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This text is (c) 2010 by Melanie. All rights reserved.
 
 
Eighty-Two

Alyssa! They were going for my little girl! I briefly wondered if they knew anything about her transformation or her real identity, but I dropped that train of thought quickly because it would not help me right now.

I needed to regain control of the situation if possible, or at least flee. With the headache having receded a bit, I tried reaching for the magic again, but met with no more success than the time before. Magic wasn't likely to be the solution. I had been totally relying on my abilities there and being stripped of them just when I needed them most was a hard pill to swallow.

I raised myself up a little and peered out of the window just in time to see the woman with the gun and one of the others leave through the gate, which was closing after them. The other two women were nowhere to be seen.

Well, I had done it. I had managed to adroitly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and endanger all my friends and my daughter. Just great, I thought, yes, just great.

The sound of a key in the door brought me to full alertness and I watched the door for an opening to take action, any action. One of the women was standing about 20' from the door and covered the doorway with her gun. The sorceress stood off to the side, well out of my reach and out of the other woman's line of fire.

She said “Come out and don't try anything. We have you covered.”

When I got up, the pain from my hip and chest hit me and made me stagger. I winced and looked up to see a cruel smile play around the corners of the sorceress' mouth for a moment, then her expression hardened again.

“Get a move on already, we don't have all night!” She said.

Damn right, I though, I don't have much time at all to save Alyssa. I got out of the cell and into the open area, where a single chair had been set up. The sorceress motioned towards the chair and I painfully walked across the room and sat on the uncomfortable, hard piece of furniture.

The sorceress walked up and down while she started talking to me.

“You have been quite troublesome. Really a dark horse, to be honest I still don't know who exactly you are. You and your Council really had me going for a while, they haven't come up with anything like this in the last two hundred years.

“But now that I have you here and well secured, it's time to unravel the thread and find out exactly what you have been up to.”

Council! She thought I was with the Council. Then she must know about Alyssa as well.

The sorceress went on. “Now, I don't believe you are going to tell me what you know of your own free will, and sadly the damper also prevents me from interrogating you magically. But I believe you will tell me everything, won't you?”

Her cruel smile was back as she motioned to the other woman to keep me covered and crossed the hallway to another cell door, which she unlocked. She then stepped into the cell and dragged Stacy out by her hair, flinging her to the floor in front of the chair I was sitting on.

“You will tell me everything.” She repeated. “Or else you can watch me remove some body parts she might be rather attached to,” she said, motioning at Stacy.

I sat there mutely, trying to form a coherent thought. I felt I had totally run out of options at this point, with the sorceress holding all the cards and me holding none.

The snick of a switchblade knife brought me out of my thoughts and back into the harsh light of reality. The sorceress took Stacy's arm and said, “I believe a demonstration is in order.”

She then pushed the knife into Stacy's upper arm. Stacy screamed and looked around fearfully, but seemed to be unable to move much. I recognized the effects of the spell Alyssa had used at Stacy's apartment and I knew that Stacy would not be able to break free of it.

The sorceress had pushed the knife all the way through and i could clearly see the bloody tip of the knife protruding from the back of my lover's arm. Stacy looked at me pleadingly while the sorceress fixed her cruel stare on me and looked into my eyes as she twisted the knife.

Stacy screamed again and I came out of the chair and took one step toward the sorceress and Stacy. I was thrown back when the other woman fired and the bullet tore painfully through my right shoulder, the sound of the gun firing arriving just a split second after. I spun around from the force of the impact as my knees buckled and fell to the floor, just inches from Stacy.

So this is how it ends, I thought, extending my fingers to touch Stacy one last time. Stacy must have thought the same as her fingers twitched and, fighting the spell, moved to close the remaining distance.

The tips of our fingers touched.

Eighty-three

I sensed, rather than saw, the woman with the gun move around to keep the sorceress out of the line of fire as my senses came back alive. A thin but steady stream of the energy I had supercharged Stacy with was moving across the tenuous connection formed by our fingers and I found that I could actually control this energy. The band seemed to keep me from accessing my own energy, but it couldn't account for my unique ability to use energy from other sources.

I quickly looked at the web of spells that were woven around the band and decided that there wasn't anything I could do about the thing. It's complexity was staggering and it was also very old. I thought there were probably not too many of those around.

As the woman with the gun moved around, I reached out for her energy and pulled it into myself, causing her to crumple to the floor in a lifeless heap. The sorceress' head flew around at the sound of the woman falling and I moved to grasp Stacy's hand firmly, focusing my inner vision on the sorceress. I met a nearly solid wall of shielding, she was certainly powerful and not someone I could tackle, much less in my current condition.

Also, there was a much more pressing matter to attend to, so I focused the energy from Stacy on the return spell I had prepared ahead of time.

