Gods of Chaos (Red Magic) Page 17

  Nettled, I clutched the bag tighter. “Don’t worry. If I do anything to you, I’ll mean it.”

  He glared at me for a moment before he chuckled. “Fair enough. But remember, we have a bargain.”

  I nodded. “I won’t be the one to break it.”

  “Neither will I.” His dark green eyes held mine, intense and powerful. I tried to keep his gaze, but I finally had to look away.

  I fiddled with my bag, pulling out a granola bar and handing it to him. “I have other tools, but I know how to use them. The mirror was the only thing I never bothered with.”

  Instead of answering, Marcus reached into the cargo pocket on the side of his pants and pulled out a crooked twig a little shorter than my forearm. He held it out to me.

  “It’s my dedicancy gift. A birch wand.”

  I looked at it with interest, but I didn’t touch it. I didn’t want to give him another excuse for hating me.

  He smiled slightly. “You can hold it if you like. You have my permission.”

  Gingerly, I took the wand from his fingers. It was bent near the tip, and the length of it was white and smooth with age. Energy rippled through the wand and into my hand, and for a moment, it was like I was still holding Marcus’s hand. I shivered at the unexpected pulse of electricity. “I’ve never used a wand.”

  He looked surprised. “I thought all Witches did!”

  I shook my head. “My school focused more on internal magic rather than using objects to manipulate energy.”

  He snorted. “That’s a load of horse shit. You must have realized that a tool can make you more powerful.” He reached for his wand, and I felt it grow hotter under my fingertips as he took it. When my hand was empty, I felt suddenly cold.

  “But is it a good thing for Witches like us to be more powerful?”

  Marcus put his wand away. “Why shouldn’t we be strong? Did you ever think that’s why Hecate is after you, because you’re the weakest of the three of us?”

  Eagerly, I leaned forward. “Do you know the third?”

  He shook his head. “Not likely to, either. We each have our own realms to govern. Only a crazy person would go looking for another Red Witch.” He smiled tightly at me.

  “I’m crazy? Just because I don’t want to fight Hecate alone?” My anger rose.

  “Easy. We’re partners, remember? Put it down.”

  I glared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  He gestured slightly toward my hands. “You just grabbed a ball of energy. I don’t want you to throw it at me.”

  I looked down, startled by the red sparks pulsing around my fingertips. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “You’re quite the loose cannon, aren’t you? No wonder the Queen wants to use you.”

  The red sparks dissipated, and I stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If she is out to reshape the world, like you said, what could be better for her than an untrained Red Witch wreaking havoc in a third of the world?”

  Confused, I shook my head. “But she’s trying to kill me!”

  Marcus looked skeptical. “Are you sure of that?”

  The events of the past six months played through my mind, and I snorted. “If she isn’t trying to kill me, she sure has a funny way of showing it.”

  He pressed on. “But think about it. A goddess like that should have no problem killing you. So why are you still alive?”

  “Because the gods can’t directly harm us,” I argued. “That’s why she sent my best friend against me!”

  I couldn’t read Marcus’s expression. “I didn’t know that. When?”

  “Last fall.” I looked down, fighting back an overwhelming urge to cry.

  “What did you do?”

  “What could I do? If she lived, she would have become the most destructive Witch since Caracella and his slaughter at Alexandria.” My words felt heavy, and my heart clenched. I hated talking about Rochelle.

  “So you killed her.”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “Publicly?”

  I glared at him. “I’m not that stupid! We had a fight at night, at the school. No one but my family knows.”

  “Interesting. So Hecate tried to have you killed once, and you’re convinced she’s still out to get you?”

  I turned my back on him and lay down. I didn’t want to have this conversation. I was afraid that if I kept talking about Rochelle, I might have a meltdown, and I didn’t want Marcus to see that. “We should sleep. We need to figure out what to do, and I’m too tired to think.”

  Marcus was silent for a moment, and I concentrated on my breathing. When I had almost lulled myself to sleep, I heard his voice again.

  “There is so much you still need to learn about our path.”

  The next morning, Marcus refused to move.

  “We need time to regroup. And we’re safe here.”

  I shook my head. “Did you forget that owl?”

  “No, but has anything bothered us since then?”

  “But it’s only been a few hours!”

  He shrugged, surveying the charred landscape he had created. “Still. I feel like this place is safe.”

  “And I’m just supposed to trust your feeling, is that it?” I asked sarcastically.

  Marcus looked at me for a long moment. “Yes,” he said simply.

  I stared at him in disbelief. “But there’s no reason I should trust you!”

  He held up his hand, and I saw the remnants of the binding spell flicker for a moment in the early morning light. “No reason?”

  I blew out a loud breath. “Fine. Fine, I have to trust you. You’re right.”

  He looked self-satisfied for an instant before his face smoothed out.

  I ignored his expression. “But I want to set the wards.”

  “We’ll set them together.”

  By the time Marcus and I had circled our campsite three times for added strength, my head hurt and I didn’t think I could stand much longer. When I sank to my knees, Marcus handed me my bag. Wordlessly, I grabbed a granola bar and devoured it. I offered one to Marcus, but he shook his head. While I ate, I looked around at the forest. If I tilted my head at just the right angle, I could make out the shimmering bubble that marked the protective wards we had cast that morning.

