Part 21 (1/2)

”Stop,” I whispered, so softly I could barely hear myself. I tried to clear my throat. ”Stop.” Incy ignored me. His chanting continued. He had been practicing this, planning this, for a long time. Probably since right after I'd disappeared. Maybe even before.

Katy watched the scene dully, her reactions coc.o.o.ned as well. Did she understand what was happening? I suddenly felt that as much as I had hung out with Katy, traveled with her, practically lived with her at times, I actually didn't know her all that well. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, what she would do if she could.

Incy's smooth tenor became stronger, harsher, his words sounding like bullets, like whips, filled with evil intent. Suddenly Boz seemed to awaken and started to struggle. His shoulders jerked; I heard his chains rattling and grinding against the wood column. His eyes flared, staring at Incy with disbelief.

”Stop!” I said, spitting out the word like a lump of clay. Once more I tried to free myself, with no result.

A sound tore from Boz's throat, an unintelligible animal sound of pain and fear. ”Okay! Okay! Yes! Take it!” he cried, sobbing. ”Take it! But stop!”

Incy smiled cruelly and kept singing.

Boz started screaming, the sound deadened and choppy. His eyes bugged out, the pupils filling the blue irises like a black oil stain. Horror filled me as I saw true evil stripping Boz away from himself. I remembered the sight of Reyn's brother being flayed by my mother, during the siege. Her words had been dark and terrible like this, her face almost unrecognizable. She'd raised her hand, snapped it out at the raider, and her amulet had seemed to glow with a frightening power. The raider's skin had burst from him, shredding through his clothes and leather armor, his chain-mail s.h.i.+rt. I'd watched dumbstruck as he'd stood there like an anatomical statue, raw muscle and sinew and bone, his eyes huge and surprised without their lids, without brows. It hadn't killed him, of course. Sigmundur had leaped forward and severed the raider's naked head, and that had killed him.

My mother's power had been as dark as this, as evil, though she was trying to save us, her children.

”Stop!” I said, the word sounding like a sob, and even that sapped my strength, made me feel like collapsing in the dust and pa.s.sing out for a hundred years.

Still Incy chanted, his voice victorious now, his face flus.h.i.+ng with triumph and life, eyes glittering. The air felt polluted, defiled, as if I were breathing illness, breathing in wretchedness and despair.

Incy's voice rose in a crescendo of exhilaration. His hands pressed against Boz's face so hard that the skin glowed white around his fingertips. Tears ran out of my eyes and down my cheeks.

Boz's back arched. His voice was raw and strangled. Katy slowly turned her head toward him, watching him uncomprehendingly. Incy shouted his last few words, then jumped up, arms raised, standing like a matador who'd just killed a bull for the crowd.

Boz's voice broke off abruptly. Just ten feet away from me, his face... crumpled inward on itself, as if deflated. I gasped, my stomach heaving at the sight. Boz's shoulders folded in, his head sinking onto his chest in a grotesque, unnatural way. His skin was gray and powdery, withered and wrinkled beyond recognition. His body slumped forward, held only by the chains binding his reedy, stringlike hands. It was as if Incy had sucked Boz's actual soul out, leaving a desiccated, inhuman husk, a repulsive, empty skin that had once been my friend. Everything that Boz was, everything he had been, everything he had done in his life-it was all gone, forever.

I'd never seen an immortal die without having his head cut off. It was stunning, for some reason hitting me so much harder than the odd occasion when I'd seen a human die. I hadn't known it could be like this. Incy had known.

The air crackled with magick and darkness. It felt sharp, barbed, painful, and disgusting all at once, all around me. I tried not to breathe in the foulness, almost retching from its noxiousness. Incy was laughing, dancing around, so full of Boz's life and energy that he couldn't stand still.

”I am invincible!” Incy shouted, whirling and leaping near Katy and me. ”I am invincible!”

I tried not to throw up with revulsion and dread. I looked over at Katy and behind her dull stillness I saw terror and comprehension. She knew beautiful, selfish, silly Boz was dead, knew that something unspeakable had just happened. And would happen to her and to me. Either way, one of us would have to watch it again.

She started crying then. Her shoulders, pulled back so painfully and awkwardly, shook. She choked on her tears, gagging like I was, and at one point seemed to pa.s.s out. Then her head rose again, tears streaking the dirt on her face. Her mouth opened but closed without saying anything. I'd seen her drunk before, and sick; laughing hysterically, crying with shared emotion as people all around us whooped in the streets on V-Day. I'd never seen her like this, disheveled, dirty, dopey, well past fear, well past terror. I wished I could comfort her.

Still Incy danced around us, vibrant with power, alive with Terv magick, laughing maniacally, rubbing his hands together.

Finally he whirled to a stop in front of me, looking unholy with a terrible, unnatural beauty. ”Nastasya-you're next. Give me your power, like ol' Boz here, and Katy won't have to buy the farm. Deal?”

I stared at him. Did he mean it? Could I save her? But... what would he do with my power? Nothing good. What a choice. What would River want me to do?

CHAPTER 24.

New Year's Eve felt like hundreds of years ago. I had danced in a circle with everyone at River's Edge, danced around a fire and felt magick rise in me like a fountain, like a sunrise. I had tried to cast darkness out of me.

