Cursed

“So?” Cinder said.

“Belthas took my phone. I need a new one.”

Cinder gave me a look.

“There’s nothing there,” I said. “Any luck?”

Cinder gestured at the pile of guns at his feet. The five men had been carrying enough weapons to stock an armoury: submachine guns, pistols, grenades, clips and boxes of ammunition, knives, radios, coils of wire, and what looked like plastic explosive. It was enough to fight a small war—unfortunately, at the moment, it was also completely useless.

I looked at the iridescent metal rod. “Know what this is?”

Cinder walked forward and squinted. “Yeah,” he said after a moment.

“You and Deleo got them from that mage, didn’t you?” I said. “Jadan or whatever his name was. The guy who came up with this bloody ritual.”

“Yeah.”

“How do they work?”

“Dunno.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Got his materials. Didn’t know how to use them.”

I sighed. “It’s just like last time, isn’t it? You guys never understand what you’re messing with but you do it anyway.”

“Would have been fine if you’d let us kill that enchantress.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if you and Deleo had done a bit less collateral damage I wouldn’t have gotten involved.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“Wasn’t why you were helping her.”

I looked at him. “How would you know?”

“She acted sexy and vulnerable and made you feel good,” Cinder said. “So you trusted her. Right?”

I was silent.

Cinder shook his head contemptuously. “Idiot.”

The sound of footsteps made us look up to see Sonder emerge from the tunnel out onto the Heath. Cinder walked away. “Sorry,” Sonder said as he approached. “He made a gate but I couldn’t see through the shroud.”

I nodded. “And in here?”

“They left three hours ago,” Sonder said. “Belthas, twelve men, Martin, and that woman. They had Luna.” He didn’t look happy. “Martin was dragging her.”

I thought about Luna and how she must be feeling. She’d trusted Martin and thought him a friend, probably in the hope he’d become a lot more, and he’d betrayed her in the worst way possible. Then there was the question of what Belthas would do with her or if she was even still— I shook my head and pushed the thought away. I needed to focus.

“Can you take it out?” Sonder asked.

I looked up to see that Sonder was pointing at the rod in Arachne’s back. “Not without killing her,” I said. “And even if I could, I don’t have the first clue how to fix whatever Belthas did.”

“I think it was a paralysis spell,” Sonder said. “I only saw bits of it but …”

I nodded. Ice mages are good at that sort of thing. Sonder looked at Arachne’s motionless body. “Could we get someone to heal her?”

“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. I stuck my hands into my pockets. “We’d have to—”

I stopped. There was something in my pocket and I drew it out. It was the fang of some enormous creature, made of some kind of grey stone, heavy and warm and eight inches from base to tip. It was a magical item and a powerful one. I’d never seen it before. I’d checked my pockets just after escaping Belthas and they’d been empty. How had it … ?

“Wow,” Sonder said. He was staring wide-eyed. “What is that?”

“A gate,” I said. I realised I knew the command word. And it would take me to … “Holy crap,” I said quietly. “It was real.”

“Where does it lead?”

“To someone who could fix her.” I looked to see what would happen if I used it and saw that the fang would cut through the gate wards easily. For a one-shot item, it was incredibly powerful. “It’s designed to take two people,” I said. “User and one other … Crap.” As I looked at the consequences, my heart sank. The spell on Arachne was tied into her life force. Gating her would break the spell and sabotage Belthas’s ritual—but it would be fatal for Arachne.

Sonder looked at Arachne. “Can you—?”

I shook my head. “Moving her while that thing’s active will kill her.” As I thought about it, though, my spirits rose a little. “But now we’ve got a way to help her. Just got to figure out how.”

“Why’s it alive?” Cinder said from behind me.

I didn’t take my eyes off the fang. “She’s not an ‘it.’”

“Why’s she alive?”

“Because Belthas wants to use her for your damn ritual.”

“So why’s she alive?”

“Because—” I said, then stopped as I realised what Cinder was getting at. The ritual killed its target—I knew that already. So why had Belthas left Arachne here?

Because she couldn’t be moved. The spell stopped me from moving her but it would stop Belthas from moving her too. The obvious thing for Belthas to do would have been to have completed the ritual here, already. But he hadn’t, which must mean he wasn’t ready. Maybe Garrick hadn’t been there to stop me from escaping. Maybe Belthas had stationed him there to make sure nobody touched Arachne.

“He’s going to do the ritual somewhere else,” I said. I turned to Cinder. “Deleo knew bits of it, didn’t she?”

Cinder shrugged. “Bits.”

I nodded to myself. “That was why Belthas needed her alive. He won’t try the ritual until he’s absolutely sure it’ll work.”

Cinder looked at me sharply. “So he still needs Del.”

“Yeah. And he’ll probably keep hold of Luna too.” I saw Sonder perk up.