That movement stepped forward into the faint light.
Balding, thin, Dr. Frank Gordon ambled across the wooden floor, his dress shoes making solid clucks that echoed against the rotted rafters. As he walked, he rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows. He didn’t look up at me, didn’t look at my father. His glasses caught the liquid play of light and shadow from the windows, reflecting mercury and ebony. In his hand, he held a vial. A vial of blood. My blood.
“Do you understand now, Allison?” Dad asked. “This man is a very powerful magic user. He has done this to me. Used me, my death to open our world to magics that will destroy it. And you are going to help me put an end to him.”
Fuck. How did I get in the middle of a dead-undead magic showdown?
“To bring the police here?” Frank continued like he had not heard my father, and I realized he hadn’t heard him. So only I could see my dad; only I could hear him.
Frank pursed his lips and shook his head. “This is too sacred an event to expose to the uninitiated.”
There was that term again.
“His name is Frank Gordon,” my father said. “He is part of the Authority. An ancient order of men and women who are the caretakers of magic. Life magic in life. Death magic in death.”
“I know who the Authority is,” I said to my dad.
But it was Frank who answered. “Do you? And here I had thought your father kept you ignorant of such things. Protecting you.” He shook his head. “Such an idealist. You belong to us, Allison. To our world. Both worlds. You always have. Even he knew it.” He squinted to look up at me through his glasses. “Even he knew how useful you would someday be.”
My father swore. Called Frank a dozen names in a dozen languages. I had forgotten how extensive his vocabulary was.
“My father didn’t know me as well as you might think,” I said.
Move over, shock. Fight, flight, and adrenaline had just kicked the doors down. My senses heightened; my heart picked up a runner’s pace. Not because I was using magic, but because I was damned determined to get out of here alive. And I was going to take Anthony and the girls with me. I shifted my grip on the dagger, keeping it low, using the table that was still between me and Frank to block his view of it.
What I needed was a chance to throw a spell at him, something like Containment or Hold. Something to buy me enough time to run. Because unless I could knock him out-and I didn’t think my physical reserves were up to bearing the price of that without passing out myself-my best option was to do just what I’d told my father. Run and get the police, the SWAT team, Stotts, and the MERC down here. Fast.
“And yet,” Frank said, “blood calls to its own, Ms. Beckstrom, just as magic calls to magic. I have brought you here”-he gestured toward my father’s body with the vial of my blood as if that explained everything-“and you have come. Welcome to the beginning, the birth, of true magic. Life and death as one. As magic, and the world, should always have been.”
My father’s ghost traced a very powerful glyph that had pain written all over it. His lips moved in words I could not hear. He threw the spell at Frank.
And absolutely nothing happened.
Okay, time to do the math. Frank had my dad’s corpse. That made him a grave robber. And if he had my blood, it meant he was in league with Trager. He also had Anthony and the six girls whom I assumed were the kidnapped girls Stotts was looking for. I’d Hounded those hits, so I knew someone had used Pike’s blood and cast the Glamour spells with Pike’s signature. Even as I had Hounded them, I knew something was wrong with the glyphs, something that made me doubt it was Pike’s hand that cast those spells.
Pike said he thought Trager used Anthony to cast those spells, but I didn’t think Anthony was that good. He’d have to be a Hand-an artist who could forge magical signatures-and I didn’t think Anthony knew magic well enough to do that.
Frank, however, looked like he might be very good at forging someone else’s magical signature. Looked like he might be very good at all things magical. Hells, even my dead father said he was a very powerful man. Powerful enough to use my father. Powerful enough to be screwing around with the gates of life and death.
So I had it wrong. Trager was working for Frank, not the other way around. Working to help Frank with this horror-house magical ritual bullshit.
“He is working dark magic, Allison,” my dad said. “It is forbidden. Magic that has been mutated by death belongs in death. He is using my body,” he growled, “and the magic in it, not the magic beneath the city. He is using my body to open the gates to the dead. To free those who hunger.”
Holy crap. Zayvion was right. Why hadn’t my dad taught me this stuff years ago? Dark magic. Those who hunger. I didn’t even know what they were, much less what they could do.
I was so screwed.
“So now,” Frank said, “I will ask you once, politely, to come here and lie down on this table.” He smiled and pointed to the empty table next to my father’s corpse. “Please.”
“No,” I said.
“No,” my father said at the same time. Well, at least we were in agreement on one thing.
The doctor shook his head. “I am so sorry to hear you say that.”
He flicked his fingers fast and subtly enough he’d give Kevin a run for his money.
His spell radiated so much magic-dark, strange, twisting magic that moved on its own like snakes slithering through the air. I could see it, even without the Reveal spell. It was a huge spell. Strong enough it could knock a hole through a brick wall. And Frank had thrown it with no more trouble than flicking a speck of dust from his shirtsleeve.
From the corner of my eye I saw Anthony shudder in pain.
What kind of price did dark magic carry? How much more could Anthony take?
I held up the knife in one hand and wove Shield in the other, drawing magic from deep within my bones and pouring it into the Shield. I braced for the impact.
Instead my dad appeared in front of me and threw himself in harm’s way. For me. It was the most selfless, noble thing I’d ever seen him do.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
Frank’s spell slammed past my father’s ghost, slammed past my Shield, slammed past the bloody dagger I carried, and hit me like a train falling off a mountain.
The force of Frank’s spell threw me across the warehouse. I tucked and rolled. Managed to land flat on my back hard enough to knock the wind out of me. Seriously, I should take self-defense classes one of these days. Maybe I’d find a way to stay out of these situations.
But, hey, at least I didn’t eviscerate myself with the knife. Trouble was, I’d lost my grip on the knife. It was no longer in my hand.
My dad stood above me. “I will not see you fail in this.”
Way to talk me up, Dad. That disapproving scowl told me I was in for a world of hurt.
He knelt. Shoved his hand in my head. My vision went white for a second. I blinked. The warehouse was back, but I couldn’t see my father. I saw myself-through my ghost father’s dead eyes-on the floor of the warehouse.
No wonder Davy had been scared of me. Blood covered my face, following the strange leopard pattern burn marks from dead magic user fingers. Not pretty. Not even close to pretty. My eyes were too wide, hard and pale as cheap emeralds. I had a bad cut under one cheek and my lips were swollen. My hair was a mess. I looked wild. Angry. I looked like I was going to kill someone.
No coincidence, that. My father was pushing into me, into my head, taking me over. Oh, hells, no. There was no way I was going to let him possess me.
Problem was, I didn’t know how to stop him.
I pushed with my heels, scrambling backward, scooting my ass across the floor but unable to get away from him, unable to get to my feet.