Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [118]
“Mallory!” I called out, stepping toward the plinth again. “You have got to stop this.”
She lifted her hands into the air, and I could feel the magic gathering and swirling again.
“Why should I stop? So you can gloat about how you nailed the screwed-up little sorceress? No, thank you.”
“This isn’t about you and me!” I yelled full-out over the roar and crackle of fire and the swirling wind. “It’s about Chicago. It’s about your new obsession with black magic.”
“You don’t have a clue, Merit. Keep living in your tidy little vampire dorm. You’re oblivious to the world around you—to the energy and the magic. But that’s not my fault.”
Catcher emerged through the smoke on the other side of the plinth. “Mallory! Stop this!”
“No!” she yelled out. “You will not interrupt me!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t let you do this.”
“If you stop me now, you’ll kill Ethan.” She pointed at me. “Tell her that, Catcher. Tell her that you’ll keep me from bringing him back.”
But he kept walking closer and closer toward her. “If you bring him back, it won’t be him. He’ll be a zombie, Mallory, and you know that. I know why you’re doing this. I know how good it feels, and how bad it feels, all at the same time. But you can learn to control it, I swear to God you can.”
“I don’t want to control it,” she said. “I want to own it. All of it. I want to feel better.”
But Catcher persisted. “Simon was an awful tutor, and I’m sorry I didn’t recognize it. I’m sorry I didn’t see how dangerous his stupidity was. More sorry than you’ll ever know. I didn’t know you were going through this. I just thought you were pulling away from me. I thought he was turning you away from me. This is my fault, Mallory.” Tears streamed down his face. “My fault.”
“You know nothing,” she spat out, and hefted up the Maleficium . “No one understands this—how important it is.”
“It’s not that important,” Catcher calmly said. “You’re just high on it. On the power. On the potential. But it’s false, Mallory. That sense that you have in your chest?” He beat a fist against his heart. “It’s false. Doing evil won’t make the world a better place. It won’t make that feeling go away. It will only make it stronger, and you’ll have driven away everyone you love.”
He raised his other hand, and I could feel the pulse of magic as he prepared to whip something toward her.
“You can’t stop this,” she said evilly. “You can’t affect my magic.”
“No, I can’t,” he said with resignation. “But I can affect you.” Magic began to glow and swirl in his palm as he prepared to strike.
Realizing that she’d have to face him down, she changed up her strategy again. “But that will hurt me,” she said, her voice more like a child now than a woman of twenty-eight. “Please don’t do that.”
“If you’re telling the truth, then I pray it will only hurt for a moment,” he said. He lobbed his hand at her; a diamond-sized glint of light flew in her direction, growing into a giant blue orb.
As if in slow motion, it flew through the air past me. But Mallory dropped the book and batted away the orb. With an explosion of light and rock, it hit the statue and knocked a chunk out of the knight’s shoulder.
“I hate you!” she screamed at him, and while I had no doubt the sentiment was just magic and exhaustion talking, the pain in Catcher’s face was clear.
“You’ll get over it,” he said, and threw another orb at her. This one landed, and struck Mallory square in the chest. She flew backward and hit the ground.
All that magic she’d created, all that energy she’d gathered together, was suddenly released. With a freezing cold rush, Catcher’s orb exploded, expanded, and spread into a blue plane of light that flew across the Midway with the roar of a 747, extinguishing the flames as it moved.
Extinguishing the spell as it moved.
Extinguishing hope as it moved.
For a moment, there was mostly silence. Smoke rose from the charred grass and singed trees in the Midway, and crackles of