45. Dychat

forty-five

Shades poured over the edge of the stage, rising as a fog and wafting westward over and through the crowd, gathering around the massive devil guarding the entrance to the Ninth Ring.

From her place on the viewing platform, Milla scanned Darkly’s work, noting the crowd mesmerized by his every move, an utterly captive audience. She pressed her hand against her phone, half telling herself and half pleading with the app she’d left running.

This will work.

Her phone buzzed in a show of support.

“Any minute now,” Constance said from behind Milla. “Goddess, he’s something, isn’t he?”

“Millamauschen has excellent taste,” Morgen’s crisp voice answered. She sat in the front row of chairs beside Cal of all witches and greeted Milla with a tight nod and tiny smile when she joined them on the viewing platform. Her casting hand danced in a series of sigils, and she had one arm raised, projecting an illusion in the sky to show Darkly paying his ritual dues to every witch in attendance.

“The vase is there.” Lou pointed at a small table on the stage, several yards away from Darkly. “One quick enervation and you’ll be done.”

“Got it.” Milla did not take her eyes off Darkly, and honestly, who could? The witch was a born showman, flinging shadows and playing with the crowd. He spread his arms, summoning a stygian cloak like a vaudevillian. “Any word from Donmar?”

Sweeping an arm to the side, Darkly whirled in a circle. The cloak billowed behind him, casting out over the crowd. They cheered, and he did it again, blinding another swathe of witches with his Way. A slice of his hand sent the cloak flying over the crowd to tangle in the devil’s horns.

“Staid campout,” Lou said. “Some corporate event, no sign of the ritualists.”

“Hm.”

The sun was well below the trees, the sky to the east deepening toward night as the western horizon gleamed in goldenrod and blush pink. On the stage, Darkly spun in a slow circle as he moved to the edge, where he dropped into a wide-legged stance, his right arm stretched to the east, his left reaching west for the construct. The crowd and the Elder Witches cried out as the shadows cast by the beast’s wings swelled and throbbed, whorling as a midnight storm. With less than a breeze tangling in Milla’s hair and tickling her cheek, Darkly clapped his hands together, summoning the Shades and bringing on the night.

Black sped across the sky from the east, rushing to the roiling mass he had summoned and plunging the Ninth Ring into a starless black. Magick filled the humid air, heavy and electric. A charged aether at the ready for any witch bold enough to reach out and take it.

Milla closed her eyes, curling her hands into fists and taking three quick breaths before mounting the stairs to the stage.

As swiftly as they were summoned, the Shades vanished, taking with them the crackle of excess Way Darkly had drawn from every witch in attendance. Darkly swayed as she stepped beside him, the magick filling his person. His eyes were wide and fevered, a glistening opalescent black. Veins pulsed in his neck and temples, and faint, worming ashen streaks crawled along his arms. She grabbed his hand to keep the quake in his fingers from being seen as salt lamps flared to life at the base of the stage, lighting their world in grays and greens.

There was a moment of silence. The crowd inhaled as one, and then deafening and riotous applause erupted. The audiomantics beneath the stage dampened the sound, and Darkly raised their joined hands, drawing all the attention to Milla.

“Hope you’re ready, leannán .” His words came out hollow and distant, not quite the voice he sometimes used, but she heard the restraint as he spoke. “Nae sure how long I can hold on.”

“Like you said, milenec,” she used the masculine Czech, calling to him as he called to her. “It’s showtime.”

Darkly grinned, releasing Milla’s hand. The crowd fell into an uneasy silence, taking in their first glimpse of the Death Witch. Small, slight, pale. In her costume vest and dark makeup, she was everything they expected and still fell far short of the mark. It was in the hushed whispers and mocking whistles. In the silence bleeding from the viewing platform at the back of the stage.

Milla sashayed in front of Darkly, circling the flowers on the table and rotting them with a touch. The crowd gasped, her small act of magick projected by Morgen for all to see. She brought them back to full bloom, and a witch on the viewing platform muttered, “I never get tired of seeing that.”

