I took a big gulp of air. “I’m tossing everything out but it keeps coming back too quickly. My body has done something to the demon magic. There’s no separation anywhere I can see.”
“You have a special ability to morph magic,” Tally said. “It helps you fight off an attack, and it’s truly remarkable, but I don’t want you to do it right now. If the demon magic becomes a part of you, I have no idea what will happen.”
“What did you think would happen when you pumped me full of this stuff?” I continued to push outward. But it was dawning on me that I wasn’t breaking the circle, I was still feeding it.
“Clearly not this,” she retorted. I was certain she had her hands on her hips and a wary look on her face. “The magnitude of power I shot into you was supposed to teach your body how to defend against such a force. You take the power in, harness it, and eradicate it. It’s magic defense 101.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess I missed that class.”
“There has to be some way to get the magic out of her system,” Rourke snarled at Tally. “Do something to help her, witch.”
“Cat,” she replied, “I would if I could. But if what she says is correct, her body has completely absorbed the demon essence, and now it’s changed into something unknown. There’s no precedent for such a thing. Her own magic is fueling this circle. It thinks she’s a demon.”
“Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “I don’t care about any of that or who’s fueling what. I refuse to believe there are no other options.” I felt his tension and his love. This was killing him. “What was your backup plan, witch? There has to be a way to break this circle open if something goes wrong.”
“There is no backup plan,” Tally huffed. “No witch can do what she’s doing. Even if they were somehow chock-full of demon magic they couldn’t activate the circle on their own. And if this were a real demon, they would know how to drop their magic to stop fueling the circle.”
“Tally,” I said, “I’m not a demon and I don’t know how to stop it.”
“I’m picking up on that,” she answered. “It weakened when you first threw your power into the ground, but now the energy is circulating again. As much as I presume to know about demons, I’ve never spent any time with one. Witches eject power, but maybe demons do not. Instead of grounding it back into the earth, try to suck it back into yourself and see what happens.”
“Isn’t that what got me here in the first place?” I growled, my body still quaking in time with the ground. Suddenly I wondered if anyone else felt the earth shaking. It pissed me off that I still couldn’t see.
“Try to channel it where you keep your own magic,” Tally ordered. “It’s possible you can store it somehow. But you have to hurry.”
I had no idea where I kept my magic. It had always just been there. I usually left the power grabbing to my wolf, who did it instinctively, because that was her role in this partnership. Do you know how to do what she’s talking about? My wolf yipped. Where do we put it? I asked. My wolf started pulling back the magic we’d been channeling into the ground and began to funnel it into us, but I couldn’t detect any secret spot she was stashing it. It just felt normal. I began to help—by doing what felt right, like stretching my muscles after a long run.
The force of cycling it back into us launched me forward onto my face. “Oof.” I spit out a mouthful of dirt and braced myself back up on my arms. Holy crap, I said to my wolf. There’s no way we can harness all this. Plus it feels like it’s growing. The magic kept piling up on me, continuing to build. I was too new and unskilled to stop it, and my wolf was completely overwhelmed by how much was in our system. She abruptly stopped and sat down with her ears pinned back. And I knew instinctively that once the magic reached a pinnacle, the circle would activate completely and we would be sent to the Underworld and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
The demon essence Tally had hit us with had inadvertently started something I had no idea how to control.
“Jessica.” Rourke’s voice was urgent. “Listen to me. If you go, I’ll be right behind you. I swear. The witches will get me there right on your heels. Just hang tight until I get there. Find a place to hide.”
“Rourke,” I gasped, trying to push myself completely upright. I managed to stand and stagger a few feet. “You can’t come after me. Give me your word you won’t go to the Underworld. Once I get there, I’ll have some reasonable cover, but you won’t. They’ll probably think I’m a demon with all this demon essence inside me. But they’ll know your signature once you land. Please, you need to stay here.”
A vicious sound erupted out of his throat. “Nothing is going to keep me from going after you. Nothing. I don’t care if they send a thousand demons to hunt me down, I promise I will find you.” His fists continued to pound against the edge of the circle. I knew they were battered and bloody by now. “If the demons find me, I will wreak havoc on the Underworld and give you the best distraction you’ll ever get down there. I will gladly let those bastards catch me if it gives you a chance to escape.”
“No,” I argued, pain in my voice. “Please, Rourke. Let me go alone.” Images of him being torn apart by demons raced through my mind. “We need to stick with the original plan. It’s the best chance we have to get Tyler out. You need to promise me you’ll stay here.”
“She may be right,” Tally stated quietly. “If her signature has changed now that she’s taken in the demon magic, she may indeed be undetectable once she arrives. She will be able to navigate undercover for a time. It might be enough to find her brother.”
“Arrives where?” Rourke bellowed. “Where exactly is this circle sending her, anyway?”
“There isn’t one place it lands,” Tally answered. “When the witches fuel it, we can pick from a number of designated places that are known to be low traffic. But we aren’t doing this, she is. It’s going to be keyed to wherever she directs it.”
“Then you need to give her directions,” Rourke said, his voice low and menacing. “And do it now. I want her in a ‘low-traffic’ area. She’s going to need all the help we can give her.”
The ringing reached a fever pitch in my mind.
It blocked out everything else around me. I could barely hear the conversation. I cupped my hands behind my ears and strained to hear Tally and Rourke, but almost nothing came through. “You’re going to have to tell me now!” I yelled. “We only have a few more minutes at most. I can barely hear you!”
“Giving you directions is not going to be that easy,” Tally shouted, her voice projecting. “In my lifetime, I’ve only sent two witches to the Underworld, and both of them were seasoned spell casters. And they were only there for moments at most, just to do recon. We have very few concrete details about the Underworld. The demons keep it secretive for a reason. We’re only grasping at straws here.”
“All that doesn’t matter now,” Rourke urged. “There has to be someplace that will guarantee her the best chance of survival. Where were you going to send her in the first place?”
“The trash heap.”
“The what?” Rourke said.