Half-Blood Curse

14 - Blood Mage

Lucas knew he would need to make a very large rune, so naturally he picked out a very sharp knife. He didn't have a paintbrush, but he had a pastry brush. It was wide, but it would work. They turned the lights down low, because Lucas had gotten used to working in his dim basement and it made concentrating easier. The cafeteria was dark, and the kitchen had all but one light off. In the cone of light, Lucas knelt and carefully crafted a blood rune almost three feet in diameter. It would take more blood than he was used to losing.

Sonia and Caroline were dead silent while he listened to the currents of magic being pulled through his design. He wanted to flood his own magic into the spell coating Caroline until it was permanently connected to him, attached by a tether that would override any other wizard's command. Once he owned it, he could probably break it, although that would be another rune, on some other day. He had a feeling this spell would take a lot out of him.

The smell of blood was getting obvious, even to his poor excuse of shifter senses. They would have a lot of cleaning to do.

"Almost done," Lucas said, getting to his feet. He tiptoed around the design, swiping his brush against the blood leaking from his arm and then adding more and more slashes and swirls in the circle. It needed four outer rings, and once the fourth one was finally finished, Lucas was starting to feel light-headed. More from the expenditure of his magic than from blood loss, but the blood loss didn't help.

Lucas stepped back. His rune was complete. It started glowing with that familiar maroon light, and Lucas breathed a sigh of relief.

Now to hope it does what I want it to do, and not something totally different.

"Mom, step into the circle on three. One, two, three," Lucas stepped forward in tandem with Caroline, and the rune flashed supernova bright before settling. Sonia gasped and Caroline stood so rigidly that she might as well have been made of stone.

"Hold out your hands," Lucas said, extending his.

Caroline hesitated. She gingerly held hands just over his. The shivering magic on her was even more visible to him inside the scope of his magic, and Lucas focused all of his will on it.

"You shouldn't feel anything, mom. Try not to move."

"What's going to happen?"

Lucas didn't answer. Instead he held his dripping wound above her trembling hands. A single drop of blood hung from his skin before falling, but in slow motion. Caroline's breath caught. An inch away from her hands, his blood hit an invisible barrier.

Lucas grit his teeth and flexed his arm, pushing more blood from his wound. The rune beneath their feet began to glow brighter and brighter with every drop that splashed against the outer edges of the foreign spell. Lucas commanded every reserve of his power to concentrate in a single drop of blood. It slipped from his veins, slid down his arm, and dropped onto the pool of blood hovering above Caroline's shaking hands.

There was a sound like a creaking floor board, and a blood-red seam split along the transparent shell of the spell. Lucas's power squeezed through, rushing into the spell and learning its shape and design. The magic on her hands started to change. Caroline gasped when she saw the spell on her skin for the first time, changing rapidly from the palest of pink and through shades of wine into the color of blood.

"Almost... there..." Lucas was sweating from the power it took to flood the spell. The wizard who made it must have been extremely powerful. Powerful enough that Lucas was beginning to wonder if he would even be able to succeed. Gabriel's desolate, hopeless expression flashed before his eyes and he pushed even further, beyond what he had ever done before. The rune started humming beneath their feet. Caroline yelped in distress.