Poison in the Blood (23 page)

“No, of course not.” I stood straighter, doing my best to appear brave and determined.

“It would be perfectly understandable if you did. I would not fault you for it. We could always wait a few more years.”

“No. This will work. I am sure of it. The sooner it is done, the better.”

“I know you want to stay with me, but are you certain that you wish to exist as Simon and I do? To rely on the magic in the blood of others to further your existence?” It was an old argument, for we had been having it for weeks.

“Yes. I love you. If it means staying with you, I am willing to embrace a liquid diet. Please continue.”

Michael shook his head, but he smiled as he continued placing candles.

“And you mustn’t blame yourself if something goes wrong,” I reminded him. “I’m confident that I won’t, but should the worst happen—”

“Emily—”

“—we should be prepared,” I finished.

He set the last candle in place. “I am prepared.” Michael held his hand out to me as though requesting a dance, and I stepped over the candles to join him. He lit the northernmost candle with a struck match, and then the others burst into flame, one after the other, in a wave of magic until the circle was complete.

“You learned that from Simon, didn’t you?” I asked.

“He does have a knack for fire spells. I don’t know how I never noticed it before.” He placed his hands on my shoulders. “Are you ready?”

I nodded, my mouth suddenly dry. He helped me atop the table, and I turned the hourglass over and placed my right hand on it. For now all I had to do was remain still while he began the first round of chanting. It was Latin, which I understood well enough, having lived with a family of librarians who would ramble on in whatever language they happened to be thinking in at the moment. Michael walked the circle three times, and then he stopped, placing his hand over mine on the hourglass.

Power bolted through me, though I recognized it as being picked up by my seer’s senses and not the effects of the spell itself. My heart raced, and I took a long, calming breath before beginning my portion of the chant. I repeated the chant three times, and magic flowed through my hand and into the hourglass. It was imbued with both of our energies now, and I prayed this would work.

Michael drew me into his arms and I turned my head to the side, offering him my throat. This was the most frightening part—he needed to drain my blood to the point of death. On purpose, this time. He kept the bite pleasant to cover the pain, but he didn’t drown me in sensation, and my head was clear enough to be anxious. My heart raced and black spots appeared to waltz through my field of vision. A sleepy, heavy sensation settled into my limbs, and my hands slid to the tabletop and lay there, unmoving.

Death loomed over me with a forbidding chill like a blast of winter air. Michael drew away and gently laid me back. It was difficult to hear and see. The ceiling of the library seemed far away, at the other end of a long tunnel that I was slowly falling through. My head lolled to the side, and I watched the sand in the hourglass stop. It seemed a strange thing, and I stared at it while Michael sliced the skin of his wrist. He placed his wrist to my mouth and ordered me to drink.

When the first drops of blood slid down my tongue and into the back of my throat, I gagged, then swallowed. It was not the blood itself that was important, but the magic within it—a portion of the spell that had created the first blood drinker, and had been passed from mentor to student down through the ages. Fire seared through my veins, racing through every inch of me until it burned out, leaving hunger in its wake. I had never felt so famished, or so thirsty, in all my years. I latched on to his wrist like a suckling babe and drank until he pulled away. The loss devastated me, and I was filled with a sense of emptiness. My eyes slid shut, and I lingered in darkness.

While there, something clicked shut in my soul. No, not shut…it ground to a halt, and the sensation of falling vanished. My wheel of life jammed in place, frozen forever in my own glacier. The pale blue energy of ice crystalized behind my eyelids, but a multitude of silver threads spread from it, connecting my soul to Michael’s until the end of time.

“Emily! Say something.” Michael was shaking me awake, and I opened my eyes and smiled drowsily.

“You caught me.”

Michael breathed an enormous sigh of relief, and then he smiled broadly. “Of course I did. I will always catch you.”

“I love you, darling.”

“I love you, too. For as long as we both shall live.”

The future had never looked so wonderful. Though hungry darkness settled inside me, I knew I was not alone, and Michael and I would never be separated again.

Glossary

alchemist
: a magician who specializes in brewing potions. The source of the magic is not the ingredients themselves—though they can help add an extra kick—but the alchemist who infuses her own magic into a potion. Alchemists are the most mercenary magicians because their magic is the most marketable.

blood drinker:
a polite slang term for a master necromancer or chronicler. Blood drinkers consume the blood of living magicians—specifically the magic within their blood—to fuel their continued existence. Most keep spouses, partners or “pets” as blood sources. It is extremely rare for a blood drinker to kill during feeding, because it is considered wasteful. Though some older, powerful blood drinkers venture out in the daylight, most avoid it because sunlight causes damage to their skin.
Vampire
is an impolite term for a blood drinker.

chronicler
: a librarian who has joined the Order of St. Jerome and become a blood drinker. Chroniclers undergo a ritual that was originally stolen from the necromancers and altered. It stops their aging and places the body in a sort of stasis. Like the original ritual, there is a chance of failure, and the odds of survival are only 30 to 40 percent. To survive, chroniclers ingest magic by consuming the blood of living magicians and often take blood as payment for their research services. Chroniclers are responsible for recording magician history and archiving spells and magical research.
See also
Order of St. Jerome.