Reality shifted around us as we materialized in the space we had cleared for that eventuality in the living room. The babysitter awoke at the unexpected sound and, seeing the bloody and disheveled women who had just appeared out of thin air, made as if to scream.

“Sshhhhh..” I motioned to be quiet and I saw recognition in her eyes. She calmed down and started to ask a question when I said “Please be quiet. People are on their way here to hurt Alyssa. I'm hurt and so is Stacy. We need to prepare and we need your help.”

She gave me a confused look that turned to fear when she saw the blood from my shoulder and the knife in Stacy's arm. Stacy was still under the spell and not moving, which made her appear unconscious or dead at first glance.

“Snap out of it!” I yelled, startling her into action. “Get some bandages, towels, anything!” I barked out as I stood up, swaying a little from exhaustion and loss of blood, reaching out and pulling one of the volumes off the bookshelf.

This book was about healing, and I had placed it in a prominent place so I would always easily find it. The babysitter came back with some kitchen towels and the first aid box we kept in the kitchen and I told her to see to Stacy's knife wound.

The look I received from her was one of utter helplessness and I sighed and turned around. Looking into Stacy's eyes I saw a little fear but also resolve and from that I took the strength to grip the handle of the knife and pull it out in one smooth motion.

Stacy flinched and bit her lip, tears welling up in her eyes while she fought the pain. The babysitter recovered and started tearing packets and unrolling gauze and band aids.

I turned back to the book and quickly found the spell I was looking for. Touching Stacy for energy, I cast the spell on my shoulder, where the wound closed up and stopped hurting so much within a couple of minutes. I found that the spell had also had an effect on my hip and chest, lessening the pain there and returning some mobility to my badly battered body.

I used some of the energy at my disposal to lock down the apartment and strengthen the wards to a point where no one without powers would be able to pass them. There was little energy left within Stacy and it seems like I could not control any energy I myself absorbed. I could not tap other people because that was just going into my own pool of power, which was locked in by the head band device. I needed the remaining energy to cast the spell to remove the damned headband.

Again I frantically turned pages to find information on the device that was placed on my head and how to remove it. After what seemed to be an interminable period of time, I found a mention in one of the older tomes and finally I also found a detailed description of the band.

It appears this was forged around A.D. 75 by a celtic smith and then imbued with it's magic by a powerful sorceress, who used it to subjugate, humiliate and finally kill her rivals. The good news was that it wasn't, in and of itself, deadly. The bad news was that it could not be removed at all. At least not while the wearer was alive.

Eighty-Four

I used some more of my precious supply of energy to poke and prod at the spells in the band and to study them. I recognized some of the intricate patterns I had seen in other ancient spells, a filigree of energy that was beautiful to look at and terrible to contemplate. None of the more recent items had anything even remotely like this, they tended to be simple, blunt spells.

For many magic users, technology had replaced these wondrous magical creations the book listed and the skills needed to create them were possibly all but forgotten.

I memorized as much of the spell as I could while studying it and picking at it with slim tendrils of energy, akin to someone carefully picking at a scab to see if it could be removed.

One of my probes slipped into a gap between fields and suddenly I was able to see these spells from another vantage point. What I had merely thought beautiful from the outside was stunning from inside, scintillating threads of energy intricately interwoven to form a gossamer net that could harness the basic energies of the universe itself. Images and spell patterns flooded my mind, etching themselves into my memory for eternity. I shrieked as I slipped and let go of Stacy's hand, cutting the flow of energy.

Miraculously, my senses didn't shut down, instead, the tendril that had insinuated itself into the spell fed energy from the spell directly to me, energy I could wield. In fact, the spell contained a tremendous amount of energy, more than I had ever handled, ever sensed in my life.

This was a strange energy that had an otherworldly feel to it, and as I followed it through the spell and beyond, the spell on the band unravelled and joined with the energy swirling around in my mind as I drew energy from places beyond, places filled with beauty beyond human comprehension.

The band, drained of it's energy, shifted on my head, the physical sensation breaking my concentration and bringing me back to reality. I found that the band was now only a copper band, all it's magic was gone and now held inside of me. My mind reeled with new knowledge, patterns of energy twirling, rotating, twining and unravelling before my inner eye in a fearsome firework of forces that could tear the world apart.

Was this what they were scared of, I wondered? Did I stumble on forbidden knowledge here? I needed answers but they seemed to be further away than ever.

My journey into these other planes must only have taken a few minutes, because when I focused back on the physical world, the babysitter had just finished wrapping a bandage around Stacy's arm. I reached out with my mind and dissolved the immobilizing spell that the sorceress had cast on Stacy.

Stacy took a deep breath and smiled at me. I could see the love in her eyes as she looked up and said “Thank you.”

I answered “I love you” and caressed her cheek, cradling her head in my lap.

End of part Twenty-two