It didn’t matter that the normals had their heads in the clouds. Protocol was protocol, and Bastion would be nothing if he didn’t uphold the Lorica’s precepts. We followed, huddling in the shadow of a tree just beside the Twilight Tavern. Bastion placed his hand in the middle of the circle, nodding. We each grasped a spot on his arm, a piece of his clothing. The spells differed, but close contact was almost universally necessary for successful transportation magic.
Bastion muttered something under his breath, the loose circle formed by the ring of our feet shimmering with pale white light. It crept up our bodies in a slow wave, bits of us disappearing as it passed. I held my breath, trying not to panic. My shoes, then my shins, then my entire bottom half vanished as the spell took me.
Teleportation magic had never been my favorite thing, but I defy you to find a more convenient way to get from point A to point B. Of course, that’s if you ignored the fact that an amateur spellcaster could get himself lodged into the heart of a mountain if he got his coordinates wrong. But Bastion was far from an amateur. He wouldn’t be a Scion if he wasn’t versed in several disciplines of magic.
But I still clenched my jaw, and my butthole, silently hoping for every piece of me to reappear in the same place and condition at our destination.
Within a second the murmur and chatter of the normals in the plaza outside the Twilight Tavern had also disappeared, replaced by the hooting of an owl, the rush of a cool breeze through the trees. I opened my eyes, and there we were, standing in the driveway leading up to the Everett House.
Everything was still red, though. The mundane, unchanged normalcy of the world around us was really starting to get to me. The earth wasn’t trembling. The night birds were unbothered, no flocks of them darkening the sky as they flew away from the trees in murmurations of panic. Had someone gotten everything wrong somehow? Was it even possible for a blood moon to appear prematurely? And then Tabitha spoke.
“It’s close,” she said, gasping, one hand over her chest. “Oh. Oh no. It’s too close.” Her eyes were huge in horror, looking at something only she could see. Her gaze shifted from the ground to the door of the Everett House itself.
Where Asher was already rushing. Somewhere in the chaos of teleportation, he’d managed to slip the keys out of Gil’s pocket.
“Asher,” I shouted. “Wait.”
I’d never seen him move so fast, his skin lined with sweat as he ran with desperation, and longing. He unlocked and threw the door open in no time at all. I sprinted past the others, reaching the threshold just as Asher reached the journal, still sitting by his laptop on the coffee table. He picked it up with trembling hands, opening the covers, turning the pages.
“What’s gotten into you?” I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Tabitha says something’s off. We can’t stay here.”
His eyes searched the pages frantically, looking for something neither of us could name. He glanced up at me, eyes goggling, his lips parting just as he was about to answer me.
Something clicked.
Asher screamed. Blood spurted from his hands, spilling in droplets on the table, the floor, in warm flecks against my face. The metal bindings and clasps on the journal’s cover extended like blades, shredding his skin to ribbons.
Uriah Everett’s journal fell to the ground, its pages wet with blood. Asher’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head. I grabbed him by the waist, helping him onto the couch, settling him slowly down.
“Asher?” I whispered, my chest clenching. “Are you okay? Jesus, you lost a lot of blood.”
Gil burst into the living room, his mouth falling open as he spotted Asher, the book, the blood. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my eyes still trained on Asher’s face. “The journal was trapped. It cut his fingers open.”
My hand shook as I took one of Asher’s into mine, his skin gleaming with a sheen of his own blood. Yet somehow, all his necromancer blood, it wasn’t a temptation in the moment. I wasn’t hungry. Hard to be hungry when you’re furious.
Tabitha stumbled into the room, her eyes wide, Bastion trailing after her. “You kept me out of the woods too long,” she said. “It’s too late now. Something’s coming.”
“Whatever comes, I’ll kill it,” I snarled. “Even if it means tearing it apart with my bare hands.”
Asher mumbled incoherently, his fingers curling against mine. A glimmer of hope lit up in my chest.
“Asher?” I whispered, stroking a hand against his brow. His skin and his sweat were so cold. “Asher, can you hear me?”
“Fine,” he muttered. “I’m fine. The book called me, took over. I’m okay now.”
Times like these I wish I had even a smattering of talent when it came to blood magic. Never mind turning into bats or wolves or mist. Things would be better if I could put Asher’s blood back inside him, stitch him back together. He’d heal up soon enough, use his necromancy to speed up the process, but what if his injuries were more grievous in the future? What if something worse happened?
And then it did happen.
The ground shook beneath us, the walls, the furniture, the shelves trembling in time. I’d lived in California for so long that the regular earthquakes meant very little anymore. But this was different. It wasn’t the earth moving.
“The house,” Gil shouted. “It’s going to come down around us.”
I scooped Asher up into my arms, making a mad dash for the front door as the vibrations shook harder. The others piled out into the driveway. The world outside wa
s perfectly fine, the ground even, the trees still, only their leaves moving in a gentle breeze.