The phone in her pouch buzzed. Milla feigned a yawn and made a show of checking the notifications.

“Got the time, witch?” Darkly jeered.

The chart on her screen was a mess of signatures, wavy lines, and sharp peaks and valleys. She glanced at the crowd, Darkly, the phone, then turned her face to the mound behind the stage. Darkly followed her look and smiled sharply. At his nod, Milla slipped her phone into the pouch.

“Time to go.”

He was fast. Goddess, he was so fast. He strode across the stage and took Milla into his arms, uttering nothing more than a rushed “Hold on to me” before the world opened up and arctic winds swallowed them both.

He stepped them out on top of the mound, keeping Milla tight against him as he formed a sigil with one hand and closed the seam. The winds of the Neitherworld still howled in her ears, and for a second, Milla thought he had miscast.

“Darkly!” She yelled over the sound to gain his attention, but he kept his gaze pinned over her head. “What happened?”

Hollows had begun to creep into his cheeks, and a faint bruising grew beneath impossibly dark eyes that crinkled as he showed Milla the crowd.

The screaming, cheering, riotous crowd.

Every witch in attendance whooped and hollered, losing their minds as they surged for the Enforcers holding the space before the stage.

“We have to do this now,” Darkly said, no louder than a whisper, but she heard it clear as a bell as if he had slipped the words directly into her head. “Cannae hold on much longer.” A faint tail of smoke drifted from his mouth, whipping around Milla, and for a moment, the world went hazy and gray, clearing just as quickly.

That’s new.

“Right.” She shook out her hands, took a deep breath, and stepped further into her Way than she’d gone in years.

She focused her intent on the demonstration. In the shock and awe. On impressing the assembled covens. Showing them what a Death Witch could do and keeping the attention on her. Her desire was in line with her intent: be the distraction Lou demanded. Never let them know what was coming next. Darkly had done his job well; now it was up to her.

And sacrifice, well, considering the requirements of this specific ritual, this was certainly going to hurt.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“Goddess, I hope so.” Darkly wrapped an arm around her front, steadying Milla, and a jolt went through her body. Her veins lit up, heat flaring higher and brighter than ever before.

No. Not quite. It was the Loa all over again. The surge of power from her demesne and from his Shades, pushing Milla over the finish line. But this time, it was given power. Desired power. Intentional power and Darkly was not the sacrifice.

Lifting the curved boline blade on her necklace, Milla dragged it along the length of her left pinky.

“Holy Horned God,” she hissed from the pain and hooked the blade at the last minute to slice off a chunk of her flesh. Blood welled and dribbled into her palm, pooling over the scars and drowning the slice of skin. She pressed the fingerbone on her necklace to her palm with two fingers, mingling it with her flesh and blood, and began chanting.

“ Probu? se, probu? se do tohoto fale?ného ?ivota .”

Wake. Wake to this false life.

Milla swayed as her intent immediately caught. She staggered to the left and Darkly grabbed her by the shoulders to keep her upright.

“ Nahoru a natáhnout k?ídla. Nahoru a natáhnout k?ídla. ”

Rise and stretch your wings.

“Gonnae give them all nightmares,” Darkly muttered in a voice gone guttural and raw.

“ Probu?te se a dychejte. ”

Wake, and breathe.

Goddess, the intent was strong, the magick in the air high and charged, yearning to be seized. The vein-worming pain of the funeral mask shot out from her temples, grounding Milla in the ritual and urging her on.

She raised her palm to the massive sculpture at the rim of the Ninth Ring, bidding the triple-mouthed beast to wake. To stretch his wings in a simulacrum of life.

“ Dychat. ”

Breathe.

Her voice went sepulchral, echoing as a rasping moan the audiomantics did not bother to adjust. Morgen’s projections flickered overhead, doubling the greyish-green light from the salt lamps on the stage and casting an eerie pallor over the mound. Milla allowed herself one greedy glance at the projection floating over the crowd, and Horned God was it terrifying.

