Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

52

Her concentration was interrupted just long enough for Häxa to grasp her beams and pull. She yanked Mari into her like a pitched ball, then batted her away, sending her flying.

Mari landed on her back, with such a crushing force that blood sprayed from her mouth. Even prone, she tried to attack, raising her gloves, but Häxa had somehow bound her outgoing magick.

"Just stay down, child," Häxa said, rising to her towering height to close in on Mari. "Your father didn't even make it this long. I yawned while I froze your mother."

Häxa loomed over her, building magick in her eyes, her mouth, her hands. Building... building. She was going to use everything she had to finish this, to render Mari to ash.

The Queen of False Faces was just too strong.

The kill shot neared.

Coughing up blood, Mari lolled her head to the side, wanting to see Bowen a last time...

The bone in one of his legs was broken, jutting up, piercing his jeans. His chest was bleeding profusely. The blood had spread out across the front of his shirt and was sopping a trail along the floor as he still struggled toward Mari.

All at once Mari understood why people fought losing battles—because if you want something badly enough, you can't do anything else but fight for it.

Mari would fight.

The mirror she'd climbed through lay on the floor between her and Bowen. She met his eyes, furtively opening her palm for it. Calling it to come to her, she might have budged a corner. Gnashing his teeth, he lunged for it, spinning it across the wood floor to her until her magick could seize it and draw it close.

The sorceress blinked her eyes at them, then shrieked with fury, letting loose her power. At the last second, Mari shoved the mirror upright, huddling behind the glass like a knight behind a shield against the fire of a dragon.

The beam reflected, trapping Häxa with her own unstoppable power.

So hot... hold on... fight!

Häxa's screams echoed, piercing the night. In a circle all around Mari, the force of the beam's overflow splintered the floor as though a jackhammer had broken through. Shards of wood flew upward. Stakes embedded themselves in the ceiling.

Just have to hold on longer than she can.

Häxa's screams grew dimmer.

Hold on...

Bowe watched as Häxa's body seemed to rupture from within, cracking open into thick fissures. With her claw-tipped fingers clenched in pain, she began to shift—and a thousand forms flashed over her.

In the midst of them, Bowe spied a witch with raven hair and draped in a black stole.

Then... light exploded inside her, incinerating her.

Like an atomic bomb, a flat line of energy cast out before erupting straight up. The force blew the roof off the house, searing it to instant ash. Cinders wafted down as the walls groaned and collapsed.

Mariketa shakily set the mirror away. He saw her drop her head as if she were staring at her stomach.

"Oh." She grasped something in her front, then yanked. Her fingers went limp and a spike of wood, dripping with blood, rolled from her grasp. Holding her side, she tried to stand, but fell back on her hip. Another unsteady attempt, and she finally made it to her feet.

When she faced Bowe, he winced at her bloodied face, the bruises already emerging. Her hair was coated with soot. As she limped to him, her eyes began returning to normal.

"Mari," he grated, "you've got to heal yourself."

"Bowen, your legs... your chest."

"I'll be fine—"

Another sudden wind rushed over them, scattering debris. Mariketa cried out as an invisible force assailed her, seeming to strangle her from inside.

"What's happenin' tae you?" he yelled. "What is this?"

Grueling moments passed. When the wind eased, and she was released from whatever had gripped her, she appeared confused. "I think... I think that was Häxa's power... "

If what Mari had said earlier about destroying a sorceress was true, then she'd just had an infusion of a near godlike power.

As she started for Bowe once more, the whites of her eyes and her irises seemed to become flooded with black, as though ink had spilled inside them—like Häxa's had been. As if possessed, Mariketa swung her gaze from him until her uncanny eyes locked onto the glass on the floor.

Her expression was as if she were starving, even lustful, and she hurried to it, stepping directly atop it. The ground seemed to fall out from under her, and she dropped down, disappearing.

Bellowing with fear for her, Bowe dragged himself to the mirror to reach her. But she was gone.

He raked his claws down the glass, desperate to follow.