Chapter 11

Tom had told Sarah to run knowing that it wouldn’t do her any good. Deep down he just hadn’t wanted to watch her die and he cursed himself for his cowardice. He should have stayed with her and protected her. It would have been better than suffering the nerve-wracking agony of not knowing what had happened to her. If she had stayed, she might be dead by now but he knew that by running she couldn’t have survived this long on her own.

The disorientating chaos of the fight was making it impossible for him to sense her anywhere in the building and the way the banshees upset his powers wasn’t helping either. He still had his magic but it came and went in erratic patterns and was next to useless in these conditions. He’d made the decision quickly, telling himself he could hold the creatures off so that she could escape, but he had known it was useless. Still, he had tried.

The banshees hadn’t seemed too worried about the condition of the prisoners this time and he hated to think what they would have done to a human. The creatures he had seen go down around him were in pretty bad shape. It didn’t seem to matter how strong they were or how well they fought; the banshees were stronger.

Now Tom crouched on the hard floor, no longer aware of what was happening around him and unable to do anything about it anyway. He wondered about Sarah again. The last he had seen she was heading towards the stairs but then the banshees had been upon them and he had been immersed in the carnage.

With surprise he felt some of his magic surge within him, it gave him strength but little more. The banshees seemed to be having trouble binding his powers and he wondered if the size of the mob was giving them problems or if the house itself was still helping him, even in its weakened state. Either way, his magic had proved pretty useless against them. Whatever spell was aiding them was stronger than he had realised. They were unstoppable.

Still, he had fought with everything he had; his magic, his fists and everything else at his disposal. He couldn’t let the banshees win. The fighting had been brutal, and it had seemed to go on forever.

Tom sensed more than saw his father by his side. He didn’t have to look at him to know that although the great man had been brought down he was still alive, broken and virtually powerless but alive. Thaddeus had mentioned something about the book and had been wearing his trademark smug look just before the creatures had attacked. It had been pointless though, there had been no time to break away to read the pages. All they could do was fight as they had, side by side, using all the combined magic at their disposal. It hadn’t been enough.

The fighting was still going on around him as Tom hunched helplessly on the floor. He could hear the otherworldly screams and tried not to think about the agony the creatures must be going through. He had to save whatever strength he had. He looked over at his father, lying on the floor nearby with his face turned away, and Tom knew he had to use the last of his strength to get up. He couldn’t die like this.

It was different for the other creatures - the immortals - even his father would survive. Their pain could go on forever but still, they would survive in some form. Tom was one of the few half-mortals there that could be killed by the fighting. He could withstand more than humans but he knew that if this continued he wouldn’t live past this day, past this fight.

Marshalling his strength, he tried to stand but was bumped back down by some unfortunate being that had fallen to the ground. The fighting seemed to have moved in the room and somehow he had found himself in the middle of the chaos. Any thought of standing and fighting fled as he was pummelled by flailing limbs and creatures stumbling over him in their fright. Closing his eyes, he gritted his teeth against the pain.

Suddenly as the fighting got to its most frantic, frenzied mess he felt something different begin to weave throughout the room. Teasing on the edges of his consciousness at first, it slowly made itself known to him. Intrigued by its oddness he forced himself to concentrate on the sensation. It was weak magic, one that was so different to all the other powers surrounding him that it seemed out of place. Unfortunately, the magic was so weak that it was completely useless against the forces within the room.

Still, there was something in the unknown power that drove his body on and filled him with purpose. Rising to his knees he looked around as if to try to see the source of the magic. It felt as if it were coming from the depths of the building but he couldn’t latch onto anything definite about its location or who was behind it. He didn’t recognise the magic, yet there was something so familiar about it that was calling to him.

Looking around quickly he realised that no one else in the room seemed aware of the new energy in the building. No one seemed affected by the power. It wasn’t strong enough to even hint to them its presence let alone dispel the anger of the inhabitants and stop the fighting. Absurdly he knew that this was what it was trying to do.

As he ducked under a rogue elbow Tom ignored the fighting around him, the weak magic was all that mattered. He could feel the power trembling along and slowly felt every nerve of his body responding, every ounce of his being sparked with power and he shuddered with the experience. He looked towards his father again, only to find him still prone on the floor. The magic hadn’t stirred him from his languid state and Tom knew that it didn’t call to Thaddeus as it did to him.

Knowing what to do Tom bent to the task, hoping he would be able to help from his distant spot in the middle of the fight. The timid power wasn’t destructive enough on its own. It was thin, hollow, an echo of the force that would be needed. He plied his magic towards it, almost strumming against it like playing with the strings of a guitar before catching the wave of it and flowing everything he had into its current while letting it propel him along.

It called to something deep within him, tapping into parts of his magic that had never been used before, and as he pushed out along with it he felt it reach into his soul. He knew he had to withdraw a part of himself if he were to survive, the amount of power he was using wasn’t safe and he was nearing a dangerous state of exhaustion. Yet as the strange force wobbled uncertainly alongside his he knew he had to give everything. Tom fell forward, catching himself before he hit the floor as he hunched concentrating on every inch of his being and the power within it.

