Spellfire by Jessica Andersen Read Free Book Online Page A

taken out the ’
zotz
or how they’d summoned the green flames, but not really giving a shit as long as they gave him a clear shot.
    The knife was suddenly in his hand, his palms bleeding, though he didn’t remember making the sacrifice. It added to his power as he called the fire magic, gathering it from the depths of a soul he’d thought was dead and gone, used up and kicked aside when he’d betrayed his teammates. Now, though, he felt whole in a way he hadn’t for a long time—farther back even than his imprisonment. He wasn’t the whipped dog anymore, wasn’t the betrayer, the prisoner or the mage.
    He was all of those things and none of them.
    Magic pumped harder and higher, flowing through his synapses and setting fire to neurons long unused. He could do this. He could.
    Raising his bleeding palms, he drew breath and shouted the command again:
“Kaak!”
    Sound, heat and fury detonated; flames speared from his outstretched fingers and hammered into the demoness. Her dark-magic shield cracked and then imploded, sucking back into its maker as she screamed, flung her arms wide, and caught fire.
    “Rabbie!”
she cried. The word trailed up at the end, going to an inhuman screech as she began morphing away from the human form she’d flaunted. Her fire-wreathed shape stretched, blurred, elongated . . . and became a huge dark shadow, with glowing green eyes that blazed with hatred and pain.
    “Son of a
bitch
,” Rabbit grated. It was a
makol
, a soul of such terrible evil that it had descended to the lowest of the nine levels of Xibalba, to be tortured there, honed by fire and pain until it emerged as a green-eyed wraith.
    The luminous eyes dominated his vision, locking him in place as her voice spoke deep inside his head.
In time you will know me for real . . . Son
.
    “No!” He poured himself into the spell, into the flames, aware that the others had arrived and were adding their magic to his as he shouted a final: “Go to hell!”
    The fire flared higher and the
makol
writhed, screeched and clawed the air, fighting hard enough to make him think it wasn’t simply being dumped back in the underworld, but was being destroyed utterly. And who knew? Maybe it was. The rules were changing as they got closer to the end date; the magic was stronger, the stakes higher. Good fucking riddance.
    Her face appeared in the flames, human once more, and tortured as it screamed, “Rabb-ieeeeee!” Then the luminous green eyes winked out, the shadow disappeared, and the flames guttered and died. And Phee was gone, leaving behind only a few char marks scored deeply into the stones.
    Rabbit stood, staring at the scorched spots.
    Phee was gone.
    Dead. Kaput. No more.
    The burning need for revenge drained suddenly, leaving him hollow and aching, with no clue what he was supposed to do next. He could hear the thud of his own heart, the rasp of his breathing. He was very aware of the others standing behind him, partly as backup and partly—no doubt—to protect Myrinne from him. Which was a hell of a thought.
I won’t hurt her
, he wanted to tell them, but history said otherwise, driving home the fact that one part of the battle might be over, but another had only just begun.
    Taking a deep breath, he turned his back on the Nightkeepers—on his resurrected father, his king, all the people who had every right to hate him—and faced Myrinne. Who had the most right of all of them to hate his ass.
    She was standing at the midway point between him and the far wall, at the edge of where he’d set his shield spell—gone now, though he didn’t know when or how it had fallen—and very close to the smudgy ash pile that was all that was left of the
camazotz
.
    As their eyes met, she lowered her ridiculous magic wand. And his power went out—
poof
, gone.
    “I didn’t need your help,” she said coolly. “I had it under control. So, hey, thanks for nothing, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
    Shock seared