Afterward Reyn had waited for me. In the snowy woods I had reached for him and he had kissed me. He'd been so warm, so strong. He'd told me what he wanted-me-and asked if I wanted him, too. I'd been an idiot, a scared idiot. I had learned so much there, but it had come at me like unrelated bits and pieces: crystals here, herbs there, stars, names for things, spellcraft, oils, and moon phases. I'd been so stupid that none of it had fit together; none of the pieces had been made into a stained-gla.s.s window of understanding. If I could try one more time...

”What do you say, my love?” Incy's face was glowing, as perfect and eternal as that painting I'd seen in the Met, full of stolen life and energy.

His voice snapped me back to the appalling present, with my muscles seizing and cramping, my brain lit and frantic, this unnerving binding spell wrapping me tightly in victim cords. I stared up at Incy, focused on his face. A word floated into my consciousness, indistinctly at first and then forming more completely: fjordaz. Fyore-dish. It was an ancient word for what Incy was stealing-somehow, instantly, I knew that. He'd taken Boz's fjordaz.

Where had I heard that before? My mother? Yes. It had been a word in the song she sang to call her power to her. I remembered her strong, lovely voice singing, and the word fjordaz being woven in. Was she calling on her own power? Trying to subvert someone else's? I closed my eyes, trying to think.

”Fine!” Incy shouted. My eyes popped open as he pulled out an old sword, its blade inscribed with symbols that made my flesh crawl. The metal glinted in the candlelight as Incy hefted it. ”Did you know there's more than one way to skin a cat?”

My brain struggled to follow his thoughts.

”With Boz, I actually ripped his power away while he was alive, just to see if I could.” Incy smiled, showing teeth. ”And it was incredible. I hope it was good for you.” He did a few dance steps, tapping the sword on the ground like a cane. ”But if I just whack Katy's head off, I'll be able to grab her power out of the air. So, easier, eh?”

”Wait!” I got out. I'd been kneeling all this time on the cold floor, and my knees burned and throbbed with pain. ”Wait!”

”Wait? You want to think about it? No.” Incy bounded over to Katy and raised the sword above her head. She blinked several times, looking up at him, and I saw her try to move, try to stand. It all seemed surreal, a bleary recollection of a nightmare that I would soon wake from.

”No!” I couldn't shriek, but I made my voice as loud as I could. It was garbled, like I was yelling through a tunnel of felt. ”No, Incy, wait!”

Katy was gagging, unable to sob. Her eyes were wide, still disbelieving.

Incy looked at me. ”You are making me do this,” he said clearly, and brought the sword down.

”Katy!” I choked out, even as I heard the unexpectedly loud thwack. Everything in me bolted forward until the deadly chains yanked me back. Katy's inarticulate shriek stopped.

My mouth hung open as I saw Katy's head drop to the floor and roll slightly, facing me. Her eyes looked at me, slowly blinked once, and then glazed over, like sc.u.m forming on old milk. A gush of blood, vivid red, erupted from her neck and pulsed outward several times with her heartbeats. In a split second I was back to the night when my entire family was slaughtered. There had been so much blood then, too. I had walked through it, my felted wool slippers squis.h.i.+ng in the soaked carpet. Now I stared as Katy's blood, red and s.h.i.+ning on the old warehouse floor, flowed toward me, making rivulets through the dust. The heavy, coppery smell hit my nose, filled my mouth.

My guts heaved. I leaned sideways and hurled, my stomach convulsing over and over. The drinks I'd consumed just hours ago burned with bile at the back of my throat.

Incy had been chanting during this, but now he stepped back quickly to avoid getting the spreading blood on his shoes. He was breathing hard, little puffs of smoke visible in the weak moonlight. His eyes shone when he looked at me, and he seemed amazed, impressed, giddy that he had actually done such a heinous, ruinous thing.

”Are you happy now?” he asked. Blood dripped off the sword that dangled from one hand. ”You see what you made me do? That's your fault!” He gestured at Katy. ”She didn't have to die! You could have saved her! But your selfishness killed her!” His words would have stung even more if he hadn't looked so exhilarated.

That was when my hatred of him began to override his binding spell, just a bit.

”I hate you!” I said, my tongue still feeling thick but my voice stronger than before. Incy reeled back in shock, whether from my words or my ability to say them, I didn't know. But it was pouring out of me now, the way Katy's blood had poured out of her.

”I hate you! I hate everything about you! You're crazy! Evil! Drunk on power!” I was going to die anyway-might as well let it rip. I put all the coldness and loathing into my voice that I could summon.

Incy's face contorted with rage. ”Shut up! You're the dark one! You're evil, all the way down to your shriveled little soul!”

”I used to think so. Used to fear it,” I spit. Speaking was still difficult, not fluid, and required effort, but I could get words out. ”Everything was going wrong, and I thought it was me! But it wasn't! I'm fine! It was you, all along! You're the dark one!” I wanted to sob with relief at that realization-a.s.suming it was true-but since I was about to die, there wasn't much point.

”Shut up!” Incy yelled again, waving the b.l.o.o.d.y sword at me. ”You don't know what you're saying! You love me! I've done everything for you!”

I gaped. ”Love you? Are you insane? Look around! Look what you've done! Look what you're doing to me!” My chains rattled and sc.r.a.ped against my post. I felt the sharp sting of wooden splinters digging into my wrists.

Incy did look around, and a moment of confusion crossed his dark, handsome face.

I shook my head. ”I can hardly imagine the Incy of the past, my friend,” I said. ”Every memory I have of you is spoiled, uglier than I remembered. I want to erase you from my past, erase every single thing about you.” I spoke these true, hurtful words more calmly, and it pushed Incy over the edge.