37

I didn’t know how, and I didn’t care; hope sprang through me.

Oh, Lon, I thought, please let that be you. My parents are crazy. They killed all those people and they’re going to sacrifice me. I’m so sorry for dragging you into this mess.

As soon as I finished my thought, the fiery halo went out.

I choked on a sob.

Maybe it wasn’t him after all.

My father sauntered to the edge of chalk circle with something in his hands. Intoning a spell—not in Latin or English, but in some Æthyric language—he walked the circle. As he did, Frater Blue followed.

My father blew a breath onto the triangle that held the winged demon. The air around it got brighter. Then he walked behind me, repeating the incantation. Next was the watery female demon at the western point; he sprinkled liquid on her triangle to lighten it. Last, dirt was scattered on the demon with the barklike skin who represented earth. Not only did that triangle get brighter, but my father yelled out the spell and threw Heka down at the ground. The entire circle roared to life.

A blue glow emerged from the earth and spread over our heads like a gigantic umbrella, enclosing all of us inside a dome of light.

The circle was now fortified; it couldn’t be breached from the outside. Not by a person, or even a gunshot.

“Let us begin,” my father announced.

He dropped what he was holding and picked up the glass talon. My mother joined him and they approached me, strutting like deranged peacocks, both wearing horrible, repugnant smiles. Whatever image I’d once had of my parents, I couldn’t reconcile it with the two alien beings standing before me. My family was gone. Lost. Dead. Worse: I’d never really had one at all.

Frater Blue’s robed figure moved around the inner edge of the circle, vibrating with a low noise. A background spell, an underpainting to serve as the base for the layers of the main incantation.

My father began droning the Æthyric words to his ritual.

“Oh-ele sohnef vorereh heg-heh. Goho-he iehadah bal eh teh.”

I wriggled desperately against my bindings, then tried to rock the entire oracular bowl with my body. It gave ever so slightly, scraping against the rocky ground below me. My mother put her bare foot on top of the rim to still it. I growled at her, but neither one of them made eye contact with me.

“Koh meh mateh—”

“Fuck you!” I spat. “Fuck both of you … you … lunatics!”

“Ah-deh nah gorgan-mal—”

“I hope you both burn in hell.” Angry tears ran down my face.

Movement outside the circle caught my eye. Three dark figures appeared at the top of the rocky hill outside the circle. My heart rammed against my chest. Please …

The caliph was the first. The head of the Luxe Order— Riley’s father, Magus Zorn—was the second. And the third? Lon.

A wave of wild joy broke over me, but this was soon tempered when my mother turned her head to peer over her shoulder. She saw them, but she didn’t react. Didn’t care. All she did was nod at my father to continue. Cold terror trickled down my spine.

“Oh-reh kalheh, zod a dehess—”

The caliph was the first to approach the circle, calling out as he galloped down the hill. “Enola! Alexander! Stop this right now,” he hollered.

My parents didn’t look up. My mom just squeezed my dad’s hand harder.

“This is lunacy!” the caliph said. A ghostly shape trailed him … his guardian. They stopped at the dome of light around the circle, and the caliph reached out to touch it with his hand. The fortified barrier sparked, and he flew backward, tumbling to the ground with a yelp, his guardian disappearing when he did.

“Kahsah reh zod-heh bessmah—”

“You can’t breach it from the outside,” I shouted.

Magus Zorn, the leader of our rival order and the man I’d believed to be my enemy all these years, reached to help the caliph back on his feet. Everything was wrong. Backward. I began to feel dizzy, until my focus shifted to the gold and green light behind them.

Lon walked the edge of the circle. We locked gazes. No pity darkened his face. No anger, either. No emotion at all. In the midst of all the craziness around me, the sight of his dead-pan countenance calmed me. I took in shaky, labored breaths, forcing myself to extend them as long as I could, never taking my eyes off him.

“It can’t be breached or broken from the outside.” My voice was rough and strained as I spoke directly to him over the drone of the ritual words. “Not by anything physical. Nothing.”

I tilted my head as something pierced the fog of my drug-addled brain.

“Not from the outside,” I repeated. But if someone on the inside were to step out of the circle, it would break. I was bound, so I couldn’t, and my parents would never step outside. Their eyes were shut. They were nearly in a trance, lost in the ritual.

Not me, not them … but what about Frater Blue? I hesitated, wavering. It was risky. Outside the circle, Lon was safe. I was already doomed, and there was no guarantee that he could save me, even if he was able to break the ward. What if they hurt him? They were psychotic killers and would clearly have no problem doing whatever it took to get my power. Maybe he would be better off if I just told him to leave.

But before I could weigh my uncertainty, Lon closed his eyes. A ripple distorted the blue light of the ward where he was standing. Like an ignited pyre, his halo flared up behind his head, and his horns began emerging. Zorn and the caliph looked up at him with a quiet awe. They couldn’t see his halo, but they obviously spotted his horns. Yet they handled the transformation without fuss or protest; I wagered they’d already seen him do it.

He didn’t look at me after he’d shifted. My nerves stretched like thin wire as he calmly marched around the outer edge of the circle and stopped near Frater Blue. It happened so fast. I saw Lon’s mouth moving, and frantically wondered if he could he manipulate Frater Blue without touching him. The answer to that was reflected in Frater Blue’s face when it drew up in fear.

“Qeh-noh koheh dah—”

My mother’s eyes opened, drawing my attention away from Lon. She kneeled down in front of me. Her fingers lifted the hem of the shroud off the ground and gathered it up into her hands as she stood. If I hadn’t been naked enough before, I was now. She pulled the shroud over my head like I was bride about to be kissed, exposed and humiliated, insult to injury. I spit in her face. Anger flared as she squeezed her eyes shut. But she merely wiped it away, then stepped back.

My attention flicked back to Lon. Frater Blue stood staring at him, his back to me. I couldn’t tell what was going on. Lon’s chest was heaving. He was mumbling something to himself. Frater Blue’s head jerked around. He peered outside the circle at the caliph, eyes filling with panic.

My mother took the glass talon from my father’s hand; the sharp point gleamed in the circle’s charged light. She brought it to my breastbone and pressed down. The tip punctured my skin, stinging as she slowly slid it down between my breasts.

“Oh-reh-reh-heh. Oh-reh-reh-heh,” my father chanted, louder and louder.

Blood welled as the talon slashed. I gasped in pain. In shock. In disbelief. My hands tingled; my vision swam. I was on the verge of passing out when a sound roused me. With bleary eyes, I glanced beyond my mother to see Frater Blue smacking his hands against his ears. He abandoned his droning dirge and cried out, lunging forward with outstretched arms. The moment his foot crossed the circle, the domed blue ward fizzled, then broke into millions of tiny blue stars. Like dying fireflies, they furiously blinked out of sync, then imploded.

Lon did it! He broke the fucking ward. Frater Blue was kneeling in front of Lon, pleading and crying. Whatever Lon had told him, he believed it. And I was so distracted by the spectacle that when my father’s continued chanting registered in my ears—when I looked down and saw the glass talon still tearing through my skin—I was stunned.

My parents weren’t stopping. Nothing had changed. Ward or no ward, they were going to finish this.

The crimson line between my breasts got longer. Warm blood streamed down my belly.

“OH-REH-REH-HEH … KANILA.”

An alarm beeped on my father’s wristwatch.

Midnight.