Her eyes glowed an incandescent purplish pink. Pale smoke wafted from her sclera, heightening the horror of the decayed lacing of her veins clawing across her cheekbones, above her eyebrows, and knotting together at the bridge of her nose. Her little finger and ring finger pinched the fingerbone to her outstretched palm, and blood flowed from the wound, running in a crimson line down her forearm and dripping from her elbow.

At her back stood a King in Smoke and Shadow. Tendrils of flame-like Shades fanned and danced around them, and the pale, harsh angles of his face stood out in sharp relief against wickedly narrowed black eyes. A cruel sneer parted Darkly’s lips, and a Shade wreathed his head as a crown with smoking tines. He held his casting hand beneath her elbow, pooling her blood in his waiting palm. What he did not catch fell to the earthen mound, where it ate the dirt and grass, sending the scent of sweet-rot to cloy and tease her nose.

At the sight of them, deep in their Ways and joined by his Shades, his arm, her blood, Marie’s words burned in her mind: Do you know what you both could do? Together?

Milla faltered, her arm shook, dropping slightly, and Darkly’s lean fingers curled around her elbow in Death’s own grip.

“ Continue ,” he ordered in that voice . She shuddered at the sensual roll of mercury in her veins. The heat of him at her back intensified as he curled fingers around her hip, stepping so close she could smell the wintry spice and smoke scent that was all him mingling with the sweet rot of the earth. “ Summon them. ”

Milla swallowed. This was a theory, one he had all too willingly agreed to test. And why wouldn’t he? It piggybacked off of the theory he’d been working with all along. His Way, to quote herself, was a “freaky battery” for hers. Instead of drowning it or avoiding it or working themselves to exhaustion just to ignore this peculiarity of their Ways, why not use it .

Milla braced her feet and dove further.

“Dejte mi pozor. “

Heed me.

There was a sickening pull on her Way as a tether unspooled from her gut and connected with the Shades swarming the sculpture. She jerked forward, and only Darkly’s grip at her elbow and hip kept her on her feet. A wicked and low chuckle escaped the Dark Witch as the statue’s wings twitched and curled in, swallowing the magick he had sent there. Summoned from every cache he dropped throughout the ritual grounds, from every witch who cheered and applauded as he paid his ritual dues, who bought him a drink or asked for a picture. From the oak tree he’d imbued with the power of the telos they fed in the consent circle. All of it hoarded in plain sight for his Death Witch to use.

All of it now at her command.

Milla gasped at the influx of power, and the beast shivered, rolling his shoulders with the creak of metal and snap of bone. He tilted his triple-faced head back before thrusting out massive wings and releasing a grinding, metallic roar.

His wings flapped, expelling the Shades. They burst out and swept low over the crowd like the ghouls and ghasts from Bald Mountain in the old orchestral Disney film. Her fingertips blackened and ached, her hand cramped from holding the bone and sigils. She focused on the pain to keep from being terrified. No amount of tea or sparring could have prepared Milla for this amount of magick, and she was about three seconds away from dropping the ritual and passing out.

A low, rumbling chuckle built in Darkly’s chest. He slipped his hand to Milla’s wrist, circling lean fingers around her bones to keep her steady and connected to the beast. The hand at her hips slid up and splayed across her stomach, and Darkly jerked her back against his chest with a word she didn’t know.

“Cothaigh.”

A manacle of cold flashed at her wrist. She jolted as the Dark and Death Ways connected and joined. Cold bled into her bones, deeper than the chill of the cells. Deeper than a winter night. The cold of the Neitherworld where none lived save for the King in Smoke and Shadow and the lone witch at the Gates. A flash of arousal coursed through her body, and Milla knew where she had felt this before—in her hut as he plied her with his Shades and again at the tree in Wrath.

Darkly guided her arm, and the Shades followed the swipe of her hand. He swooped them low over the crowd, pulling her hand back to draw them close, then swept her arm to send them crashing over the witches in a wave. Conducting an orchestra of Shade through his Death Witch.