  I looked at him sideways. “So why did you want to stay here?”

  He thought for a minute before answering. “I said it last night. You have a lot to learn for a Red.”

  I fought back the urge to laugh at him. “Tell me something I don’t know!”

  “We’re in this together, for now. I figure that if I don’t want you to accidentally blow off my head, I should teach you some things. Besides,” his face hardened, “whoever has my sister is going to be hard to beat. You need to be able to fight.”

  I stared at him for a moment. “I’m not sure I want to learn from you,” I finally said.

  He nodded. “I’m not sure I want you to, but it seems necessary. Right now, you’re dangerous to be around.”

  “How did you learn to control your magic, anyway?”

  He was silent for a moment. “I was pledged to the goddess I follow at a very young age.”

  “You were pledged before you were born.”

  His eyes burned with anger. “How did you find out about that?”

  I fought the urge to shrink away from him, suddenly aware of how close his hard face was to mine. “The Coven that Dr. Farren is in.”

  “I should have known they’d get mixed up in this. Did they also tell you,” he continued in a bitter voice, “that my mother was more to them than just a member of their little group?”

  I shook my head. “It was clear they were worried about her, though.”

  He snorted. “Not worried enough, considering the group is run by her parents.”

  I thought back to the farmhouse in the countryside. “Frederick and Frances are your grandparents?”

  His expression grew harsh. “Not th
at they ever acted like that. They let my mother do what she did, and they never moved to intercede. Twice! Seeing me bound wasn’t enough; they let her do it to Izzy, too.”

  “Maybe they couldn’t interfere.”

  “They should have! I don’t care about any of the laws that govern Witchcraft. They were my family, and they abandoned me.”

  “How did they abandon you? I get that you’re mad that they didn’t stop your mom, but they’re still really concerned about you and Izzy!”

  Marcus laughed humorlessly. “Oh, they’re concerned about Izzy, all right. But not about me. They let my mother bind me to a powerful goddess, making me a Red Witch against my will, and they never lifted a finger to help me.”

  I didn’t know what to say. He went on, talking as if he’d forgotten I was there.

  “Mother still went to the Coven meetings, even though they disproved of what she’d done with me. But they never allowed me to come. They never offered any help.”

  “Maybe they just didn’t understand how to help a Red Witch. There aren’t many of us, you know.”

  He glared at my attempt at a joke. “I don’t care if they understood or not. They left me to my patron for training.” His eyes bored into me. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to learn magic from a goddess who governs death and rebirth?”

  I shuddered at his words, but then I stopped. Hadn’t I done something similar when Persephone sent me to her husband? “I don’t know,” I began slowly. “I mean, I learned from Hades.”

  “Cerridwen and Hades are two very different figures. I would imagine he’s a pretty mild, impartial man?”

  I thought about the way his voice broke when he spoke of his wife. “In most matters,” I said dryly.

  Marcus nodded. “Cerridwen is anything but mild. The Celtic gods make the Greeks look playful and kind.”

  He was certainly right about that: Freya was nothing like her sister goddess of love. There was some harshness to her, and to each of the Northern gods I’d met, that didn’t seem to be there with my former patron. Only Hecate seemed as terrifying as Loki, and for completely different reasons.

  “How did she teach you?”

  “My goddess believes in learning by example. And since she and I both deal with chaos, well, her best example was the battlefield.”

  I thought for a moment, struggling with my current events. “But there aren’t any wars going on in lands that she would have access to.”

  “Not in our time, no.”

  His words made me go cold. “Are you saying that she trained you, what, out of time?”

  He shook his head, his smile bitter. “Oh, no, we were very much a part of every time she selected.” He shuddered. “I had seen more slaughter by the time I was ten than most veterans will ever live through.”

  “Why?” I hated to ask, but I couldn’t fathom what would make his goddess subject him to such horrors.

  “She wanted me to understand the power of Red magic. I saw it firsthand, thousands of times. Red Witches aren’t indestructible, but we can destroy entire civilizations before anyone stops us.”

  We were silent for a moment. His words made me think of Hecate, and what I thought she might be planning. I shivered and wrapped my arms around me. Marcus’s eyes gradually lost the haunted look, and he shook his head a few times before looking at me again.

  “Well,” he got to his feet, “enough of that. You need to learn how to use your power.” He held out his hand to help me up.

  I hesitated. Did I really want lessons from this man who’d been trained in such a brutal way? What if he wanted me to suffer through the things he had seen? But we’re partners now, I told myself firmly. He won’t harm me.

  My mind whispered the word “yet” as I got to my feet to face the other Red Witch.

  Marcus and I spent the rest of the morning drilling. He wanted me to create a blaze like he had the night before, but I refused.

  “I think we’ve done enough damage to this forest!”

  “But remember, Darlena, every forest fire—”

  “I know,” I snapped. “Forest fires lead to fertile growth, blah blah blah.”

