Sorceress, Interrupted - By A. J. Menden Page 0,84
he asked.
“Because I would,” I snapped. “Because I . . .” I trailed off.
“Because you what?”
“Because I care, okay? Isn’t that enough?”
He sighed. “No, it’s not, but I’ll take it. We don’t have time to hash this out anymore. I can feel it coming back.”
I took a deep breath and put a hand on either side of his head, resting fingers on his temples. “I don’t know that this is going to work,” I muttered.
“It’s our only hope,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
He started speaking in binary again. I closed my eyes and started to work my own spell.
“Unisci la mia mente alla tua,” I said, and began to feel the magic take effect. The spell made us able to communicate telepathically. I couldn’t wander around in his mind, but he put me where he wanted me to be.
Cyrus’s mind immediately opened to where the virus lay quivering inside him. Before I could see it, I felt its darkness. The hex was like an icicle driven into my stomach, an unearthly coldness, a sense of something horribly wrong and evil.
The dark malevolence inside him, this pulsing sorcery, turned its attention to me. It reached out a tentacle of darkness, but I mentally pushed it away. I directed myself to fight the thing, my tongue spitting out a constant barrage of Italian, much like Cyrus’s binary code, as I pushed as hard as I could against the hex. It barely budged. Not to be outdone, I gritted my teeth and pushed again, throwing more of myself into it. I felt the spell give a bit more, and I quickly spat out a few more incantations to further cement my intention: to create a temporary door in Cyrus’s mind that would slow the evil’s progress.
The hex, for lack of a better term, growled. I slammed a sorcerous door in its face and threw myself against it, holding fast even as it tried to break through.
“Now,” I growled to Cyrus, both physically and mentally. “Do it fast, whatever you plan on doing!”
I felt a difference as soon as he stopped working in his own defense; it seemed like my mental barricade was already giving way. Knowing I couldn’t fail, I braced myself and held on as tightly as I could.
“I’m almost there,” Cyrus whispered, though I couldn’t tell if it was in my mind or aloud. “I can almost reach it.”
My defense was giving way. I felt the coldness of a tentacle from the hex reach out for me. I swatted it away but said, “This isn’t going to last much longer.”
“Almost there . . . Almost there . . . I’ve got it!” he crowed, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of a building I didn’t recognize and someplace beautiful and otherworldly. And then my door holding back the black magic burst open and the hex lurched forward.
I dropped the mind-linking spell between me and Cyrus. As the connection ended, so did the hex’s attempt to make the leap into my mind. I fell physically backward, bouncing my head off the floor. The jolt was enough to jar me, and my eyes flew open, just as I heard the sound of something breaking on the ground next to me. I winced at the pain from both the fall and working the spell.
“Ow,” I groaned, struggling to sit up. But then a wild-eyed Cyrus was atop me.
“You can’t forget memory. It can’t be done!” he said, his voice pitched weirdly and not entirely his own. I wasn’t sure what messing with his hex had done, but it definitely wasn’t good. His eyes were dead, like Cyrus himself was gone and something else was working the shell of his flesh.
“Cyrus,” I said, hesitant.
“It’s not so hidden anymore. It’s coming up more and more to the surface. And it will again, once he’s set free.” Something continued to speak in that strange, almost singsong voice. I didn’t know what was talking, but it wasn’t Cyrus.
“Set the Dragon free, you mean?” I asked.
“Serpents be lowly. They hug the ground on their bellies. The Brethren are above everything.” The voice changed again, became a growl. Cyrus’s eyes seemed to see again, but it was still someone else behind them. “Bet you wished you were nicer to me now, huh, Fantazia?”
“Dylan?” There was something about the tone and speech pattern that was recognizable.
“Am I man enough now for you?” He used Cyrus’s hands to grope my body.