Dangerous, Diabolical

His nose crinkled in disgust. “So many years,” he spat it out word by word, “I have put up with your nonsense. You are the worst employee I have ever had.”

“Why thank you.” Oh no. I cringed. Why mouth, why would you do this to me?

He grabbed my hair, pulling viciously so that I was forced to look up and face him. “The SPCC assigning you to my store was a stroke of pure luck. Despite your ability to work being so useless, I have dreamt of the day I would find a way to kill you and claim you as mine. Finally, you would contribute to something!”

I felt my mouth curl up, “David I’m pretty sure if I was that terrible you could have just hired somebody else, and we would have both been happier.”

He threw my head back against the frame I was strapped to.

“Oh no, I was biding my time, waiting, watching…” Black filled his eyes. “Evaluatinggg.” The word was strung out oddly as if the syllables were hard to pronounce. A feeling similar to the empty void of the realm his minions pulled me into emanated.

My heartbeat raced. If I couldn’t burn them, I sure as hell wasn’t staying around. Muscles tensed as I coiled my magic ready to explode out of the two-legged form and rip apart the suckers… the hold on my magic dispersed.

What?

I tried again since it wasn’t even a spell, it was quite the opposite. All I needed to do was unravel the skin that held me.

“Don’t waste your time,” David smirked. “The constraints you are bound with have been specifically enchanted for you. Not a single speck of your magic will pass in any direction.”

No words jumped into my mouth, not a thought passed my mind. It was an empty void that pulsed to the beat of my own heart where the crushing emptiness was quickly filling. There was no backup plan. I was always my plan B.

Except there couldn't be a plan B.

The very fabric of who I was had gone. Trapped in a weak humanoid body, with no magic, no spells and blood rushing to my head, all I felt was empty.

And that changed everything. I understood what Leo had meant when he said I just needed to stop looking. The way to both see the magic that existed and what had been used. In the absence of my magic, I could finally see the faint overlay of the Dybbuk inside David, the man who was both alive and dead.

The Dybbuk had drained what was left of David to the point where they could no longer be separated. David was rotting from the inside out as the Dybbuk took hold.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked him. “Is this the point where you sacrifice me and make me one of your puppets?”

An animated smile crept onto David’s face. “I hadn’t planned on killing you for a few more hours. I must admit, you’ve sent everything into quite the disarray. I’d set the perfect trap until I discovered that girl covered your shift instead. A clever tactic on your part.” He pouted. “Of course, you managed to evade me a second time by sending that vampire to your home instead. What a waste of time that was.”

I literally had no idea what he was on about, but the longer I let him rant, the less murdering was happening.

“Of course, I’d already taken steps to ensure every source of magic was at my disposal. I couldn’t believe my luck when you were sat in my most rigged location of all!” He continued to mutter. “Now we must wait for the moon to become full…”

“And about what time will that be?” I interrupted him. “What’s the time now?”

David didn’t answer, a vein twitching in his forehead.

“Why did you need a dragon?” The question was almost a whisper. He seemed less annoyed at that question.

“To destroy the veil which holds the realms!” He boomed, shrugging as if it were the most obvious thing.

Leofstan’s warnings about the portals echoed in my head. “Wouldn’t that just kill us all?”

“Perhaps, or it will finally bring together the worlds, allowing for unlimited magic.” Full of wonder he added. “A new world.”

“And I’m going to be sacrificed for this because..?”

He threw back his head arms spread wide. “Because no mortal can hold open a gate permanently of course; our power is finite.”

Goosebumps lifted across my fleshy skin.

He sighed dramatically, arms crashing to his side as he lamented; “Only Gods and dragons are conduits powerful enough to create passages to last a millennia.”

David slowly grinned, the smile stretched far too big to fit a human face, distorting past acceptable boundaries. “Now I will have both a dragon under my control. Combined with the sources of all the dead bound to me, I can truly become a God.”

As he talked I made more futile attempts to grasp my energy stores; desperate to achieve even a spark, but there was nothing. Cold sweat ran down my back as I tried to keep my breathing steady. This was all Leofstan Ortwin’s and the council’s fault. If I hadn’t signed up to the SPCC I’d never have met David in the first place.

This psycho was going to kill me. I’d end up being puppeted around by this middle-aged wannabe with no magic of his own, who wanted to call himself a God.

