Summoning the Night (Arcadia Bell #2)(88)

Chora groaned and tilted his neck to inspect the damage Lon had inflicted. Just a glance. His eyes refocused on Lon, who held up his hands in surrender. I silently called out for the Moonchild power. Not a request, a command. The telltale pinpoint of blue light manifested in my vision. It was ready, waiting to be used. But, like Lon, I might have only one shot to change things, and I didn’t want to miss.

I could either conjure up the Silentium seal I’d used in the cannery to negate Merrin’s knack-stealing magick, or I could bind Chora.

Merrin was now halfway across the yard.

Chora repositioned his blade to strike, ignoring the weeping wound in his shoulder.

Jupe’s hands were shaking on my back—from fear? Or was he readying his own power? If he used his knack, he’d use it to help his dad. A guess, but I was willing to gamble, and there was no time left to do anything else.

Merrin’s mouth opened and began to form a command.

Silentium.

The pinpoint of light flattened into a disk. The lines of the magick seal formed in blue light. Heka and moon energy zigzagged in and out of me and poured into it, then I used every ounce of willpower I had to thrust the seal at Merrin’s galloping body.

Blinding white light whooshed around the magician. He hollered and tripped, thudding to the ground as Jupe yelled, “Stop!”

Chora’s eyes darted in our direction. He’d heard Jupe’s persuasive command, but it didn’t come fast enough. Though he faltered, his blade was already arcing through the air. As Lon ducked, the blade’s tip sliced, nicking Lon’s neck where it met his jaw.

Lon grasped his throat and fell to his knees. Blood seeped between his fingers and stained the neckline of his shirt.

“Nooooo!” Jupe screamed as he hurtled to Lon’s side.

Chora’s arm went limp, his hand still gripping the bloodied blade. A look of regret darkened his eyes. Regret and pity. The wound he’d delivered wasn’t deep, but it was precise. He looked like someone who’d just killed a stranger in a duel over honor. He looked human.

Merrin’s husky voice burred from behind me. “Finish him off, Chora!”

He was on his feet again, but the knack-stealing sigil was dead. And it wasn’t the only sigil diffused by my Silentium spell. The smaller tattoo over his heart that I’d glimpsed earlier? That was dead now, too. The ink was faded—the tattoo was much older than the knack-stealing sigil—but now that Merrin was bowling toward me like a peg-legged sailor ready to throw me to the sharks, I recognized its purpose. Egyptians marked their dead with a symbol to keep their mummified bodies from being invaded by evil spirits. I reckoned that Merrin used it to keep Chora from entering him. A little insurance, I supposed, after the demon nearly killed him during the first possession thirty years ago.

Partners. Chora and Merrin. That’s how Merrin described their relationship. I hardly agreed, but since Chora hadn’t realized that Merrin was now wide open and unprotected, I’d give him a little push.

Darkness blanketed my mind. The yard and everything in it faded to black, and the breezy night air stilled. I willed the moon power into action once more, conjuring the blue light, expanding it into a simple binding triangle, clear and strong. Moon-kindled Heka flowed as I tossed it like a lasso and slammed it over Chora’s body.

As I’d done with Jupe’s golden thread, I reached out with magick and pulled. Darkness receded. Sound and sight returned to me in a flash as the binding snagged the demon. Furious and unhinged, Chora howled as his body sailed through the air like a bullet headed for Merrin’s chest.

“Ride!” I commanded as he blurred by me.

I released the binding. Chora’s body slammed into Merrin’s without a sound, without the expected thud of flesh hitting flesh. Chora merely melted into the magician’s skin and disappeared like a specter.

Merrin’s eyes widened in horror. His body twitched, bristling with additional life. His torso jerked. A low rumbling started in his legs and spread upward. What little hair he had remaining on his balding head stood on end.

Then the shaking halted and his eyes rolled back in his head. Flesh ripped. A thin, bloody blade, glowing with pink light, poked out from his stomach. The blade quivered, then sliced upward, dissecting Merrin from the inside. His organs spilled out in a dark, shiny tumble half a second before a bright pink light exploded and geysered up into the air. Merrin’s body erupted along with it, sending up a grisly shower of blood and flesh that fell back like rain and splattered over the wet grass.

Merrin was gone. Decimated. Torn to shreds.

Chora was gone, too. No trace of pink magick remained. Whether he was dead or banished, or had slipped back into the gap between the planes, I didn’t care. I turned my back on the gore and raced to Lon, dropping to the ground beside him.

He lay on his back, his horns and halo gone. His hand still gripped his neck. Both of Jupe’s hands were pressed on top. So much blood . . .

I tore out of my jacket and ripped a strip of the lining, balling it up. “Let go, Jupe!” I said as my hands hovered over his with the cloth.

“I can’t!”

“On three, okay? One, two . . .”

Jupe jerked his hands away. I pressed the fabric against Lon’s neck, his hand still clamped and wedged under my makeshift compress. I saw the fear in his eyes as I pulled his hand away. “Let me, please,” I said. His blood-slicked hand drooped into the grass.