Sorceress, Interrupted - By A. J. Menden Page 0,81

“Esplodi.” A loud pop sounded, and then the building fire alarms went off.

Cyrus’s body slumped back in his chair. I risked a glance in the direction of the computer to make sure it was handled, and it was indeed a charred and inactive mess thanks to my spell-driven explosion. Thank God.

I turned to Cyrus. He was lying still in the chair, head and shoulders slumped down, almost like his body had caved in on itself. His eyes were closed. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. Hesitantly, I crept over to lean closer. Barely breathing, I reached out a hand to touch his shoulder.

“Cyrus?”

His eyes flew open and he jumped up, causing me to shriek and crash backward to the ground. He was spouting off binary code again, flailing wildly, reminding me of what had happened to Donald. “Still there! Still there!” he shrieked, rubbing at his skin like there were bugs crawling over it. He started in on the binary code again.

“Nothing’s there, Cyrus! There’s nothing on you!” I said, scrambling to my feet to get away from his flailing. At the same time, I wanted to calm him.

“Virus is still in me. It’s draining me off. I can’t hold it off much longer,” he said. Then he went right back to speaking the binary, his eyes wild.

I swore and started running through every spell I knew. Casting them all, I found nothing helped. This was a tricky and powerful spell—once again, something Dylan shouldn’t be able to cast. I mentally cursed the Dragon and whoever was helping him, and I narrowed my eyes at Cyrus, trying to magically see what was happening to him.

I finally threw everything I had into one order, one enormous exertion of my personal will. “Smettete di sanguinare.” Stop the bleeding.

It felt like a giant weight went out of the room. Cyrus slumped down in his chair.

Using so much magic in all of my spells in rapid succession had taken a lot out of me, and the utter terror of the last few minutes had combined to give me a splitting headache. I dropped down on his bed with a groan and lay there, trying to will away my pain or at least get enough magical power back to heal myself.

“Finally got you into my bed, I see.”

“On it, at least.” I sat up to see Cyrus eyeing me from his position in his chair. He looked like he’d been sick for days, white and clearly drained of energy.

“You got it to stop for now, but it’s still there,” he announced. He splayed his hands over his chest, like he was suffering heartburn or a heart attack. “I can feel it.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right.” I squinted at him and could almost see the evil out of the corner of my eye. It was like an attached parasite. “It’s like you had an artery cut. I put a heavy bandage on it, which is slowing down the bleeding, but if we don’t get that artery repaired—”

“I’ll die. Got it.” Cyrus looked paler. “It’s definitely still draining off my energy.”

I nodded. “Energy, magic . . . hell, this sucker could be taking parts of your soul as we speak. It’s an insidious little spell.” I got slowly to my feet, though I felt like I might puke from the pressure in my head. “It conceals itself well, which is why I couldn’t see it at first. This is a step up from what was done to those other magic-users. That was this spell’s baby brother or something. If this is what hit Chad and those civilians, we’re in big trouble. This doesn’t attack in one blast; it keeps feeding off of you until it finally kills you.”

“Continue giving me good news, Fantazia,” Cyrus grumbled.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “A draining spell can in no way be this powerful. And what was cast on those other magic-users wasn’t this powerful . . .” But then I smacked my head with realization and winced from doing so. “Damn it! Why didn’t I think of it before? No wonder I couldn’t shut it down. This isn’t a garden-variety spell at all!”

Cyrus stared at me as if I had lapsed into Italian. “So what is it?”

“A hex!” I said triumphantly.

He stared at me blankly. “What?”

“Well, it’s really called a heculous diondo. It’s a powerful and ancient type of sorcery that I’d thought pretty much the whole world forgot about, but obviously someone out there still knows. It’s also