Go, me.
I curled inward, fetal position, and wished I could stay there forever. Then pushed up to a sitting position. Made it too.
The Reveal I cast showed me the Binding’s true nature. The glyph on my thigh glowed pus green and oozed black. I’d never seen anything like it. One part of my mind-the part I was trying very hard not to listen to-was screaming. The other part was getting pissed off.
Calm, Allie. Stay calm.
Pike rattled out a long, thin breath.
I inhaled, scented the rotten flesh stench of the Veiled, who undoubtedly had invited themselves to my little private hell. I didn’t take time to search for them. I knew they were there, around me, on their slow march.
Fast. I needed to work fast.
I opened my mouth, leaned toward my thigh, and inhaled the scent and signature of the spell. I knew Trager had cast it, but my Hounding senses sorted through the spell’s subtleties. And, most important, let me trace the actual manner in which the spell had been cast.
With the knife in my right hand, I pressed my right fingers at the top of the glyph and traced it, dragging my fingers through the blood, drawing a new layer of pain along its twisted route.
Ow, ow, ow. Someone was whining like a kicked puppy. That someone was me.
My fingers probed at the spell, pushed at it.
There. Where the thinnest tendril of the glyph stretched out to connect to the knotted lump in the center. The Binding originated there.
Keeping my right fingers on the point of origin, I brushed my left fingers more lightly out from there, followed the twists and knots until my fingertip rested on the exit point of the spell-the last line drawn before the spell had been stabbed into me. That point was deep in the gash I’d made with the knife.
Good news, I told myself. I didn’t have to make a second cut.
I gritted my teeth and stuck my fingers into the wound. Holy shit, that hurt. My fingers slipped across a very thin, glasslike thread in my flesh. That was the Binding, cast in blood magic, which had somehow turned solid beneath my skin. Or maybe blood magic always turned to glass. I didn’t know. And I didn’t care.
I pinched at the slippery thread, caught it between my thumb and fingernails. Then I tugged. The Binding slithered beneath my skin, unwinding with barbed pain along the path of its design.
Good, but not good enough.
I tugged harder, groaned. The glyph unwound some more. I could see the solid glass thread as it exited my skin, but as soon as it hit the air, it dissolved into ashy black smoke. And of course the harder I pulled, the more it hurt.
Pike was dying. The Veiled were closing in. I didn’t have time to be subtle. I clenched my teeth and yanked. Fire scraped across my thigh, up my belly, shocked across my nerves. Pain gouged my chest and stabbed my heart and lungs. I yelled and yelled. Stars burst at the edges of my vision.
But I didn’t stop pulling.
My vision narrowed. The only sound I could hear was the pounding of my blood. My world reduced to two things: pain and sheer determination not to stop pulling on the spell.
The Binding shattered, rising in the air like wisps of smoke from a sudden fire. I broke out in a heavy sweat, like a bad fever breaking. I was still sitting, my left hand pulled as far from my body as it could reach, the final ashes of the spell drifting away on the sweet-cherry-scented breeze.
Without knowing it, I’d pressed the dagger deep into my thigh again. Holy hells, that was going to scar. So much for wearing miniskirts.
Somehow I had managed to hold on to the Reveal spell. I blinked, looked up. The watercolor people-the Veiled, dead magic users-rushed me. Empty black eyes, mouths open, hands reaching, hungry for my magic.
I scrambled backward, turned my face away from their onslaught, and let go of the Reveal spell. The stink of dead flesh rushed past me, borne on an unnatural wind. And nothing more. No fingers, no eyes, no mouths.
I shuddered, gagged. Took a couple hard breaths. Then I dragged my ass back to where Pike lay.
Trager would now know the Binding was broken. He would now know I was not his little toy. And it pissed me off that I had just destroyed the evidence I had against him-evidence that would have thrown him in chains.
But when I made it to Pike, I didn’t care.
Pike was curled up on his bloodiest left side-Hounding instincts to keep the most vulnerable side of yourself hidden, protected. It meant his good eye-the eye he still had-was toward me.
I brushed my fingers over his neck, searching for a pulse. A sluggish throb sent a slow gush of blood over my fingers.
Deep blood. Lifeblood. Pouring down to the icy street.
Even though I didn’t remember doing it, Nola had told me I healed Zayvion with magic when the storm of wild magic raged over the city. Paying the price for that had thrown me in a coma and erased weeks of my life. It could have killed me.
But if I could do it once, I could do it again.
I calmed my mind, sang my little song, and shoved the panic to the side.
“Pike,” I said. “It’s Allie. I’m here. You’re going to be okay.” I ran my fumbling hands over his chest, his belly, looking for the deepest wound. His entire torso felt like ground beef-wet and pulpy everywhere. Someone had beat him physically and magically. I didn’t even know where to begin.
I took a deep breath and, still holding the knife in one hand, pulled the magic up through my body. It responded better this time, spooling out through me like warm water over burned skin. I didn’t know any glyphs for healing-no one healed with magic. The price was too high. Even doctors used magic only as a tool to assist in healing, not as a means to the end.
I closed my eyes and directed the magic through my fingers and into Pike’s body.
Heal, I thought, putting my will and intent behind the magic. I held an image of him whole and well in my mind, and told the magic to make that happen, make him alive, breathing, healed.
Magic poured into Pike’s wounds, and there were a lot of them. Magic poured through me fast, faster. But instead of wrapping around his bones, spreading through his muscle and veins, mending and healing, the magic poured through him and then sank, useless, into the ground.
I couldn’t make it spread through him, couldn’t make it catch up the pieces of him and knit him back together. It was like he was made of sand, and all the magic I pumped into him drained into the earth without touching him.
No, no, no. What was I doing wrong?
I smelled the fetid rot of flesh again, opened my eyes. The Veiled shuffled slowly toward me. I did not stop pouring magic into Pike.
Pike’s eyelid flickered open. His eye roamed the flat, dark sky and then rolled down and focused on me.
“Al,” he rasped. “Trag used”-he inhaled, a short rattling breath that made his body stiffen-“my blood. To kidnap girls. Trag used Ant to cast like me…” He inhaled again, his one eye wide, as if there were more words trapped behind his broken lungs, as if there were more words trapped in his broken body.
“Doctor,” he wheezed. “Has blood. Yours. Girls.”
My blood? What doctor? What girls? The kidnapped girls?
“Don’t let Trager free-” The painful inhale again.
“Easy, Pike,” I said. “It’s okay. I won’t let Trager free. I’ll take care of everything. You just hold on. Hold on, okay?”
A spasm wracked his body. His hand jerked out, gripped the blade that was still in my right hand. His blood mixed with mine, caught in the finely wrought runnels of the blade and slid down the liquid glyphs, turning the glowing symbols into a dull fire before dripping onto his chest.