Greywalker - Kat Richardson [136]
Then Mara began a larger circle of her own, outside and around his, that encompassed most of the rest of the room. She muttered as she walked, making a trail of dim sparks along with her chalk line that pushed the darkness into a heavy, gathering storm around the organ. She left a small opening opposite the door. I went to stand by it with her, facing the door. I could feel the organ’s power surging.
“The scent of blood to draw him,” Carlos said and looked toward me and Mara.
She glared at him.
Carlos watched me and started to reach for my hand.
“No,” Mara snapped, her words coming out of her mouth sharp gold and scintillating. “And not mine, either. You know that.”
Edward raised a languid hand. “Don’t be cruel, Carlos. It’s poor form to repay our friends in that coin. I’d give mine, if I had any.”
“Maybe your friend downstairs,” Carlos suggested. “I could call him here.”
I tried to glare at him. “That’s not fair.”
Carlos growled, “Fair . . .” Cameron started to say something, but Carlos shut him up with a look. “Very well, then. Cameron, open the door for our guest.”
Cameron edged around the circle as Carlos, mumbling something that sounded more like curses than spells, drew a small knife from his clothing. He slashed it across his right wrist.
Nothing happened. Then Carlos closed his eyes. His lips moved but no sound came out. His chest heaved as though from heavy exertion and dark, slow drops of blood welled along the wound, then dripped to the seething floor. They splashed loud as cymbals. Carlos flung his hand in an arc, dark droplets splattering over the organ’s mirror and stops with the sound of shattering crystal.
Stillness and the sickening stink of corrupted blood held us. I was panting as I called out, “Sergeyev. Grigori Sergeyev. I have your vessel. Come and get it.”
A wind burst up from the floor with a roar and a shape rushed through the door. It crossed the edge of the first circle, racing toward me. Mara dropped to her knees and closed her circle with a word. A wall of white light leapt upward. The Grey shape smashed against the barrier and recoiled with a howl of frustration, collapsing into the form of my spectral client, trapped between the two charmed circles.
He cursed us all in vociferous Russian. Cameron stood spellbound by the door and I cowered behind Mara, oppressed by the ghost’s withering hatred and battered by my own fear, pain, and exhaustion.
“There’s nothing he can do to you, so long as the circles remain intact,” Mara whispered, as I held her shoulders. “The only one at risk is Carlos, and no ghost wants a taste of a necromancer’s fury if he can avoid it.” She looked uncertain and pale with fatigue, hands wound into her circle’s spell, keeping the ghost confined between it and Carlos’s circle of necromancy. Her own power strained to maintain the circle’s integrity as Sergeyev stormed against it. I hoped whatever flowed, pulsing, through me was helping her, but I didn’t know.
Carlos reached out and yanked one of the stops out of the organ. Sergeyev turned with a jerk and threw himself against the inner circle with a shriek. The ivory decoration on the knob crumbled to dust and sifted to the floor, frosting the blood with a thin coat of white. Carlos dropped the knob and reached for another.
“Nyet!” Sergeyev screamed, followed by a babble of Russian sounding imploring and threatening by turns.
Carlos answered him. “We come to release you, you ungrateful wretch. Seven hundred years of torment and all you can think of is revenge. Against whom?”
Sergeyev spat out a name, stalking in frustration around the perimeter of Carlos’s circle. His appearance wavered and flickered through a vertigo-inducing montage of every person he’d ever worn, stolen, or devoured. I leaned one shoulder against the wall, which flickered with strange lights.
“Dead,” Carlos snapped back. “A long time dead. I knew of him.” He yanked out another stop. “From his torments, I release thee. From this prison, I release