Council of Three
: the magician governing body. Every type of magician is monitored/ruled over by a Council of Three, as are faeries. There are levels to councils—regional, national, global, etc. Because the seers (
See also
seers) are so few, they only have one global council.

demon
: an entity native to one of the hell realms. Unlike other magical creatures, demons cannot be killed, only banished back to their realms. However, if a magician travels to that realm, he or she can kill the demon there. Demons come in a variety of shapes and sizes due to the difference in hells—some embody sins or vices, others natural elements like faeries, and some are outright nightmarish bogeymen.

faerie
: one of the magical races formerly native to Earth. Faeries are extremely long-lived but are not immortal. In many ways they are embodiments of magic, the different clans representing different aspects and elements of it. Faeries left Earth and created their own world after the extinction of the elves, but that act left them damaged as a species, unable to reproduce with each other. A full-blooded faerie has not been born since the formation of their world. Many magicians owe their magic to their faerie heritage.

guardian
: an enforcer of magical law and order. They work for the higher powers to ensure criminals are apprehended, but councils are responsible for judging guilt or innocence and deciding punishment. Guardians can be called on to execute the guilty, if necessary.

hunter
: an individual or group who hunts and kills magicians. There are several different types of hunters. Religious groups often believe they are ridding the world of evil. Some hunters have personal reasons, such as having a family member killed by shapeshifters. Others do it for sport, believing magicians to be challenging prey.

librarian
: a magician specializing in history and research. Because they study a variety of magics, librarians can cast any type of spell. However, when a librarian casts them, these spells are less powerful. Most librarians aspire to serve the Order of St. Jerome and consider doing so to be a great honor. Though few are chosen to become chroniclers, many work as servants or assistants.
See also
chronicler; Order of St. Jerome.

magician
: a person with magic in his or her blood. Most magicians have inherited their magic from faerie relatives, but in the past many humans were born with their own innate magic, although this has dwindled over time as magic has faded from this world. Only people with magic in their blood can use magic.

necromancer
: a practitioner of death magic. Necromancers specialize in dealing with corpses, ghosts and zombies. When a magician becomes a necromancer he is apprenticed to a master, and once his training is complete he undergoes a ritual to become a master himself (
see
blood drinker). This ritual is risky, with a roughly 50 percent chance of the subject dying. Master necromancers build up bad karma for jamming a spoke in the wheel of life, and when a master dies horrible things happen to his soul.

Oberon
: an ambassador responsible for overseeing relations between our realm and the faerie realm (if the position is held by a woman, she is referred to as the Titania). An Oberon or Titania maintains balance within a region on Earth, ensuring that faeries do not cause too much mischief within that region, and that the local magicians do not abuse their access to Faerie.

Order of St. Jerome
: the organization of chroniclers. The Order was founded by a group who decided that having immortal librarians to protect magician records and be able to remember stories and events was necessary to maintain a record of magician history. The necromancers were furious that their ritual had been stolen, but a war between the two factions was prevented when the Order agreed not to become involved in magician politics. The group has gone through many names over the years, but St. Jerome is the most recent and longest lasting.

seer
: a magician who can read magical auras and receive prophetic visions. Seers are the rarest kind of magician, with only a handful in the world. Their visions center around the person they’re reading or a traumatic event in an area. Seers are not mediums, and though they can get a feeling for the energy in a house, they don’t communicate with the dead (because that’s necromancer territory). Seers are particularly adept at locating a person’s soul mate.

shadowspawn
: a faerie who has been expelled from Faerie for evil acts. Though faeries have a high tolerance for mischievous acts, they do have limits as to the sort of crimes allowed inside and outside of Faerie. Faeries convicted of acts of great evil are expelled from Faerie, banished to live on Earth.

shadowstep
: a method of transportation used by master necromancers, chroniclers and shadowspawn faeries. To keep master necromancers from causing mayhem in other worlds, the higher powers closed the doors to them—except for the hell dimensions. (Though they did not exist at the time of this decision, chroniclers are also affected by this limitation.) Shadowspawn faeries and blood drinkers brave or foolish enough to make the trip can travel through the shadow realm as a short cut from place to place on Earth.

shapeshifter
: a magician infected with wild magic and possessing an animal spirit. In ancient times, many animals had their own magic and were seen as sacred. These animals could imbue a magician with their magic—known as wild magic—and this created the first shapeshifters. These shifters were then able to spread their magic to others, imbuing them with the spirit of the original animal. The most common shifters are canine, with the rest made up of feline, ursine, equine and avian.
See also
wild magic.

sorcerer
: a magician specializing in elemental magic, typically destructive in nature. Like witches, sorcerers use elemental magic, and tend to focus on one element in particular. In general their magic does not require spoken spells or physical ingredients; large, formal rituals are rare occurrences. Sorcerer society is divided into houses or families, though some prefer to remain solitary and avoid the internal politics.

soul mate
: a soul’s perfect match. Soul mates are not always romantic partners and can be represented in other close relationships, such as best friends. Because souls are reincarnated, a person can meet his or her soul mate in several lives, or none at all. Also, due to free will, soul mates are not guaranteed true love or a happily ever after. Seers can be helpful in finding a person’s soul mate.

summoner
: a magician dealing in summoning, binding and/or banishing magical entities. Summoners capture and bind their prey, trading magical favors or power in exchange for release. They mainly deal in demons, but with the right information, such as a True Name, they can deal with any living entity—elementals, imps or faeries.