Page 94 of Demon's Bluff
That was a nice way to put it, and I started, almost dropping the syringe, when Kisten took a slow breath.This has to work,I thought as I glanced at him. Sunrise. I might not even be here at sunrise if Trent caught us.
“You should feel a growing connection to the ley lines with each drop,” I said, and Dr. Ophees frowned.
“Obviously,” she said, her gaze on my staticky hair. “What did you use to join the blood to its associated pentagram?”
“Ah, same word as with the other,” I said, touching the bag in question with an unsaidJuncta in uno.“Okay. Pentagrams are scribed. Jar is linked to receiving pentagram, blood is linked to the giving.” I looked at Elyse. “Anything yet that would kick this into illicit?”
Elyse bobbed her foot. “Not as long as the blood was freely donated.”
Again Dr. Ophees frowned at the clearly younger woman as if wondering why I was asking her.
My pulse quickened. I had modified curses before, but not in front of anyone as ego-ridden as Dr. Ophees, and I’d once spelled in front of the entire body of demons. “Then let’s see if it works with the original invocation phrase.” Because if it didn’t connect to the demon collective properly, I was going to have to show my work and do it the long way.Yuck…
Power fizzed from my toes to my fingertips as I strengthened my hold on the lines, and I stifled a pleasant shudder. “You want to write this down?” I said, stalling, and Dr. Ophees made a rude laugh.
“Go,” she said, attention on her phone again. Clearly she thought this a waste of time.
Why did you even come down here?I thought as I steadied my grip on the lines, feeling them hum through me like a second sun. Exhaling, Isettled a protection circle about the two pentagrams, glancing at Dr. Ophees to see what she thought about the hint of smut decorating my aura’s gold and red.Please work, please…
“Du ut des,”I intoned, and a slip of air left me when a trill of connection tripped down my spine. It had connected to the collective. It was going to work.
“I give so you may give,” Dr. Ophees said as if surprised. “Huh.”
“Whoa!” Elyse’s chair rattled as she stood. “It’s working.”
My annoyance that she had doubted me vanished as an odd pulling sensation tripped through me. Again I opened my second sight, relieved at the hint of a brown and green aura within the bag of blood swirling in a diminishing spiral.
“Don’t touch it,” I warned when Elyse moved to take a closer look. Brow furrowed in annoyance, she crouched to put the jar at eye level.
“This is not my first spell,” she griped. But I could see why she was fascinated. A soft upwelling of glow was filling the jar. I could feel the aura funneling through me, tasting of the memories of the man it had come from. He liked cats, and bitter chocolate, and the smell of pine trees, and the touch of wind at sunrise. His emotions swirled, connecting me to the All, making me a larger part of the universe.
Is this what a vampire feels?I wondered as the last of it trickled through me and was gone. Loss remained in its wake, a lack that I’d never known I had. This, I realized, was what kept the undead alive. The emotions were stolen but no less sweet, and my throat closed as I touched Kisten. If he woke, he wouldn’t remember what it felt like to love, to exist, to be a part of the whole. That’s why he hungered, and what he hungered for: the connection to the world, our collective past experiences, our joy. That’s what he took with blood. The lack of memory and emotion was the payment for life never ending.
It had been a poor exchange on the vampires’ part, in my opinion.
“So you what? Open the jar and pour the aura on the, ah, patient?”
Dr. Ophees’s voice jerked my thoughts back to the present, and I rubbed my fingertips together, needing the sensation. The older womanwas frowning at me. She knew something unexpected had happened. Either she would do the spell right and find out for herself, or she wouldn’t. She might understand what had passed through me better than I could.
“Sort of.” I picked up the jar, feeling it tingle against me.You will not die of starvation, Kisten.I took a steadying breath.Rhombus.
“Ah, Stef?” Dr. Ophees cautioned as a circle formed around me and Kisten.
I licked my lips, nervous. “You’re right. I’ve never done this before. I don’t want the aura to escape if I don’t get the binding part right the first time.”
“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” the woman muttered. “I don’t even know whose blood that is.”
But I did. Sort of. He had been kind, and loving, and I opened the jar with no fear. Besides, auras had no power. They were the expression of the soul, cast like shadows to act as the connective fluid between mind and body, linking them to each other and the soul both. Auras were simply conduits. It was the soul that could act, not this sparkling memory of existence that tricked the undead into thinking they were still alive.
My stomach knotted as I poured the aura onto Kisten, and for a moment, elation filled me as it settled into the thin patches of his waning aura…
…and then with a sparkling haze of discontent, began to dissipate, thinning as it expanded and drifted away as if seeking its owner.
“Crap on toast,” I whispered. It wasn’t sticking, and panicking, I invoked a second circle to catch it. The bright haze sparkled as it hit the edge of my circle, and I condensed the globe down until it was no bigger than a basketball.
“It didn’t stick,” Elyse said, stating the obvious.
“You should have told me you hadn’t done this before,” Dr. Ophees said as she stood beside my circle. “I might have had an idea to adhere it to him.”