Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(42)

“After the last time we dreamed.” He shook his head at her look. “I don’t know how I know, but I know. It’s after that, but not long after.”

Trust, she reminded herself. Faith. They continued on with the humming growing deeper yet. She could all but feel it inside her now, like a pulse, as if she’d swallowed the living dark.

“It pulls him,” Fin murmured. “It wants to feed. It pulls me through him, blood to blood.” He turned to her, took her firmly by the shoulders. “If it—or he—draws me in, you’re to break the spell, get out, get back.”

“Would you leave me, or any of us, to this?”

“You, nor any of the others come from him. You’ll swear it, Branna, or I’ll break it now and end it before it’s begun.”

“I’ll end it, I swear it.” But she would drag him back with her. “I’ll swear it because they won’t draw you in. You won’t allow it. And if we stand here arguing over it, we won’t have to break the spell, it’ll end on its own time without us learning a bloody thing.”

Now she took his hand. A spark shot between their palms before they moved forward.

The tunnel narrowed again, and turned into what she recognized as a chamber—a workshop of sorts for dark magicks.

The bodies of bats, wings stretched, were nailed to the stone walls like horrific art. On shelves skeletal bird legs, heads, the internal organs of animals, others she feared were human, bodies of rats, all floated in jars filled with viscous liquid.

A fire burned, and over it a cauldron bubbled and smoked in sickly green.

To the left of it stood a stone altar lit by black tallows, stained by the blood of the goat that lay on it, its throat slit.

Cabhan gathered the stream of blood in a bowl.

He looked younger, she realized. Though his back was to them as he worked, he struck her as younger than the Cabhan she knew.

He stepped back, knelt, lifted the bowl high.

“Here is blood, a sacrifice to your glory. Through me you feed, through you I feed. And so my power grows.”

He drank from the bowl.

The hum throbbed like a beating heart.

“It’s not enough,” Fin murmured. “It’s pale and weak.”

Alarmed, Branna tightened her grip on his hand. “Stay with me.”

“I’m with you, and with him. Goats and sheep and mongrels. If power is a thirst, quench it. If it’s hunger, eat it. If it’s lust, sate it. Take what you will.”

“More,” Cabhan said, raising the bowl again. “You promised more. I am your servant, I am your soldier. I am your vessel. You promised more.”

“More requires more,” Fin said quietly, his eyes eerily green. “Blood from your blood, as before. Take it, spill it, taste it, and you will have more. You will be me, I will be thee. And no end. Life eternal, power great. And the Dark Witch you covet, yours to take. Body and power to our will she must bend.”

“When? When will I have more? When will I have Sorcha?”

“Spill it, take it, taste it. Blood from your blood. Into the cup, through your lips. Into the cauldron. Prove you are worthy!”

All warmth had drained from Fin’s hand. Branna pressed it between hers, gave him what she could.

“I am worthy.” Cabhan set the bowl down, rose to take up a cup. He turned.

For the first time Branna saw the woman in the shadows. An old woman, shackled and shivering in the bitter cold.

He walked to her, taking the cup.

“Have mercy. On me, on yourself. You damn yourself. He lies. He lies to you, lies to all. He has chained you with lies as you have chained me with iron. Release me, Cabhan. Save me, save yourself.”

“You are only a woman, now old, your puny powers leaking. And of no value but this.”

“I am your mother.”

“I am already born,” he said, and slit her throat.

Branna cried out in shock and horror, but the sound drowned in the rising roar. Power swam in the air now, black as pitch, heavy as death.

He filled the cup, drank, filled it again. This he carried to the cauldron, poured through the smoke. And the smoke turned red as the blood.

“Now the sire’s with it,” Fin said, and Cabhan went to a bottle, poured its contents into the cauldron.

“Say the words.” Fin’s fingers, icy in Branna’s, flexed, unflexed. “Say the words, make the binding.”

“Blood unto blood I take so the hunger I will slake and the power here we make. From the dam and from the ram mix and smoke and call dark forces to invoke my name, my power, my destiny. Grant to me life eternal and sanctuary through this portal. I am become both god and demon and reign hereby over woman and man. Through my blood and by my power, I will take the Dark Witch unto me. I am Cabhan, mortal no more, and by these words my humanity I abjure.”

He reached through the smoke, into the cauldron, and with his bare hand, pulled out the amulet and its bloodred stone.

“In this hour by dark power I am sworn.”

He lifted the amulet over his head, laid the glowing stone on his chest.

The wind whirled into a roar as Cabhan, his eyes glowing as red as the stone, lifted his arms high. “And I am born!”

From the altar leaped the wolf, black and fierce. It sprang toward Cabhan, sprang into him with a deafening scream of thunder.