Page 70 of Road To Runes

That was good news. We needed an overload of power if this was going to work. Although I could all but hear the seconds ticking away, I took as deep a breath as I dared, my throat tingling with the urge to cough, and absorbed Hecate's power.

I bent my head and screwed up my face. It felt like fear and mischief wrapped in a layer of self-assurance, but the moment her power inked through me, I could detect the enchantments in the walls. Hecate was right; an entire network of enchantments ran through the entire house, the crystals that made them connected with powerful threads of magic. I reached out with her power to really get a feel for what we were dealing with.

I put Hecate down on the floor and stepped to the wall, but an even thicker mouthful of smoke entered my lungs and I hacked into the arm of my cardigan. Asher coughed too, and when I looked up toward the stairs, I couldn't see the door anymore. The groaning of the house grew louder. We had minutes until the smoke made it too hard to breathe and even less time if the house came down around us.

I pressed my hands to the wall and prepared to concentrate, but a sensation at my back had me double taking. Asher pressed himself to my back and his breath tickled my ear. I swallowed hard as his hands rested on my hips.

"You've got this," he muttered.

And just like that, all my confidence flooded to the surface and wrapped my core in a protective layer. I wanted to go down a rabbit hole of asking the whys and the hows, but none of us had time for that.

Instead, I focused on the power from the enchantments. I pushed at the threads connecting the crystals in the walls, and they bent and twisted but never snapped. No, that was no way to approach this. I had to destroy one link in the network and maybe then we could squeeze out through a window or something. Even if the Bishops had boarded up the small basement ones near the ceiling.

I pushed all the power toward the crystal in the wall; Hecate's power scratching against the walls of me inside, like sandpaper on a piece of wood. But it still worked, even if it hurt. Hecate clambered up Asher's back and perched on both our shoulders, keeping low.

I gritted my teeth, suppressing another cough brewing in my throat. Immersing myself in the power completely, I thrust it into the crystal. I could feel it react to the power, flickering in and out, but the magic threads emanating from it didn't budge. The sandpaper turned into sharp fork prongs as I pushed the power even harder.

"Bea..."

"It's okay, Hec."

It didn't feel okay. Not even a little bit. As the fork prongs turned into knives that sliced me from the inside as I pushed the limits of Hecate's power. But it made sense to me. I was never supposed to get out of this house tonight. Not alive, anyway. Butthere was no reason Asher and Hecate would have to go down with me.

"Asher, make her stop. She'll kill herself!"

When Asher's hands tightened on my hips, everything devolved into slow motion. I could feel his intention to rip me away from the wall and stop me using Hecate's power. But what would that achieve? We would just die all together in this basement from the smoke before the house came down around us.

That was not happening. Not to them.

I screamed as the knives ripped at me, the power surging into the crystal, but the sharpness disappeared as the wall exploded. Asher, Hecate, and I flew backwards in a hail of concrete and stone pieces, and Hecate flew toward the stairs, landing on her feet and skidding to a stop. Asher and I slammed into the ground, and my world darkened as he rolled onto me, containing me in a secure bubble of his body as the debris rained down.

My thoughts were like the smoke in the air; thick and all-consuming but impossible to catch. I blinked, but a red sheen had covered my vision, as if I was looking through solar protection glasses.

Before I knew what was happening, I was being lifted off the ground and Asher looked down at me with concern. His lips moved but I couldn't hear him, and even if I could, I was too consumed by the breeze and light that cascaded in from the giant hole that had blown in the wall. The hole was just a jagged circle of blinding light and all I could do was smile at it before I lost consciousness completely.

Chapter 36

My fantasy of curling up in my bed again was the first thing to surface in my addled mind. Every thought was distorted; a jumble of words that made no sense. But the pictures in my mind were clear and colourful; Asher's face when he looked at me in that basement, and Hecate mewling at me for food when she had just finished her dinner. Penny, when she was laughing at me over a deck of her tarot cards. All of us having dinner at the kitchen table like it was a normal evening.

They calmed me; consistent joy in what was otherwise a confusing mess. But when the memories started to return of the Bishops trapping me in my old home, and torturing me in the basement, I could almost feel the agony again, and my grandmother's indifferent expression as Thornton heaped the magical punishments onto me.

The chains were wrapped around me again and I fought them, hoping to slip my limbs out of them so I could flee. But the manacles wrapped around my wrists too tightly, squeezing them uncomfortably, but not with the biting pressure I remembered.

Suddenly, the ground fell out from beneath me and I found myself falling. In this odd dream state, I half expected to fall forever, but instead I hit a fluffy rug on top of floorboards.Myrug, if my fingers squeezing the fibres didn't lie to me. I opened my eyes and found myself looking at the space under my bed, dust and all.

I flinched as something brushed up against my face, but I instantly relaxed as Hecate curled up in front of me and licked my chin.

If this was a dream, I liked it. Better than the last one, anyway.

"Come on, help me get her up. She's going to give herself a brain injury at this rate." That was Priya's voice from somewhere above me.

"I told you, we need a straight-jacket. Then she can't hurt herself in her sleep." Edward's voice followed. "Actually, it might be useful for day-to-day, too."

It might have been my friend speaking and in all likelihood a joke, but the idea of being so tightly wrapped up had dread consuming me from top to tail. When a hand wrapped around my arm, I jerked it off and rolled onto my back.

Priya and Edward stood over me, but both jumped back a little when they saw me staring up at them.

"Finallyawake." Edward grabbed my upper arms and dragged me off the floor with a grunt, sitting me on the edge of my bed. "We knew you liked long lie-ins, but this was ridiculous."

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