Page 86 of Transfiguration
The terror on Sam’s face broke Con’s heart, but he remained frozen, even as the beast pulled away with a cackle. “We don’t need wind. We already have it. But fire… we need fire…” Matthew said, digging his claws into Sam’s shoulder as a portal opened behind them. “Time to rule the world, Sammie. Too bad we’ve gotta rip the magic out of you to get it. The memories of this body enjoyed having you beneath it. I would have liked to experience that firsthand.”
Con reached for them as Matthew shoved Sam backward through the rift and the two of them vanished with a pop. His vision crackled and faded, the pain and panic warring in his last moments. He never thought he’d die alone, having failed both Luca and Sam. His heart pulsed blood from the wound, but the heat was fading fast as he bled out. Which would happen first, he wondered, asphyxiation or exsanguination? He hoped he passed out before finding that answer, but it wasn’t looking like he’d get that blessing.
He stared up into the darkness that filled his vision, the air vanishing from his lungs and adding a heavy weight to his chest. He saw Kat’s face. She smiled at him. The warm light she’d been before Roman had stolen her mind and her life. They had been inseparable, and he missed her terribly. He smiled back, even though he knew he was dying. Would she accompany him to the beyond? Had she waited for him? Was that why Bella had spoken to her? Con wished he had Luca or Sam, but eventually they’d join him, right?
She touched his face, leaning in close to touch her forehead to his, and the wind pressed against him, forcing his lungs to fill despite the blood. It hurt, and he choked on the weight of the power, forcing oxygen to mingle with the blood. He wasn’t healing fast enough without the help of his runes. But she caressed him with wind, the power she’d given him on the day of her execution stirring in his bones like a long-forgotten treasure. He’d buried the memory deep. But it slammed back into him like a wrecking ball, mixing, weaving, and binding with his own magic.
He hadn’t watched her execution, even though it had been televised. The Dominion used fear to create an authoritarian power over magic, and he’d raged. They had freed him before the event, which he didn’t understand, but he took a car and drove until he found a field, barren of people. Nothing around for miles but endless prairie grass.
He laid down in the grass, his heart heavy with grief, and cried. He had never felt so helpless. Kat had been the more powerful of them. Together they had been amazing, and the magic they could create had been addicting. It was his fault she died. If he’d been stronger, protected her, or even encouraged her to hide her strength, would she ever have been targeted?
He felt her die. It was part of their lifelong twin senses. He had known when Roman forced her first death and transition to vampire. The bond they had torn to shreds, someone else ripping it from him. Her true death was worse, their bond completely severed. The lifelong link that he’d thought everyone experienced snuffed out in an instant.
Con sobbed. His entire being severed in half.
Then the power jolted through him like he’d been struck by lightning. It rippled through every cell, a blaze of excruciating pain. Too much, his brain yelled. He hadn’t been strong enough to control that level of wind magic. Con screamed into the vacant field; certain he would be ripped apart cell by cell.
It was the first time he’d called a tornado. The wind rose and whipped, descending in a terrifying column of power, headed straight for him. He didn’t move. Didn’t care if he died. He was alone, everything he ever wanted stripped from him.
The wind tear up trees larger than houses, flinging them into the distance, and the car he’d driven hit like a giant fist smashed it flat, then hurtled away. He stared up at the column, expecting death, but the wind reached him and slid within. Too much, endless magic, until he passed out from the sheer volume of it.
When he’d woken, it had been as the owl. Kat’s shifted form, not his. For a moment, he felt her consciousness touch his, warm and loving. She had been the only one who never hesitated to hug him and comfort him.
Until he met Sam and Luca. Con sought the runes to help him control the added strength of Kat’s power to his. The ability was never meant to be his, and she might have been the Pillar someday. His love for Sam and Luca kept him searching for answers to control his power and keep the peace within despite the raging cry of the wind.
