He fired at the imp, driving the beast back.
“-and I can flex muscles that have atrophied in the past few days.”
“Sorry,” Maggie told me.
She bolted, running down the street.
Conquest raised his gun, but Maggie ducked low, and in a moment, the connection broke. She’d cut it.
I bit my lip.
Conquest loomed over me. I couldn’t move.
No tricks up my sleeve.
He stopped to shoot a larger animal. One of the imp’s.
I was starting to feel the effects of the imp’s power.
That scared me more than anything.
“You’ve got the upper hand,” I said.
“You surrender?”
“I don’t know if I can,” I said.
“The alternative is death. I strongly suggest surrender,” Conquest spoke. “Laird is dead. I promised him that I would wait two centuries before I used the Thorburn power. The threat would cow those beneath me, I would gain in power, simply having you in my grasp, and he can build his kingdom in the meantime. Keeping you alive was only a way to delay your counterpart’s manifestation as something real. It simplifies things.”
“My counterpart-” I started. My mouth was dry.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know if I can surrender, because Rose and I are a unit, two sides of the same thing. We’re both the Thorburn heir, as I understand it. You might need to get her to surrender. You’ve bested me, I won’t move ten paces from here until this is decided.”
Rose spoke, “Fuck you, Blake. Sticking this on me now? It’s-”
“It’s base trickery,” Conquest said.
Shocked at the words, I swallowed hard.
“Rose told me you were hard to get along with. That you and she had a flawed, distorted relationship. I’m to believe the tie between you two is so strong that you can’t surrender without her consent? That when you promise to refuse any use of magic, she isn’t bound by the same promise?”
“It’s complicated,” I said. It sounded feeble. “We’re ying and yang, two sides of the same coin.”
“It’s not that complicated at all,” Rose said. “I haven’t used any magic.”
Conquest turned his head.
“I haven’t. Just like Duncan did when he was spent of power, just like Blake, I’ve been using the power Maggie and Blake’s friends set up. They drew the circle, they set the things up to be summoned when an object was broken… we picked objects on my side of the mirror.”
“Thin.”
“As for my other power, to break mirrors, it’s innate to me while I’m an Other, a distorted reflection. Besides, the deal was not to use power in Toronto. This mirror world… it’s not Toronto. It’s a vestige of Toronto. It’s like comparing Disneyland and Euro-Disney. It’s my world.”
“Questionable,” Conquest said. “All the same-”
He lunged.
He passed into the pendant.
I flinched as the glass shattered.
The window of the S.U.V. broke next, then the windows of the house.
A battle waged over the reflective surfaces.
I could only wait. I’d done what I could.
Pauz approached me, grinning.
No.
“I beat you once,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Shall I take my revenge now?”
If he did – if he stopped me before Conquest could…
The contest would end. A draw at best.
But it would be a horrible way to go.
No, I had to trust that this would work out. Trust in the others.
Even if my companions here were reduced to the ones I trusted the least. Maggie with some wild thing lurking within her, Rose with her questionable motivations, Corvidae, the impof things feral and foul.
I closed my eyes. “No.”
He had a mocking grin on his face. “You said you wouldn’t move. Shall I drag you aside and watch what happens? I can reign over the chaos that follows.”
“Or you can go,” I said. “Did you think I didn’t plan contingencies? That I don’t have a way to capture you right away?”
His eyes narrowed. “Tricks.”
I remained still.
Glass continued to break here and there. I could feel the strength going out of me. Rose was spending power, and she was using the conduit of blood Maggie had drawn out, to keep her reserves up.
“I am Blake Thorburn,” I said. I shifted position, cupped a limp Evan in my hands, then found my feet. I stood as straight as I could manage. “Custodian of Hillsglade house, overseer of the Thorburn’s diabolic library. I come from a long line, and you’ve caught me at a moment when I’m very tired and very pissed off.”
“Poor mortal,” Pauz said. “I can smell your pain.”
Time to draw from the same well as Rose. “If you cross me here, I will bind you again, Pauz, I swear it on my name and my blood, and I’ll stick you somewhere where you won’t be found until humanity is long gone.”
“Your words don’t have the power that hers do. You’re not the real heir, not the heir intended.”
“No,” I said. “Do you really want to risk it?”
He narrowed his eyes.
He disappeared in a flurry of flies and darkness.
I sagged, the strength going out of me.
I’d never acted so much in my life. To pretend I had strength when I felt more powerless than ever.
I carefully measured my steps, taking only five, to get past the driveway.
Corvidae appeared, a small oval mirror in his arms.
There we go.
He held it up, walking slowly.
I could see when the presence moved into it.
Corvidae threw the mirror.
It landed in the snow, one end buried.
He can’t turn down a fight, I thought. He has to crush the weak.
The mirror stuck in the middle of the circle I’d drawn. The blood of a free man, Laird.
The circle would be lined with Rose’s hair. Hacked off. Caught by Conquest, freed by myself.
Maggie had torn out the pages of Black Lamb’s Blood, weighing them down so they wouldn’t fly away. I couldn’t afford to lose them. The pages that had bound an Other, now free.
Thrice bound.
“It’s done,” Rose said.
I slumped to the ground, exhausted.
“We did it, Evan” I murmured to Evan.
“Woo,” he mumbled.