Her phone buzzed in her pouch, one alert after another. Milla tore her eyes from the Shades and the construct, scanning the crowd and almost missing it—a deep red, so deep it was almost black against the night sky, blooming of light.

“Darkly.”

His smooth, sweeping movement faltered just enough that she knew he had seen it, too.

Their idiot plan had worked, and the ritualists had taken the opportunity Milla presented. The magick Darkly had pumped into Beltane, the intent, desire, and sacrifice Milla paid to her ritual. The beacon they lit atop the mound drew all eyes onto themselves to allow the ritualists a chance to work, and it had worked .

“ A little longer, Death Witch, ” that voice crawled out of Darkly again, and for the briefest moment, it felt as though he were conducting her as he conducted the Shades.

“When this happens, we need to be fast.”

“ Lest you forget, Ludmilla, ” he teased, breath chill against her ear. “ I can leap tall buildings in a single bound. ”

“Alright, Superman.”

Darkly chuckled. The beast stretched and furled his wings, rushing an arm down low over the heads of the crowd and roaring its three mouths into the night sky. Their terror, the fury of the Shades, turned his rumbling chuckle into a laugh that grew into a full-on villainous outburst.

His laughter bubbled over into Milla, drunk as she was off her Way, and soon they were both cackling mad on top of the mound, masters of the terror they unleashed on the mayhem of witches below. Wreathed in voided flame and looking like the Forbidden and Foule things they were.

Darkly quieted and sent one last surge of power into Milla, “ With me now, love .”

His hand left her front and gripped her other wrist. He held their arms out, muttering quietly in Irish over her head and circling their arms to gather the Shades as a teeming hurricane. Tightening the whorl until it was a flat disc of impenetrable black. A thin circle of Shades surrounded them, protecting Milla and Darkly from what came next.

“ Charge the field, Milla ,” he murmured. Breath hot and voice full of dark, delicious promise. It licked up her spine, heating the marrow in her bones and winning a small, needy whimper. “ Burn them out. ”

His fingers unfurled one by one by one from her wrists, leaving Milla in control of their Ways. Though he kept his arms outstretched, ready to catch her, he let her close the ritual. Let her have this moment.

“ ?ivit. ” Feed.

Her voice boomed out over the terrified crowd, and she brought her hands together, clenching her fingers until her knuckles blanched white. Power vibrated in her bones, trembling her arms, but Milla held until she thought she would fly apart. Held until the teeming mass in the sky threatened to burst and consume them all. Held until she was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this charge would take everything she was, everything Darkly had fed into his Shades, everything the witches had given over to Beltane. Until she knew in the rotted, knotted, Soul, Shade, and body of her that in the absence of magick her casting left behind, the ritualists would have nothing left to steal.

“ ?ivit!” She cried again, throwing her hands apart, thrusting the palms down and directing all of that emotional energy, all of the life and death she and Darkly had doled out, all the power of the Southeastern Covens down down down into the field.

It left her arms in a rush, draining Milla beyond the precipice. The Shades came crashing down, plummeting into the crowd and the earth to dissipate in lazy whorls of smoke. The bone fell from her hand, and the construct froze in a menacing half crouch, wings high and outspread with an arm reaching out over the crowd.

Utter silence met them as a sea of stunned witches gazed up at the mound. Milla held her breath as the last of Darkly’s shades wafted away, waiting for them to realize what she had done.

The phone in her pouch erupted. Buzzing and buzzing and buzzing until the leather burned at her hip. At that same moment, Darkly jerked Milla back against him and pointed out across the field. “Milla, look.”

She followed the line of his arm, clapping a hand over her mouth. A cry rose from the crowd, and another, as the witches realized what Milla had done: total burnout, their Ways hauled into a ritual and exhausted to power the magick of a Death Witch, save for those safely tucked behind wards.

Milla was deaf to the cries and blind to the chaos down below. Every fiber of her was intent on that deep red bloom of light, now a crimson star with a voided center pulsing in the night sky.

“We found them.”