On a Razor's Edge (Darkness #3)(11)

“Now. I’m going to try the concealing charm and it always creates monsters. Large, fanged monsters.” I drew in my mix of charms, dreading this. I should have used this charm with purple, but I didn’t expect those danged beetles. They were hard to catch, and hurt when they tried to gnaw on your leg. After I’d figured out the goo, bugs weren’t such a problem, but I’d used up the lowest power in my demonstration so my legs didn’t have bite marks.

Six of one, half dozen of the other…

Eyes closed because I knew the feel of the charm, and what happened when I used it, I brought my fingers up and swooshed them back down, as if I were fanning a sheet onto the bed. Gold coated a sapling for a fraction of a second.

Nothing happened.

I groaned. Often, explosions were the safest results to charms and spells gone wrong. As I learned more spells and charms, though, mimicking their application perfectly, I got stranger results.

Always the same results if I did the spell “properly,” though. So that had to be something.

“Here you go, boys,” Charles said with a grimace. “In three, two, one…”

The sapling started swinging wildly, branches flapping like wings, leaves fluttering. It started to grow, upward, twenty feet in the air. Wider now, a huge root stepping out of the ground like a leg, followed by five more.

“Now’s the time to cleave it,” Charles counseled. “It only gets angry from here on out.”

“You do this often?” Dominicous asked pleasantly, not bothering to watch the tree transform into a heinous creature.

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s why I try not to use the higher powers. You’ll see what happens when I get to white.”

That drew Toa’s attention away from the tree-animal, his gaze suspicious. “You can do pure white?”

“Yes, though the effects are…unsettling.”

“Is this directly after you take Stefan’s blood?”

I thought about it. “I dunno. I never mapped out his offerings.”

“But you do take his blood?”

“Yes. And he takes mine. Why? Was that supposed to be a secret?”

“When was the last time you took his?”

I thought back. Then shrugged. “Must be a while now, I don’t remember. Stefan, do you—?ˮ

A howl cut me off. The monster was thirty feet tall now with branch-like arms. A hole in the top suggested a mouth, but no teeth. Lucky for the boys.

Even still, I started to back away. This damn thing would come after me, and by the look of it, it’d have a long reach.

“We haven’t exchanged blood in the customary month before a visit such as this. She has no taint from me, nor I her.” Stefan stood with his neck craned, his face his usual stern leader’s mask, analyzing the monster.

Charles walked over, placing himself in front of me. Adnan stood off to the side. A couple of my sword fighting classmates sauntered in, too. They’d all gotten really great at working together.

My God, I sucked at this. My heart sank. Stefan would be lucky if I didn’t get kicked out.

“Easy, love,” he said in his low, deep voice, turning his back on the monster and facing me. “Have faith in yourself.”

I loved him more than words could express for believing in me, even though I couldn’t show worse if I possibly tried. I pointed behind him. “It’s about done growing. Things are about to get real.”

He winked. The man was crazy!

Another howl, and the monster sighted in.

“Here we go!” Charles crouched, sword out, orangey-gold with my help.

A giant tree-trunk leg lifted in the air, smashing down on the ground ten feet ahead of it. People started to scream or groan, moving or running backward. A few people high-tailed it out of there entirely.

“Can you not suck out the magic?” Toa asked over another catastrophic howl.

“I tried that once. I could only get half the magic back in before I got the warning prickles. When I released that bit of magic, I set fire to the whole thing. Which meant a huge bonfire monster chased us around for half the night.”

“But the magic came from you…”

“Yes, but as I release it, I’m pretty sure the draw isn’t cut off. I think I have to cut off the draw at a certain point, but I don’t know how. No one seems to think that is the right way. But…I don’t know, I suck at this.”

Another earth quaking step. The monster was indeed heading my way.

Stefan drew his sword, burnished gold, the power right under white. Dominicous drew his. Exact same color. Huh.

“What power do you throw after you take her blood?” Dominicous roared over the thick and low tree groans.

Another step forward, within striking range of the two guys.

They could have been having an idle chat over a cigarette for how concerned they were.

“White tinged with a golden hue. Not quite full white. White’s a big step up from gold. Even burnished gold, where I sit. I had no idea.”

“Hmm. I am gold with white frost when I take Toa’s. Interesting.”

“So, it’s getting angry now…” Charles counseled. “Just FYI.”

And it was. Black mouth gaping, still fangless, the beast howled again, shaking the bones of everyone there. People brandished their swords in shaking hands, just in case.