As he stared at the ghost of Kat, he wondered if it had been right to hold it back. What if he’d let the wind rage? Would any of them be here now? Had it been selfish to want to keep his guys safe and stay together? She didn’t look unhappy, and Con thought it was okay to die with her there to guide him. His only regret was that he wasn’t able to save Sam, Luca, or Bella.
The weight of binding magic around him burst, shattering outward in a blast that smashed through the cabin, leveling it and a dozen trees in the distance. Wind crashed into Con and he sucked in air, but all he got was blood.
“Accept it,” a voice snarled at him, coming between Con and Kat. She still touched him and Con wanted to go with her, but there was another face suddenly there. He blinked through stars and fading consciousness to see Bryar leaning over him, looking very demonic himself. A roll of fae magic slammed into Con, the wind electrifying through every cell of Con’s body, demanding, filling him, activating runes, healing him and tearing him apart all at once.
“Accept Wind, witch boy, save my kid,” Bryar demanded. “The earth witch demanded I love him. It’s done. Careful what you ask the fae for, this is the consequence. Accept it.”
Con wanted to ask questions, but the power didn’t wait for consent. The subtle strength he’d spent years balancing, the quiet voice of the wind, his sister’s and his own, finally combining rather than warring, and turned to a sonic boom inside his head. His slit throat reknit together, and he choked, having to turn to cough up blood. The power whipped around him, beating at him, pulling him in a thousand directions. He felt the need to fly, his heart racing in his chest as if it were a bird demanding to be set free.
Dark shadows slunk around them, blurry at first, but forming dog-like shapes out of the ooze that covered Bryar, their eyes glowing red. Beasts twice as large as any wolf Con had ever seen, and dozens of them, pacing the area, snarling, the ground they touched dying beneath their feet. Holy fuck!
The wind demanded Con change and escape, let it rage and be free.
“Don’t change, you asshole,” Bryar said as fae magic wrapped around Con like a shackle. It bound Con to his human form, which felt both too big and too small at once. “Save my kid or I will end you.”
“Kaine?” Con choked, his head pounding and the rage of the wind nearly making him pass out.
“The blond one has his true name. Break the array or I can’t get to him.”
“What?” Con blinked, but Bryar grabbed Con by his blood-soaked shirt and lifted him, dragging him through a rift. “Holy fuck!” Con screamed as they hurled at a speed a thousand times that he’d ever traveled through the veil and landed in the arboretum to chaos. “Fuck me…” Con gasped, his vision wavering in and out.
The ley lines of the property were buzzing with aggression, woven together in an unnatural buzz of energy. Con’s senses screamed. The earth and all of magic hurt, shrieking in unheard pain.
Seiran was down, unmoving, bound up with earth magic? Was that possible? A cocoon of vines wrapped around him, piercing through him, and he dripped blood. Trapped by his own element? It was a strange mess of colored and faded lines, weaker than Con ever expected to see Seiran as the Pillar of Earth. Was he that badly hurt? Con knew Seiran could physically die and the goddess would bring him back, give him new form. Why wasn’t she helping now?
Kelly too, bound in water, and Sam, whose skin burned and reformed even as he smoldered and looked still as death. A female, the wind Pillar maybe, unmoving. Whatever had bound her was gone and those dark beasts of shadow stalked around her still form, as though protecting her corpse from further assault.
Had Bryar killed the air witch to give Con the power? He blinked at the scene, his mind snapping together a thousand puzzle pieces at once. In the center of the mess of runes, bound witches, and blood magic, was Kaine, in his fae form, a young man, rather than the little boy, but his eyes blazed with a ruby glow, ripples of red and black smoke wrapping around him in some sort of magical chains, fueling the spell.
A body lying near the door, and he prayed it wasn’t the corpse of his friends or Seiran’s children. He thought maybe Jamie but couldn’t really tell from this distance. Someone had blasted it through the house, whatever wards in place, broken. Matthew, the demon, paced near Sam’s bound form, as a blond man whom Con recognized, cursed and snarled at Kaine.
A buzz of energy and sound echoed in the distance, like chanting set on low? Con could feel it adding aggression to the ley lines, power building. What the hell?