A trembling vortex opened up around him and Tom couldn’t be sure if it was within him or actually in the room. He could no longer see the other creatures as the maelstrom obscured his vision. His entire universe consisted of the power and the sensations that went with it. It flowed from him and through him until it felt like he would snap under the effort.

Suddenly there was a loud noise, a flash and then silence.

Slowly Tom found his way back to his knees and tried to look around. His ears were ringing from the loud noise and his vision was still blurry from the magic but there was something different about the shifting shapes nearby. Blinking away the darkness he slowly started to make out the room, becoming aware of the silence and stillness around him. Looking at the familiar faces he could see the looks of confusion they wore and it took him a moment to realise what had happened. There was no longer a threat in the building, the banshees had vanished.

Climbing to his feet, Tom held on to the whisper of power he could still feel drifting through him. He reached out his senses, focusing on the thin trail of magic and following it blindly to its source, unaware and uncaring of the other creature’s movements as he moved through the lower rooms of the building. He had to find the source of the power it was all that mattered. He had begun to pick up on a sense of urgency from the thin thread, it was an emotion he felt outside of himself but still connected to him.

He moved as if in a daze as he used the remnants of the power as his guide. It led him to a familiar door, one that opened into the room his father had been trying to get to earlier. It made sense that the magic had come from this room, but it didn’t answer who was using it and Tom’s questions remained. As he approached, he threw the door open without wasting time touching it, the urgency and fear he felt propelling him along. In the shadowy light cast from the open door, he could just make out the figure collapsing beside the ancient book.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sarah was floating on what felt like a cloud. The emptiness was still inside her but it felt like it was outside her as well. She was surrounded by a vast nothingness that encompassed everything. There was nothing before her or beside her, no future and no past, and she felt that the sensation of floating was all that mattered. She wondered if this was death.

Slowly she reached out a hand, expecting to feel a handful of soft clouds and was surprised to discover that the clouds seemed to be made of cotton. The thought skittered across her consciousness and was gone before she could grasp it fully. She floated, seemingly forever, before she once again became aware of the hardness of her cloud. Carefully running her fingertips across the expanse, she felt an oddly detached disappointment that her cloud was a bed.

Opening her eyes slowly, she realised she was back in her bedroom in the mansion. It was a fact she recognised but felt nothing about. The emptiness was still consuming her as she lay there uncaring of her surroundings. She ran her eyes over the dark colours of the bedding feeling that it expressed her mood for once, the dark was soothing.

The emptiness called for her to close her eyes again, there was no reason to fight it even if she could. Before she could obey her heavy eyelids, she became aware of movement within the room and wondered if she should feel afraid, it could be a monster, but fear seemed to be beyond her. Irritation at the interruption to her drifting seemed to be a far better emotion but it too was tantalisingly out of reach. She decided to simply wait to see what would happen.

Tom appeared in her vision as he sat down on the bed beside her and gently took her hand. She noticed that he looked concerned but she couldn’t be bothered wondering why.

‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

The words were simple and as they drifted through her mind she tested them out distractedly. She thought about a response, weighing up the effort it would take to answer. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he wouldn’t be happy with a simple “good thanks” so she didn’t respond. As she closed her eyes again she hoped she could go back to her peaceful cloud.

‘Sarah,’ his voice was a command that brought her back to the present and she opened her eyes again. ‘I’m going to help you.’

She looked into his face for a moment planning on closing her eyes again when she saw something in his gaze that stopped her. An emotion flickered through her and she recognised her fear of losing control of her own body again, a remembered sensation from being overcome while reading the book. Still, the emotion was weak. It was as if the feelings were from someone else, an echo of who she was, and she gave up on them quickly.

There was something different about the sensation this time. Looking into the depths of Tom’s eyes she felt an odd awareness flow through her body, more calming than she had expected. It was similar to the feeling of peace that she had felt when Thaddeus had saved her from the monsters but it was gentler, more controlled and completely centred on her.

The sensation was tinted with the power she had felt while reading the book, like a signature she recognised. Remembering that terrible power made her think of floating away again but something was comforting in the familiarity of the magic. This was the “something else” she had felt while reading the book. This magic had saved her.

As the feeling flowed through her she started to feel more like herself. The darkness began to retreat and the emptiness that had consumed her began to fill up again. The emotions she held deep within, feelings she had always thought were sacred and unable to be touched, seemed to slot back into their proper places inside. It was like she was putting back on her skin and settling down inside it, finding it well-worn but comfortable and entirely her own.

The feeling eased before abating completely only to be replaced with another emotion that she was powerless to control, she began to weep. Tom waited patiently, simply holding her hand as the feelings washed over her one after another and the tears slowly trickled their way down onto the pillow under her head. Eventually, they subsided and Sarah found herself feeling more normal than she had in days. The outpouring of emotion had cleansed her, helping her to put all the horrors she had experienced and witnessed behind her.

‘Feeling better?’ Tom asked as he handed her another tissue from the box that had magically appeared beside her at the beginning of her meltdown.