  He glared at me. “Did you know that some plants can’t reproduce without the heat of a fire?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are certain pine trees that have evolved to respond to fire. They won’t open their cones unless they’re subjected to intense heat.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “I didn’t know that. But I still don’t want to cause a forest fire today! Your burn was pretty big last night; the woods need some time to recover.”

  He laughed. “I think you’re just worried about it getting out of control,” he taunted.

  “Maybe. But I’m still not doing it.”

  Marcus lowered his hands, looking resigned. “I get that. But eventually, you’re going to have to face the fire aspect of Red magic, and if you’re unprepared, it won’t be pretty.”

  “I’ll risk it. What else can you show me?”

  We moved through the elements. First, he taught me how to make the earth ripple and reshape itself. He demonstrated by opening a chasm in the forest floor and pushing the earth up to create a sheer cliff face. If I just looked at it without taking in the surrounding woods, I would have been convinced we were standing on a rocky shoreline.

  “Now you try.”

  My attempt was far less grandiose, and I was almost embarrassed of the little mound of rock I managed to move. Marcus smiled encouragingly.

  “Remember, I’ve been doing this my whole life. That wasn’t too bad for your first time.”

  I gritted my teeth and tried harder, but all I managed to do was widen the chasm in front of us a fraction.

  “Surrender to the magic, Darlena. Let it flow through you. You are Red magic.”

  Marcus’s words were soothing, like listening to a yoga instructor, but my mind rebelled. I didn’t want to be Red magic: I had chosen to wield it, wasn’t that enough?

  “You aren’t concentrating,” he murmured when a spasm of rock slid off my mound to the earth.

  “You’re making me nervous!” I complained.

  “I think you’re making yourself nervous. You still haven’t fully accepted what you are.”

  I glared at him. “I don’t care how you were taught, but I believe that I’m more than the magic I practice. Just because I’m a Red Witch—”

  “You’ll have to find your own balance then. That’s nothing I can help with.”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “I know.” I’d been looking for balance ever since I declared to Red magic. Gritting my teeth, I focused on the chasm. “Should I try again?”

  He paused, considering. “If you want balance, why don’t you try to heal what we’ve both done?”

  “How?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? You said you wanted to use Red magic to mitigate chaos. Well, start by cleaning up after yourself.”

  I glanced up at the cliff he had made. “Show me how.”

  “Nope. Figure it out.”

  It took me an hour, and I almost crushed us under a rockslide, but eventually I had forced the earth back together. There was still a slight rise where Marcus’s cliff had been, but otherwise, the forest floor looked flat and undisturbed.

  Marcus clapped sarcastically. “Not bad for your first lesson. Now air.”

  I glanced up at the still branches overhead. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “A breeze would be nice.”

  Hesitating, I wiped my hands on my jeans. “Isn’t that an awful lot like Weather magic?”

  “So? What are you afraid of?”

  I ignored his tone. “My parents are both Greens. They taught me that Weather magic has unintended consequences.”

  He snorted. “You sound like a stuck-up old grandmother.”

  “Don’t you ever worry about it? Consequences of your spells, I mean.”

  Marcus stilled for a moment, thinking. Finally,
he said, “I suppose I try to be mindful. But when you’ve felt the power of Red magic pulsing through your veins for close to a quarter of a century, it gets harder to think cautiously. The power,” he whispered, “can be intoxicating.”

  I took a wary step back, but Marcus went on as if he didn’t notice me.

  “Red Witches have reshaped the world. What concern did they have for their actions? Why should I question myself when I have so much power just waiting to be used?”

  “The Rede,” I spoke loudly, trying to break his trance-like stare. “The Rede says that we can act as we like, as long as our actions do no harm.”

  “Who knows what really causes harm?”

  “And just because it’s hard to figure it out, you’d rather not think about the ramifications of your magic?” I was getting angry, but I couldn’t help myself. Marcus was a powerful Witch, but it seemed like every other thing out of his mouth was a direct challenge to the beliefs of my family.

  Marcus ignored me, his face turned to the sky. “Interesting.”

  “What?” I snarled. “Have you had a change of conscience?”

  “No.” He pointed to the canopy, and I looked up, startled to see the trees violently swaying. “Your magic is sharper when you’re angry.”

  Struggling to calm myself, I sent a silent apology to my mother for accidentally interfering with the weather. “Isn’t yours?”

  He paused, thinking. “I don’t really know. Although if anger does make magic more powerful … ” A dark look crossed his face.

  “What? What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing important.”

  I paused, thinking of the brutality he had witnessed. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. But that is something to think about: anger and Red magic.”

  Eager to share my own knowledge for a change, I told him, “When I was fighting Rochelle, I realized that anger might make my power stronger, but other emotions also had an effect. Love was … ” I trailed off when I saw the hard look in his eyes.

  “Back to work. We’ve wasted too much time talking. I’ll count that for moving wind, even though you did it without thinking.”

  “What’s next?” I tried to sound enthused, but the truth was, I was tired. We’d been working all morning, and Red magic drained me more than basic spells. I felt woozy, and my stomach grumbled loudly.