Chapter Twenty-Six
I scrambled down the other side of the railroad bed and raced toward the scream. I didn’t hear Coyote follow—either he’d vanished or was simply waiting for me to solve the problem on my own.
Gabrielle’s cry hadn’t come from the direction of the vortexes. That faint relief didn’t make me feel much better.
The growing darkness hampered me, as did the weeds and thorns in my path. I stumbled across the rock-strewn dirt, heading for the noise, only the moon to light my way.
I nearly fell down a steep-walled wash choked with juniper and scrub. Breaking my way free of branches at the bottom, I found the usual sands of a dry wash that flooded during the rains—and Gabrielle.
She lay half upright, propped on her elbows in the churned pale sand. Her dark eyes were wide in terror. Emmett stood over her, his business suit coated with dust, his hands full of white light. The light, I saw to my horror, was coming straight out of Gabrielle.
I ran toward them, shouting wordless sounds. Emmett looked up.
His face was the gaunt, hollow-cheeked skin-over-bone I’d seen in the mirror, his fingers leathery sticks. His eyes glowed hot, the same color as the light he imbibed.
“Janet!” Gabrielle screamed. “I didn’t mean to. I thought I was helping you. I wanted you to be proud of me.”
My forward momentum was halted by a wall I couldn’t see. I bounced from a spongelike substance and stumbled, fighting to keep to my feet.
Emmett turned back to Gabrielle with the slow, jerky movement of the undead. However, he spoke in the same smooth tone he always used.
“I’m almost finished here, Janet,” he said. “You can thank me when I’m done.”
“Thank you for what?” I pounded at the transparent wall. My fists sank into softness and did no damage. “Leave her alone!”
“You’ve always said she was out of control,” Emmett replied. “Now she’ll be completely harmless. Your sister thought she could best me, do you know that? Promised she’d help me get the mirror, but really she intended to kill me. She tried, anyway. All by herself. But I know how to fight Beneath-magic creatures.” He sped up the stream of light out of Gabrielle, and she shrieked again in agony and misery. “I’ve learned. Fighting you two this summer was most instructive.”
I beat at the wall, unable to get to her. Emmett, who built up his own power by siphoning off others, continued to suck Gabrielle’s ultra-strong Beneath magic into him.
He might kill Gabrielle when he was finished. Doomed to only watch, I couldn’t stop him. But even if he let her live, what would become of Gabrielle? Mick, when his dragon-ness was taken away, had snarled at me that Emmett had not given him life but living death.
Emmett, when he was done here, would have Beneath magic as well as all the earth magic he’d stolen for decades. Beneath magic was tough for the human-born to handle, but I had no doubt Emmett had been preparing to take it into himself for years.
He’d stolen magic from demons, witches, the evil and the good, the supernatural and the ordinary. He’d made it clear he’d go after the magic of the mirror, of Cassandra, and now of Gabrielle.
The only magic he hadn’t tried to steal was mine.
I was a mess of Beneath magic and storm magic rolled into one. My own mother, a goddess, feared me. Coyote, a god, watched me carefully, as did the Hopi gods who’d once imprisoned me.
As I stood there, I realized in shock that Emmett Smith’s ultimate goal wasn’t, in fact, my magic mirror. Oh, he wanted it, all right, but only as a tool to reach his next step. He wanted Gabrielle’s magic for the same reason.
Armed with all his power, Beneath magic, and a magic mirror, he could then turn toward the target he’d always been aiming for.
Me.
“You son of a bitch!” I yelled at him.
Emmett didn’t respond. He kept on draining Gabrielle dry, his body glowing like an arc light while Gabrielle wept. A glint in his hand looked remarkably like a piece of magic mirror—the shard she’d stolen, and now Emmett had taken from her.
I wasn’t certain how real this was. Had the mirror made me dream to show me what Emmett had been up to? Or was this Emmett remembering what he’d done, while he was trapped inside the mirror?
Didn’t matter—I had to kill him. I had to do it now. I had always imagined that the next mage Emmett would fight to retain his title of Ununculous would be Cassandra. She was the only witch I could think of who might best him.
I realized in this moment, that the mage who had to challenge the Ununculous was me.
Janet Begay. The baby my father had protectively folded in his arms while he defied his mother for the first time in his life.