Weakly, he swipes at me, his claws parting my flesh like a knife through butter. The pain bursts to life along my arms and torso, but I ignore it, raising my dagger.
I bring it down sharply, letting my magic guide my movements. The thin blade cleanly slides between Asmodeth’s ribs and impales his heart.
The demon’s scream echoes through the room, the sound terrifying and not of this world.
I draw on both my own blood and the demon’s, the crimson liquid burning up as my power devours it. And then I call on the magic beneath the earth, pulling it into me.
We give you power. Give us something in return.
I ignore the voices and cobble together a spell.
“From blood and air, to rock and flame.” As I incant, I fold my power into the words. “I banish you back from whence you came.”
My magic detonates, filling the space in a massive cloud of pale orange plumes. I can’t see anything, but it doesn’t matter, I can feel my magic pressing in on the demon.
“I assure you,” Luca says somewhere beyond the circle, “she cannot send the creature back.”
Old queen, forgotten queen… the voices murmur.
Harder and harder, my power tightens on the demon. I see the plumes of it push and push against the demon bleeding out.
Asmodeth tries to fight the magic, but he’s lost so much blood, and my power holds him fast.
My body trembles as I continue to exert force, pressing, pressing. I scream at the energy it takes, my limbs beginning to tremble as my power strains.
All at once, there’s a pop, then Asmodeth is gone.
I’m breathing hard as I kneel on the now empty ground, which is scrubbed clean of all the black blood that pooled on it a moment ago. I can hear the steady drip of my own bleeding wounds. Aside from that, the room is deathly silent.
Eventually, Jacques says, “You said she couldn’t send the demon back?”
“That’s…never happened before.” Luca clears his throat. “It doesn’t matter. We can try summoning Asmodeth once more…though he might be too weak to make the journey. I have another demon in mind that might be perfect.” He begins flipping through the pages of The Book of the Damned.
I glare at the pair of them and gather my magic.
I’m too angry and too impatient to study this spell circle for some exploitable weakness. I want out now.
I rise from the floor and draw on my magic remorselessly. One of the most basic aspects of a spell circle is that power moves in two directions along them: clockwise for creation, counterclockwise for destruction.
My blood continues to drip from the wounds on my chest, but for what I intend, I know intuitively that I need more. I drag the knife I still hold across my wrist and let my blood flow freely.
This whole time, I’ve been pretending to be something wholesome when being wholesome meant denying this part of me.
I let the blood drip down my fisted hand to the ground, my bare feet stepping over the droplets as I begin to walk in a counterclockwise motion.
“To the gods that dwell beneath my feet,” I call out in Sarmatian, “give me power, and I will give you blood.” My voice sounds deeper, stronger, surer as I speak.
I sense something beneath me moving toward my offering. The blood on the floor evaporates, and thick, smoky plumes of my orange magic rise up, streaked with veins of inky black. Dark magic.
Distantly, I’m aware that my power is falling on the wrong side of good and evil. But too much of me thrills at the thick ropes of power I drag up from the earth. It’s so much more magic than what the ground usually offers up.
We hunger for more, mistress…more blood. We have missed the taste of you…
I let my blood continue to fall as I pace the perimeter of the circle. “From air, I breathe. With fire, I burn. From water, I drink. To earth, all shall return.”
Blood magic is destructive magic, and I drag that destruction along with every step I take. It batters at the ward, and I sense the walls that entrap me weakening. The ground begins to tremble, but this time, Memnon isn’t responsible for it.
“Sky above, spirits below, my blood you take.” The coven was a match; this is an inferno. “This ward unmake.” My gaze falls to Luca. “This spell I break.”
BOOM!
Power floods out of me, shattering the walls of the spell circle. It sweeps across the room, blowing the salt away and throwing the men backward.
I stand there, wounded and bloodstained, as my magic retreats into me, clearing the air.
Fearsome mate, I felt that, Memnon says down our bond. I swear I hear the sorcerer’s low laugh. The Fortunas made a mistake trying to capture a true Sarmatian queen. I hope you make them pay for it.
I am. With that, I pull away from our connection. I grip my dagger tightly and stride forward, the pads of my feet stepping on all those old, nearly forgotten bloodstains. Magic still lingers in those stains, stale and fetid but there nonetheless. I pull it into me, and the stains hiss as they simmer away.
This power came from the blood of my coven sisters, my mage brothers, and my lycan friends—them and perhaps other innocent supernaturals who were forced to give up their lives. It’s wrong to form another’s pain into power, but these individuals have already suffered. I won’t let it be for nothing.
Both Luca and Jacques are pushing themselves up from where they’ve fallen.
I draw together my magic—
Luca incants beneath his breath, and a split-second later, a curse hits me in the abdomen. The magic impales my torso as though it were a stake.
I stagger, choking on the pain, then fall.
SELENE! Memnon roars. The building shakes violently.
Luca drags himself the rest of the way up from the ground, his arm still outstretched. Tucked under his other arm is the hateful Book of the Damned. It still smokes, that acrid power wafting off it.
“Fucking cunt,” he spits out. “You think you can best me? In my own home? I haven’t survived all these years on might alone…”
He continues speaking, but I stop listening when I sense those beings in the ground beneath me. They clamor close, lured in by my spilled blood.
They can have it.
“Take my blood but spare my life,” I whisper. “Feast instead on Luca Fortuna and Jacques Allard.”
My blood sinks into the floor, drawn down by the creatures beneath me.
A moment later, the ground trembles, and a crack forms beneath my legs. It slithers forward, breaking concrete and heading right for Luca. Another crack branches from it, moving toward Jacques.
As soon as the crack reaches him, it widens to a fissure. The building creaks under the pressure.
“Fuck!” Jacques curses as one of his legs falls through the growing opening. The earth continues to shake as he attempts to pull his leg from the hole. He’s almost gotten himself out of the fissure when the ground beneath his hands and upper torso falls away. His body is swallowed into the earth, and the last thing I hear is his echoing cry.
“What in God’s name have you done?” Luca shouts as the other crack follows him across the room.
I’d love to answer, but the crack beneath me now widens. I drag myself away, crying out a little as the pain in my stomach darkens my vision.
The earth shakes again, and the floor beneath the sorcerer crumbles away. Luca drops The Book of the Damned to lunge for solid ground, but it too gives way under his body. His hands manage to catch the lip of the concrete floor, exposed rebar jutting out from it.