The Witch with No Name(188)

My heart pounded. Ivy stood at the center. Her hopeful expression almost hurt. She trusted me to do this right. Nina’s soul was in my hand, like a promise to be fulfilled.

“Plan C, eh? Bind the soul and run like hell,” I said, and Trent tried to smile, failing. Jenks was on his shoulder, and the pixy gave me a thumbs-up. This was for Ivy, for everything she’d suffered, everything she’d told herself she wasn’t deserving of. For her, I would risk it all.

And then I stepped forward, placing my foot on the glowing line.

My breath came with a slow intake, seeming to pull with it the memory of drums echoing against a sky faulted by uncountable stars. A slow lassitude spilled into me as I exhaled, pulling a ponderous beat from the spiral to replace the breath within me. I recognized it, accepted it as mine, drew it in to become one with it so I could bend it to my will. Wild magic.

The bottle grew ice cold in my hand, numbing as Nina’s soul coalesced from creation energy. Far, far older than the Goddess, it emerged, pushed by the waves of sound from the drums into a form that had no shape, a thought that came from no idea man had ever witnessed.

I paced forward as the cold crept up my arms, paining my elbows as I finished one spiral and began another. Within me, the first hints of a low chant echoed against the drums. They twined together, making a new sound to beat upon the soul seeping into me, forcing it into a pattern and shape that it once knew. It was a sound that hadn’t been heard for a thousand years. Tears pricked as I realized how much both species had lost in their war. Wild magic.

I struggled to keep my breathing even when a cold wash came spilling down my sides. The bottle was empty, and it fell from my numb hands as I gave myself up to the drums, knowing it was the only thing that kept Nina’s soul bound to the earth—and the soul rebelled, breathing the cold of death into me. My world was a glowing spiral, but as my will began to falter, threads long left fallow began to glow within my own soul, urging me to pick them up and begin anew. But to do so would be my end.

Dizzy, I began the third spiral. Ivy waited, eyes pinched and hand held out, reaching. I pushed one foot before the other, the heat-stealing soul seeping deeper, making my steps a flagging hesitancy. The seeping cold reached my soul, icing the edges, making me forget until it was only the memory of drums and the whispers of ancient elders that moved me forward. Ivy waited. Ivy waited for me. Ivy believed in me, pinned her life to me, not knowing that it would come to this . . . as I brought peace to her. If I could just move one more step. Wild magic.

“Help me,” I whispered as Nina’s soul sent cold daggers of teeth into me to tear and rend, and Ivy reached, pulling me to her.

Fire exploded in me at her touch and I gasped. Head jerking back, I sagged in Ivy’s arms, the drums thundering and the chant winding high through us, through our minds as the soul slipped from me and filled Ivy. We fell to the floor as Nina’s soul abandoned me for more delicious prey, prey that wanted to be taken.

“No! Stay back!” I heard Al shout, and a small scuffle. “The curse isn’t sealed. Touch them now, and the soul will slip from them both and be gone forever.”

“Ivy!” I called as the world rushed back and I was sitting at the center of a pixy-dust spiral, Ivy cold in my arms. I hadn’t exploded into flame; it had been the sudden absence of Nina’s soul. It was in Ivy, and it was struggling to take Ivy’s soul with it.

“Seal it, Rachel,” Al demanded. “Now, before it escapes!”

Wild magic whispered through my mind, and with a desperate need to believe happy endings existed among the pain, I gave up and opened myself to the thousand eyes. Wild magic was mine.

“Ta na shay!” I shouted as the drums thundered, energy clean and deep coursing into me with the sound of folding wings. “Ta na shay!” See me!

My eyes opened wide and for an instant I saw everything from everywhere. My heart made a pained beat, and I choked. “Ta na shay. Cooms da ney,” I wept, and I watched with eyes not mine—eyes not of any world—as Nina’s soul eased to slumber, dropping the threads that would pull Ivy and Nina both from this world to whatever lay beyond. My throat closed from the sheer beauty, and I forgot to breathe. I thought I’d done it.

“Ivy?” I whispered, and her eyes opened. Their solid blackness shifted, becoming purple as she blinked and wings covered her soul. I could hear the sound of feathers, and my skin tingled with remembered pain.

Panicked, I turned to Al and Trent, but it was Bis whose gaze caught mine. He was awake, his red eyes whirling as his wings opened in fear.

“She found you,” he rasped, and both Trent and Al spun to him.