Blood Pact (Darkling Mage 7)

Luella chuckled as she lifted her hand, accepting the glass with delicately manicured fingers. “It’s quite something for you to criticize your dearest mother about using her powers in the pool when you’re using those same abilities to

send her deeper into an alcoholic downward spiral.”

Bastion pressed his fingers harder into his temples, now seeming more sad than angry. “Mother. Please. And tell me you aren’t on those pills anymore.”

“Fine.” Luella pushed herself up into a seated position, her legs stretched out, one hand running elegant fingers through the water. “I’m not on those pills anymore.”

I took another awkward pull of my beer to help fill the painful silence, if only for myself. Sterling and I had witnessed one of these arguments in the past, and like before I was sure that this boiled down to the same thing: Bastion and the Lorica.

Luella’s glass tinkled as she swallowed noisily, and she threw her head back, watching the moon through the skylight. “You’re doing this to me, Sebastion. You’re killing me.”

“I want to help people, Mother.”

“Then help me,” Luella said. “Help me, Sebastion. Doesn’t family come first? What have your father and I been teaching you from the very beginning? What is the family motto?”

Because yes, the Brandts were exactly the kind of people who had their very own slogan. It was printed under the lion’s head family crest. Bastion’s knuckles were white around his own glass, but he answered.

“We are nothing without our pride.”

“Yes,” Luella hissed. “Nothing without the loyalty that we hold for each other, the joy and status that we derive from our sheer power. But we are also nothing without each other.” She stayed silent for a moment, but her voice shook when she spoke again. “Sebastion. Please. Your father – ”

“We’ve been through this enough times, Mother.”

“The Lorica killed him,” Luella said, her voice cracking. “And what of your grandmother? The glorious Lorica, the very paragon of magical justice and wisdom, did they do anything to help her?”

Bastion breathed deeply, calming himself. “What Grandmother did, she did to herself.”

This time, not the tinkling of glass, but the breaking of it. Luella’s hand bloomed red with her blood. It couldn’t have been from physical strength alone, because as her whiskey glass cracked and shattered in her hand, so did the perfect sphere of ice in its center.

The pool waters churned, frothing and roiling, disturbed by Luella’s fury. She knelt on the surface, her eyes a darker, more dreadful shade of gray. Threatening. Terrifying.

Chapter 15

“You will not speak of your grandmother that way,” Luella hissed.

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Bastion shouted, springing to his feet. “She made her choice, offered herself to the Eldest. What could the Lorica do? What could any of us do? We all make our own choices, Mother. It’s time you let me make mine.”

“And let you die for the sake of people who care so little for you?”

Luella’s voice boomed. All the water spurted out of the pool in thrashing waves, breaking for the edges of the room, knocking over furniture. A jet of it caught me in the chest, and I yelped as I fell over, skidding across the wet floor. Sterling, who’d been bowled over by the first batch of waves, was right – the water was nice and warm.

“No,” Bastion said, his chin lifted, defiant. “I only want to help, to plug the gaps in the Lorica’s system. So that no more good people will die. No more Agatha Blacks.”

Agatha Black was Luella’s mother, once hailed as the greatest sorceress of her time, an immensely powerful witch. But pride and ambition seemed to run in both the Black and the Brandt bloodlines, and while mages who live behind the Veil know well enough that a contract with the right entity can offer tremendous arcane power, Agatha sought out the most dangerous entities of all: the Eldest themselves.

I never quite asked Bastion how it happened – nor would I ever dare to – but the Eldest blessed Agatha by locking her in endless, immortal torture, her body as warped as a melted candle, her eyes forever staring at unseen horrors. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen her for myself, kept locked – undying – in a vault underneath Brandt Manor. The thought of it sent chills down my spine.

“No more Agatha Blacks,” Luella breathed. She slumped onto the surface of the water again, her hands planted there, as if she was sitting on the ground.

“No more, Mother.”

Bastion gestured once, and the waters stopped, their flow reversing as they rushed back into the pool, filling it up again. Sterling fell over a second time, narrowly avoiding smashing his head on the ground. God but I always knew that Bastion’s power was terrifying, but seeing two Brandts duke it out? And that was just with water. Like dueling banjos, if banjos could argue, drink, and end the world.

Silence. Luella made a gesture, a towel floating towards her. She rubbed her hand against it, blotting some of the blood.

“I’ll call for the boy to clean this all up in the morning,” she said, the rage suddenly gone out of her. “It will be fine then. Everything will be fine then.”

Her head held high, Luella lifted herself off the water, just as if she was getting up off the ground. The water sloshed as she stepped on its surface, making her way to the poolside as she wrapped the towel around her waist. Her hand left an angry patch of red.