.

Mallory didn’t look any better than she had before all this had started. She looked just as strung out. Just as tired.

She’d tried one more fix of black magic, and it hadn’t worked. And now there was no more magic to try.

She had officially reached rock bottom.

“She knows the magic is gone because she doesn’t feel any different,” I said. “Because she worked another spell, and she triggered the
Maleficium
, but it didn’t cure her. And now the book is gone, so it’s too late. There won’t be any more
Maleficium
-inspired black magic, right?”

Mallory looked up, and she must have caught the anger in my eyes. She looked away, tears spilling over her lashes. I wasn’t sure that emotion was remorse, but maybe—sooner rather than later—she’d own up to the consequences she’d been so quick to ignore earlier.

“Then, what happened with Tate?” Ethan asked.

I thought back to what we’d seen and what had happened seconds
before he’d split in half. “He touched the book. If Mallory worked the spell but no other evil escaped, could it have, I don’t know, funneled into Tate?” I looked at Mallory. “Is that possible?”