I began gathering energy. The power of magic comes mainly from an emotional connection to whatever the intention of any given spell happened to be. I was doing this to help my brother. I thought of him, of Thomas. I thought of his wry humor. Of his laughter. Of his courage. He’d stood beside me in extremely hairy situations. I thought of his desperation when last I’d seen him outside of stasis, of how battered he’d been once the svartalves had gotten done with him. Felt my desperation and my anger and my fear rising in time with the memories.
Anger and fear.
I had plenty of that to work with.
But that wasn’t all I had. It couldn’t be.
I focused on imagining my brother’s face. On the loyalty I felt for him.
I loved my brother.
I missed him.
And if anyone was going to help him, it was damned well going to be me.
I felt the energy building up around me, felt goose bumps flood across my own skin, the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I’d forgotten the room’s lights. They all went at once, first burning brighter and brighter and then bursting into small clouds of sparks within the bulbs, leaving the room dark but for the candles, and faint traces of excess energy that sparkled off the field of the circle and danced about the paint and sigils in shades of pale green.
I lifted my right hand, the hand that projects energy, and directed my thoughts upon Lara. Upon the thing inside her. I pushed my wizard’s senses forward, blending them with the circle, and suddenly I felt it—a slow, twisting roil of nauseating energy, giddying and sickening at the same time. I felt a sudden desire to let out a mad cackle and suppressed it.
I’d felt this energy before.
Outsider. Hidden right there in front of me.
Outsiders were entities that existed in the raw chaos beyond the Outer Gates, the borders of reality. They didn’t much believe in coexistence. Lovecraftian horrors, madness distilled into flesh, things so alien that there simply wasn’t much of a way to understand them, or what they wanted, or why they did the things they did. I knew they were universally dangerous, universally hostile, and that if they had their way, they’d gleefully tear reality back down into primal chaos, taking every living thing with it.
And I knew that when I talked, they had to listen. When I fought them, they got hurt. When I slung my magic at them, they had to labor to fight against it. I and, presumably, the other starborn.
“Hear me, Hunger,” I murmured. The power I’d gathered changed my voice. It was deeper, harder, twisting oddly through the room. “Hear me.”
Lara drew in a sharp breath and her eyes became brighter, silvery, reflective. “Oh. Oh, empty night,” she breathed. Her skin suddenly glistened with perspiration. “What’s happening?”
“You know who I am,” I said in the same voice. “You know what I am.”
Lara’s eyes rolled back and she began to shudder, abdominal muscles clenching randomly, rapidly.
“I have been given power over your kind,” I said, voice steady and implacable.
Lara’s shoulders twisted, as if trying to escape bindings. She let out a low, tortured groan. The flames of the candles around the circle leapt up to ten times their original height, and the white paint became brighter, giving off its own green-white illumination as the energy of the circle intensified.
I poured more into it, visualizing what I wanted to do. I spread myfingers, gathering the power, and released it, voice set in a tone of absolute authority and command as I said,“Disparus!”
Power rushed into the circle.
Lara let out a gasping, strangled scream, body arching, arms flinging out wide as she went up onto her toes.
The incense cones flared with heat, and smoke billowed out, filling the circle.
I felt the power take hold. I felt it surround her, her skin going whiter, glittering swaths of green-gold light spiraling around its surface.
“Disparus!”I called, feeling the resistance, feeling the Hunger suddenly struggling wildly against the spell.“Disparus!”
And with a sudden implosion, the smoke of the incense condensed, swirling into the other side of the infinity loop, filling into the sudden form of a being of pale white flesh, almost faceless, hairless, sexless, all lean muscle, a mirror of Lara’s form. I could feel it struggling against the spell, and I had to keep my will against that force as if pushing up a heavy weight.
But I’d been doing that a lot lately, too.
The Hunger solidified, traces of energy flooding across the infinity loop, misty strands of light that bound it to Lara’s pained form, the two moving as one, shuddering precisely in time with each other, still bound—but separated.
I stared, focused upon the strands between the two of them. I pressed against one of them with my will and felt it begin to give way.
