Black Magic Sanction

“Gimme yer bracelet,” Lenore said, squeezing my hand. “Give it.”

She didn’t want my bracelet. She wanted to freaking break my hand.

I pulled back and gave her a side kick, but it was like kicking a tree, the woman was so big. She took it, then swung a thick fist at me. I ducked and people cheered.

“I said let go!” I shouted, throwing coffee in her face.

Lenore bellowed as her grip loosened, and I pulled away. Arms outstretched, she came at me. I ducked, scampering out from under her and slipping on eggs. I couldn’t let this woman get a bear hug on me—she’d snap my spine.

Still howling, she turned to follow, moving remarkably fast. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her, but I didn’t have much choice anymore. Jumping onto the table, I fell into a fighting stance.

Lenore hesitated, her eyes flicking behind me. Taking a step back, she passively raised her hands, but it wasn’t because of me. Too late, I turned.

Pain exploded at the back of my knees, so hard and fast that I couldn’t breathe. I went down face-first. Tears blurred my vision, and I curled into the fetal position, trying to hold my knees. Someone had hit me from behind. Oh God, I’d never walk again.

“I’s kill her! I’s fucking kill her!” Lenore was screaming, and I looked past my stringy hair to see her being led away by two guards, submission holds on her with the help of a couple of sticks. Sure, big talker now that she couldn’t do anything.

“Get up, Sunshine,” someone said sarcastically, and I groaned when they pulled me up and dragged me between them. I couldn’t straighten my legs. They hurt like hell. Apart from our table, the rest of the room was orderly. Noisy, yes, but no one was getting off their benches.

Mary held her narrow body with her skinny arms, scared. Charles wouldn’t look up. But it was Ralph’s expression that scared me. Terror was in his eyes, terror he couldn’t express but was reliving. Not the medical wing. God, please. Not the medical wing.

“New girl making friends?” one of the guards said, letting go and shoving me into the wall before he jerked my arms behind me. “What is it they say about redheads?”

“The medical wing?” the other said, hesitating by a stairway going down. There was a cold draft coming up, stinking of fear and infection.God, no. They could do it, and it would be over. My life done. I’d be like Ralph, and all the magic in the world wouldn’t be able to fix me.

I gathered myself to fight again, my relief almost making me cry when the first replied, “No. She’s got someone from the mainland coming over, and they want her to be able to talk.”

My relief was short lived. They want me to be able to talk? I wasn’t getting a lobotomy because it might inconvenience someone?

The sound of links of steel ratcheting closed around my wrists was loud. I wanted to fight, but I could hardly move, and fear hit anew when they dragged me past my cell to another part of the prison. My heart pounded, and I struggled to get up, to do something! Being hurt and cuffed wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the realization that these people could do anything—cut me up like they had Ralph—and no one would think twice, much less care.

The noise from the dining hall grew fainter, and it was just me and my jailers, dragging me backward over the concrete floor past a series of close-set metal doors. They faced a solid stone wall, and beyond that, the unseen ocean. My heart pounded, and adrenaline got me to my feet when they stopped so one guard could open a cell door. It took two of them to do it, one at the cell with me, and one at a remote panel. The sound of the creaking door chilled me, and I gritted my teeth against the pain in my knees when they started to buckle with my own weight.

“Enjoy the hole,” the guard said, and he shoved me past an outer metal door and a second, standard barred door into a lightless five-by-nine box. I fell, vision graying from the pain in my knees. The barred door shut before I could even pull my face up. The second door slammed behind it a moment later, cutting off the light after I saw the toilet, sink, and nothing else.

They didn’t even laugh at me as their voices became faint, I was so beneath their consideration. Slowly I got my legs untangled, the motion difficult because my arms were still cuffed behind me. Feeling sick, I scooted back until I found the wall. It was metal, too, and cold. The soft sounds of my breathing became loud. Someone nearby was crying, but it wasn’t me.

It would never be me.

Seven (#ulink_89599839-82e0-5df5-bc19-c12d87ac649f)

The metal floor and walls were cold, but I had quit shivering hours ago, numb to it now. The backs of my knees were swollen, and I couldn’t bend them. They ached, throbbing with a pain that refused to abate and that I just learned to live with. The solid outer door had remained closed, and it was close to pitch-dark. I couldn’t see the walls, but I had traced their outlines to find the toilet—hard to use with my hands still cuffed—and the sink. Now I sat with my back in a corner beside the door, my legs outstretched on the cold metal floor to try to get the swelling down. Getting my cuffed hands in front of me had been torture.

I had missed lunch, by the faint scent of lasagna that had come and gone. My dinner had been salad. I hadn’t eaten it, and it sat beside the interior door where the woman had left it. The vinegary dressing was probably full of magic-demoting goodness.

A scrape of nail on metal brought my heart into my throat, and I strained to see. Rat? I thought. I wasn’t scared of them, much, but I couldn’t see a damned thing. Wincing, I tried to bring my knees closer. The new scent of iron and stone tickled a memory, and hope brought me stiff. “Bis?” I whispered.