And even worse I could picture sodding Leofstan Ortwin’s face seeing my corpse, telling me it was my fault. He’d told me to stay in the room. He was going to be so freaking smug.

“Soon, Celandine, you will finally be silenced for all eternity.”

That wouldn’t be a problem, since I’d long run out of things to say already.

Time passed, and relentlessly, I continued to pull my wrists to no avail, the burnt skin splitting. Blood began an inconsiderate rush to my head causing my consciousness to bask on the edge of oblivion. In between lucid bursts, a montage of David and his minions writing on the floor took place, with what I assumed was some newly acquired blood. They started with a basic circle of runes, followed by another, more complicated depiction, and finished it off with the most intricate. With the completion of each rune, the drawing shimmered with a throb of magic.

Locked into this tiny human form I longed to feel the wind under my wings one last time. I hadn’t said goodbye to Willow. Who was going to feed my fish? Even worse would anyone ever find my hoard of gold? My glamour spell might unwind in death leaving it open to thieving hands.

Furthermore was it true? Could I open new portals? Leofstan had said too much power ripped open the mechanisms to other worlds, and after I’d absorbed magic for two days straight, my reserves still hadn’t filled. If I kept going would it be enough to channel a portal by myself without combining my magic with his?

I sighed. It didn’t matter anyway, I was never going to get the chance to try.

Time crawled by.

All I could do was to watch the magic going in and watch the magic going out. All the little pockets left after spell use were now so obvious, that I was mad at myself for not being able to distinguish them before. It seemed so simple now.

With some awkward propping, I could see my feet. They now appeared to be swelling at a weird rate, considering all the blood was draining to my head. Abruptly, they emitted a soft shimmer. At first, I was completely convinced I’d imagined it, so I stared entranced at my big toe. After the angle became too tiresome to hold, I began to retract.

There it was again! Lunging forward I glimpsed a soft pale green-hued pulse. I glanced around to make sure nobody was watching me.

My source was locked away - whatever runes were written on the shackles contained it tightly - so that only left one place for magic to be gathering from. Clenching my fist, the hard surface of the gem greeted my fingertips. A soft pulse flashed over my hand, a green glistening hue.

The link to Leo.

A surge of energy jolted through me, a pounding of my heart, and the flooding of a weight lifting. I might not be able to use my magic, but Leo’s would be quite convenient. Although he had told me to leave the link alone. If I used it, he’d never forgive me. But If I didn’t, I’d be dead.

The only problem with the idea was I’d only ever managed to send him my magic and never tried taking his. How did I even find it? When I’d sent it to him before, it was down into the emptiness inside, and that was easy enough to find.

Geesh, magic was much easier when you could resort to blasting stuff. I chewed my tongue, thinking.

Leo had described pulling the wrong source of magic as pressure akin to a rock trying to pass through a cheese grater, nothing a bit of force wouldn’t fix. His magic originated from the Earth realm compared to my Fae one.

Maybe if I could see Leo it would help, I usually imagined my source of magic as a round glowy ball, so maybe if I pictured him… Who knew what he was doing right now, probably sipping tea in his room? Tightly, I closed my eyes trying to recall what he looked like.

The first thing that popped into my head was a boring stone I’d seen on the floor, and he certainly didn’t look like that. His face was much squishier; more biteable, pink and juicy filled with lots of blood. He didn’t have much fat on him. Would most like to be chewy. At least he wasn’t too hairy with his light hair tousled, and short neat stubble, he wouldn’t need plucking or peeling. He was a good size, tall and wide at the shoulders, so I’d most likely be full for a few days.

At first, I pictured him in his boring suit and then realised the nightmarish buttons would be a pain to pick out of my teeth, but then my mind drifted to when I’d seen him in his long linen cloak, the night I’d witnessed him in the Druidic ritual.

It wasn’t too dissimilar to one of the corpses standing about in the cavern.

I opened my eyes searching until I sighted the body that reminded me of him, the figure was about the right height and build too. They were moving at the capped shuffling gait as the rest of the reanimated dead, making their way towards me.

I squinted. Leofstan? I glimpsed a pair of golden brown eyes, observing from under the hood and time stopped. He was truly here, not some figment of my imagination.

It was him. And from the scathing glare he was giving me, he was very much alive.