Her lip trembled, tears hovering at the edge of her lashes.
“It’s okay. We all knew this was coming. He and Ethan are fighting. Is there anything you can do? Can you knock Tate out or something?”
She shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks, an ugly bruise beginning to surface on one. “He did something to me. I couldn’t stop him from coming here or making me tell him where it was.”
It sounded like a violation by magic, a kind of psychic extortion used by Tate to get to the book. As if he needed any more reasons for me to detest him.
Chunks of concrete flew past us as Tate’s sword nipped a bit of the wall. Mallory was out, Tate was occupied, and Paige was injured. If she couldn’t use her magic, maybe I could at least get her out of the room to keep her out of any more danger—or to keep Tate from using her for anything else.
“Do you think you can walk?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
I put an arm beneath her and helped her to her feet. But that plan didn’t last long.
“Merit!” Paige said. “Mallory! The book!”
I looked back. Mallory had awoken and was stretched full out on the floor of the vault, one hand stretched over the book, her lips moving as she continued her incantation.
The sounds of the scuffle stopped as Tate turned toward the sound of the ancient words. Ethan took advantage of the distraction and thrust his katana down.
The strike should have sliced Tate open from throat to stomach, but Tate put up a hand, and Ethan flew back against the wall again.
My heart nearly stopped again, but Ethan groaned and rolled over. Unfortunately, my relief was dwarfed by my shock at Tate’s power and the violence he threw around so casually. What was he?
Undeterred by the violence around her, Mallory continued her chanting, words that were chunky and rhythmic like Latin, but with thicker consonants and a twist that sounded almost Russian.
With Ethan handled, Tate vaulted a table and reached out to grab the book.
“Mallory, stop!” I called out, but I was too late.
Tate stretched for the book, and just as his fingers made contact with its red leather cover, Mallory screamed out an incantation. “Adnum malentium!”
A thunderous clap split the air, the energy pushing Mallory back…but not Tate.
The Maleficium exploded into a burst of bright blue light that wrapped around Tate’s hand, still on the book, and up his arm like a snaking vine. Within seconds he was enveloped in light. Mallory had done something, finished something, and the Maleficium was reacting.
The light glowed around him like a visible aura, and for a moment he smiled, as if he’d achieved some part of his plan.
But his elation didn’t last long. The light around him began to shake, and the outline of his body along with it. He wobbled and quivered inside the cloud of light, and his expression grew pained. He opened his mouth to scream out, but no sound escaped the light, just the dull throbbing of the magic.
Within seconds, his vibrating form began to lurch up and down, and then his body began to widen. It didn’t grow bigger—it stretched horizontally as he howled out his displeasure.
The shield of magic grew as he did, and I scampered back to avoid the edge of it.
Suddenly, like a string of DNA dividing, double-wide Tate began to cleave in two. The split started at his head, and in sputtering stops and starts. Flashes lit the room like a sun-powered strobe, and then it was over.
A loud crack of magic crossed the room, and the lights in the silo flickered once, then twice.
When the room was calm again, Seth Tate stood in the middle of the room, sweating and rumpled.
And beside him stood another Seth Tate.
It took seconds for my mind to actually start working again—and even then I hadn’t managed to wrap my mind around what I’d seen.
Seth Tate, former mayor of Chicago, had become two Seth Tates.
The Tates looked at their hands and then each other, and then both pushed out their chests. They screamed out—a sound wholly inhuman and ear-burstingly loud.
I hit the concrete on my knees, covering my ears against the sound. The entire structure vibrated, and I’d have sworn the concrete and steel warped from the energy they put out.
For a moment, there was silence.
And then they both shot upward, straight up the shaft of the missile silo. I ran beneath the opening and watched