A soft thump shocked through me, and adrenaline pulsed when a pair of softly glowing eyes turned to me, hovering about a foot above the floor. “Ms. Rachel,” the adolescent gargoyle whispered, his nails scraping as he came closer. “I knew I could find you!”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, relief spilling through me. I reached out to touch him, and the instant my cold fingertips made contact, the unfamiliar pattern of the shattered West Coast ley lines burst into my thoughts. I jerked back, shocked. Damn it, I really needed to touch someone, but Bis would send me into overload.

“Sorry,” he said, his big supple ears drooping like a puppy’s in the faint light from his eyes. His usually pricked ears were edged in white fur, as was the lionlike tuft on his thin, hairless tail. His leathery wings rustled as he settled them, and his craggy features looked young despite the crevices and pebbly gray appearance.

“How did you get here?” I whispered. “Is Ivy with you? Did she fly out?”

“It’s just me and Pierce,” he said proudly. “We jumped. All the way from your kitchen.”

“Pierce!” I exclaimed, then winced. Any louder, and a guard might hear. “Did he escape from Al?” Oh God, I’d get blamed for that—even if I was in prison.

Bis’s flat, black teeth glinted faintly. “No. After you almost died from that soul charm, the demons made him send someone to watch you. Pierce was willing, able, and cheap.”

“You’re kidding!” I almost hissed, but I wondered if part of the reason Al had gone along with it was because he was worried Pierce might find him sleeping one night and kill him. I’d thought those silver bands were impossible to thwart. If it had shocked me, it had shaken Al.

“Ivy is mad,” Bis said, his words spilling out, sounding like falling scree. “She thinks you lied to her about how bad you were hurt. Pierce taught me how to jump here. I swam from the mainland, but it’s too cold for Pierce. No one saw me. I didn’t know I could ride the lines. It was cool, Ms. Rachel! First I’m in your kitchen, and then bam! San Francisco! Just that fast. The lines taste funny, here, though.” He finally ran out of words, his red eyes glowing faintly.

“Pierce didn’t know I was in trouble until you told him?” I insisted, not believing that Al had just let him go. And I really didn’t like the demons sending me a babysitter. I could take care of myself. Most days. Today I could use some help though.

The small gargoyle shifted, his wings brushing my ankles to send a burst of awareness through me. “Not a clue. He’s really upset. He didn’t even know which line to jump to until I told him which line you came in on. That’s why he showed me how to jump. Ivy said it was okay. All I had to do was listen to the ley lines. You left your aura all over the place. Following you was freakier than a boy soprano’s voice changing in the middle of ‘Ave Maria,’ especially when the line we came out of was all broken and stuff, but it was easy! No one told me gargoyles could jump the lines. Even my dad doesn’t know, and he’s old!”

Gargoyles can jump the lines? Well, they could slide right through a protection circle, and it made Al’s comment last winter about my “having my gargoyle” all the more intriguing. But why didn’t gargoyles know they could? Demon censorship? Sounded about right.

“Pierce knew exactly where they had taken you when we popped out of that line,” Bis said, inching closer, his glowing eyes pinched in worry. “Are you okay?”

I wasn’t, but I forced a smile. “I’m much better now,” I whispered. “You did good. I’m really happy to see you. Can you get back on your own?”

He shook his head, his thick canines making him look terribly fierce as he frowned. “I promised Pierce I wouldn’t jump without him. He says I’m not good enough.”

I smiled, thoroughly understanding how it rankled to be told you weren’t good enough. In this case, though, I was all for a little adult supervision. How Pierce knew the coven would put me here sort of bothered me. True, he’d been a member of the coven of moral and ethical standards himself—before they bricked him into the ground, alive—but Alcatraz hadn’t been a prison when he’d been living.

“Bis,” I said, wincing when my knees bent. “Can you show me what Pierce showed you? Maybe we can get home together.”

The pair of glowing eyes slowly shifted. “Not really. I don’t have the words, Ms. Rachel. Pierce said people have to learn from an experienced gargoyle, not a, uh, novice. He can’t jump you either. But it’s okay,” he rushed on when my brow furrowed. “Ivy has someone to bring you home right before the lines close to summoning in Cincinnati.”

My knees throbbed, and his eyes shifted from orange to their usual dull red. Even the hard metal floor didn’t feel so cold. I was going home. Before they lobotomized me.

Mistaking my relief for despair, Bis edged closer, almost putting a claw on my leg. “Pierce would come rescue you himself, Ms. Rachel, but the water is too cold. No one saw me swim over. It used to be an old fort, and I only needed a little crack to get in.”

He was trying to cheer me up, and I nodded, not knowing what to do with my hands and aware of the cuffs for the first time in hours. Bis could slip through the smallest opening, like an octopus. It had driven Jenks crazy until one night the fun-loving teen showed him how he did it.

“I didn’t know you could swim,” I said softly, running a finger between me and the steel around my wrist. “The ward around the island didn’t stop you?”

“It’s just a modified ley line,” the young gargoyle said loftily. “It can’t keep me out.”

“Is Ivy okay? And Jenks?” I hung on his words, starved for the memory of comfort and companionship, and I watched his eyes shift when he nodded.

“Jenks’s wing is bent, but he’s okay. He can still fly and stuff. They want to wait to summon you home until the sun almost rises in Cincy so the council can’t summon you back again. That’s what I came to tell you. Pierce is worried. He says not to eat the food.”

He knew about the food? I mused, disturbed. “Nick summoned me here,” I said bitterly.