Sarah nodded as she sat up and cleaned her face of the last of the salty tears that had bathed it.

‘What happened to me?’ her voice shook as she spoke and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Tom indicated gently for her to shuffle over on the bed and moved to sit beside her. Leaning his back against the headboard he stretched out his long legs comfortably and looked up at the curtained posts above them before answering. ‘The magic can do that,’ his voice was soft as if he was talking from a long way off and she looked at him with concern.

‘Is it like that for you?’ she asked quietly.

He looked at her before he answered and she could see the honesty in his eyes. Sarah knew they had shared something that no one else could understand. There weren’t many people to talk to about the after-effects of magic and as a mortal, she could attest that was a good thing. She didn’t want to think about anyone else going through something so distressing.

‘Sometimes,’ he answered seriously. ‘But I’m used to it now.’ His smile and attempt at levity did little to cover the pain.

She tried to imagine becoming used to those feelings. It had been terrifying to have her emotions beyond her control and she knew she wouldn’t want to go through it again. She also tried to imagine what it would have been like to experience it as a child, growing up in this house with monsters and an imposing father and learning the magic that left you feeling devastated in its wake. No wonder Tom hid behind the mask of a performer.

‘Also, it’s worse for humans,’ he continued, reminding her that he wasn’t completely human himself. She wondered if Thaddeus had been born with the ability to control the magic and emotions, if he even had those kinds of emotions, and how much of that Tom had inherited. Remembering his expression moments before she thought he might be more human than his father would have preferred and despaired at having to regularly face even a part of what she had felt. ‘And … it’s not usually that bad, that was strong magic you were playing with.’

Sarah nodded numbly at his words, her mind trying to filter through the information and finding it impossible before she remembered why she had been using the magic in the first place. She was ready to jump out of bed at the thought of the banshees still being around and wondered why Tom was sprawled out so relaxed beside her.

‘What happened to the fighting?’

‘All over with. We won, thanks to you,’ his tone was lighter now they were on safer topics, no longer discussing shared vulnerability and remembered pain. ‘You broke the spell that was holding the banshees captive. Once they were free they fled, as we expected. They’ve probably gone back to take some revenge on the creatures that were controlling them.’

His expression turned serious and she wondered if that was what he would do in their position. She knew that if given a chance of freedom she wasn’t going to waste a moment’s thought on revenge, even if she could achieve it, and would be running as fast as her legs could carry her.

As if he had read her mind, he lifted her hand to his mouth and placed a careful kiss on it before quietly stating, ‘It’s safe for us to go outside now, I can take you wherever you like. You can go back to your realm.’

Sarah smiled at the thought. The idea of going back to her normal life was enough to make her want to spring out of bed and run for the door but then she thought of Tom.

‘What about you?’ she asked carefully, her tone still carrying her joy at the thought of the freedom she was finally being offered. ‘Are you going back to … um … my realm as well? They’ll be missing their world-famous magician by now.’

Tom laughed slightly at the term before shaking his head. ‘I can’t leave just yet. Now I’m here I have to stay,’ his voice had a wistful quality and she knew he wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but he was resolved. He continued in a stronger tone. ‘We’ve already sent out a few of the guests that survived the fighting in one piece. They’ll follow the banshees and scout out what’s happening at their lair and once we have that information we will be following it up with an attack. We have to move quickly, the banshees could be placed back under those creatures’ control again and then we will have another fight on our hands. Now that we know what spells they use we can work out how to beat them but we can’t keep going around in circles. We have to finish this while they’re weakened. Hopefully, the banshees are starting to take care of them already.’

Sarah noticed the use of the word “we” in his sentences and knew he was specifically referring to his father. She supposed she was glad they seemed to be on better terms than that first awkward confrontation earlier but she hoped spending time with Thaddeus wouldn’t harm Tom. She was finally starting to see something more human in him and was concerned about him losing it again, something she was sure Thaddeus would encourage.

The happiness she felt at going home was dampened slightly by the uncertainty of when she would see Tom again if she even would. During the confusing, scary and disorientating past few days, he had been her one constant. The one thing that had kept her going and even kept her alive.

‘So where to?’ Tom asked casually.

He was still leaning against the headboard but sometime during their conversation, he had slumped into a more comfortable position on the bed. As he angled his eyes at her in question she couldn’t help thinking that he looked so perfect, so human and so very tired. She kicked herself for not noticing before how the toll of the past few days had exhausted him. Although she wasn’t sure how long she had slept she was sure he would still need to recover from the fight with the banshees.

It had been his magic that had helped her and remembering the power of it and his earlier comment that using his magic could exhaust him she wondered how he was still awake.

‘Is it ok if we just stay here a while?’ Sarah couldn’t believe that the words had come out of her mouth and by the quizzical look on Tom’s face, she could tell he couldn’t believe it either. Yet as she said it, she realised that however odd this realm was this was where she wanted to be, at least for a little bit longer. Tom nodded wordlessly, relaxing beside her on the bed. They lay there silently, savouring the moment between both of their worlds and outside of their lives, with hands clasped in affection.