Pale Demon (The Hollows #9)(121)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Celero inanio!" I shouted, exploding it right above him.

He cowered, a dark sheet of ever-after snapping over him. I knew such a common spell wouldn’t hurt him, but it shut him up.

Ivy had staggered to her feet and was limping fast to Pierce, not me. Wise woman. I needed room to work, and I shifted my stance for better purchase.

"Oh, really. Grow up, will you?" Ku’Sox muttered as he got to his feet and his bubble flickered out of existence.

There was a tweak on my awareness as he pulled heavily on a line. Not trusting anything but a well-drawn circle, I dove to the side, landing with my back to that squat building between Ku’Sox and me. I watched his black ball of nastiness thump into the sand at the edge of the sidewalk. Water and grit sprayed up, a tiny crater hissing as it cooled to a green, milky glass.

"That’s how the big boys do it," he said with satisfaction, but I couldn’t see him. Crap, I had to get away from this building before he simply blew it up around me.

"Ivy?" I called, praying as I hurriedly sketched a circle around me. He’d simply break through it, but there were no bells ringing yet. I had to stall him.

"I’m good!" came back, and I crab-walked to the edge of the building and looked, seeing her with Pierce, crouched beside a broken bench. They were both inside an uninvoked circle, relatively safe.

"Keep her alive," I mouthed, and he nodded, even as Ivy read my lips and grimaced.

The clink of sliding rubble jerked my attention back to the beach where a black, oily smoke drifted from the person-size crater.

"I can hear you…Rachel," Ku’Sox mocked, his voice coming closer as I edged back to my circle. "I hear you breathing."

I couldn’t help it, and I held my breath, sitting with my back against the building. My heart pounded, and sweat made clean tracks in the dust on my arms. I listened for the sound of church bells, hearing nothing. Come on, Vivian…

"How sweet of you to have come back, thinking you could best me," he said, a rock clinking closer. "It took six demons to shove me under that rock they built the arch over, and I killed one of them in the process. Almost got Newt, too. Sweet little Newt, more trusting than you, even after I had convinced her to kill all her sisters. You should have waited until dark. Al can’t help you, but at least you wouldn’t die alone."

"I don’t need Al’s help to squish a bug like you," I said, teeth gritted as I attempted to figure out where he was by his voice. Trying to be quiet, I pulled away from the building, an odd sort of pain drifting through me as the curse made for him felt him and started to align itself. Pieces of me that didn’t fit, chunks of Ku’Sox’s curse. Slowly I gathered them together in my chi, praying for bells. Just one. But there was nothing.

"Don’t need Al’s help?" he said, and with a sideways step, the demon appeared from behind the side of the old bathroom, cocky and sure of himself with the sun in his hair and his lips curved up in amusement. Crap, he was almost on top of me. "You’re stupider than I thought," he finished, smiling.

Pain exploded from nowhere inside. My concentration shattered, and the bits of the curse I’d pulled from myself sprang back into place with a twang. My knees gave way and I hit the pavement beside the building, burning in agony. It felt like my lungs were exploding. Teeth clenched, I lifted my head to find Ku’Sox standing beside the building, a bundle of cloth in his hands. Great, he had a focusing object. He didn’t have to throw charms at me. He could just wish on a star.

"Oh God," I moaned, feeling the cramping slither across my heart and wend its way to my gut. Panting, I tried to inch my fingers to my scribed circle, but I couldn’t focus long enough to even find a ley line. I took a gasping breath as I realized that there was a pair of black slippers in front of me. He’d moved, and I hadn’t even noticed. But in all fairness, it was hard to see around the pain.

"That was so easy, it wasn’t any fun at all." Ku’Sox pouted.

I looked up, squinting at the doll with red hair and leather boots, and I got a clean, albeit ragged, breath as his fingers loosened on it. "Wanna play dolls?" he asked me, and pursed his lips, exhaling.

I flung myself backward, landing against the building. My lungs were suddenly overflowing with air, feeling as if they were going to burst even as the hot, moist breath lacking any oxygen at all filled them. I was suffocating, though I heaved for air. One hand on my throat, the other on the ground scrabbling for the circle, I saw a movement behind Ku’Sox, a soft ghost of gray. I tried not to look, but Ku’Sox noticed my eyes, turning in time to see Pierce winding up with a black ball of hurt dripping in his hand.

"Compages!" Ku’Sox shouted, and a shimmering protection bubble flashed into existence, breathtaking in its utter sordidness. This was true smut, making the black shimmer on my own aura look like a drop of oil in the ocean. Pierce’s curse hit Ku’Sox’s protective bubble and bounced right back at Pierce.

It was a beautiful bit of defensive magic, but it cost Ku’Sox his concentration. The pain in my chest vanished. My head came up, and I took in a huge gulp of air. In an instant, I read the strength Pierce’s thrown curse had absorbed from Ku’Sox’s bubble, knowing that the ill-made, green-tinted circle Pierce had taken refuge in wasn’t going to hold against it. The curse had Pierce’s aura and would go right through.

My eyes narrowed, and still on the ground, I whispered, "Rhombus."

The rusty, broken West Coast ley line limped into me, and I wrestled with it, trying to get some semblance of order, but it was thin, ragged. My circle was huge, me at its center, as all theoretical, undrawn circles are, the edge of it just shy of Pierce and Ivy. They were outside my circle, but Ku’Sox and the deadly curse he had bounced back at Pierce were inside.

I grunted when Pierce’s curse hit the inside of my bubble, absorbing most of the energy from his magic as it tore through my circle and hit Pierce square on, having passed right through his bubble as if it didn’t exist.

"No!" I cried out as the curse struck Pierce and he fell, mouth open in a silent scream. "God, no!" I called again, struggling to get up as the curse spread to Ivy, and they both collapsed under a green-tinted wash of ever-after.

Mouth agape, Ku’Sox spun to me, his shock clear. "You…," he managed, and then I saw Pierce move, his chest rising and falling as he lay stunned by his own magic. They were alive. They were out cold, but they were alive. Thank you, God, they were alive!

"Clever," Ku’Sox managed, clearly peeved that I’d managed to save them, and I kicked him with all the force I had.

Yelping, he fell back. I sprang at him, my hands reaching for that doll, but he vanished an instant before I touched him, and I fell right through the space he’d been in, landing hard against the sidewalk, my curled-in fingers taking much of the impact.