Silver Nitrate(111)
They did. Fire tore through the screen, like a mirror that cracked, tracing a spidery line of golds and reds. There was power in death, in blood, as Ewers had said. Power that lingered and could be re-formed, directed, and she took that feeling of might and hurled it at the screen.
She clamped her hands tight around the stick, expecting a reprisal, and within seconds the attack came. Two men stepped forward, their hands wrapped around leashes, charging forward with their dogs.
When a dog lunged at her, she hit it hard. The tip of the stick sunk into the dog’s skin as if it were made of tar, and the animal turned its head, viciously snapping at the wood. The other dog went for Montserrat’s leg, fangs sinking into her thin, atrophied ankle.
The pain was tremendous; the fangs were sharp even if the dog was not a real animal, but a dreadful mix of magic and illusions. Her eyes watered, and she opened her mouth, but she recalled Clarimonde’s living room. Reflect, she thought. Not outrun.
At Clarimonde’s house she’d had charcoal to draw with, and here she had nothing.
No, not quite.
One dog savaged the wooden stick, chomping at it, and she kicked the other dog away, though the motion ruined her balance. When she fell back on the floor she still had a free hand, and her fingers glided quickly in the air, tracing a rune.
Fire, she thought again, as she’d thought about it only seconds before, setting the screen ablaze.
Almost immediately the two dog handlers burst into flames, crowned in fire, and whirled around in shock. The dogs evaporated while the men rolled and screamed on the floor. Montserrat groaned. She sat up only to find Clarimonde moving in her direction, clutching her knife.
Montserrat managed to trace another fire rune, but Clarimonde grinned fiercely and returned the rune with another motion of her own. Montserrat’s fingers burned, as if she’d touched a candle’s flame, instead of affecting Clarimonde.
“Fuck,” she said. Montserrat managed to stand up, using the stick to help her steady her limbs. Magic was a quick-burning fuel, one second whipping through your body, then draining you. She could feel the power that she’d wielded only seconds before already receding. The boost blood and death had given her were evaporating. Beneath that there remained a charge she could access, the force that both she and Tristán had been using all this while: the infectious energy of Ewers’s spell. Of Ewers himself, although this too seemed to almost be wavering, as if Ewers were angrily clawing at it. Perhaps because he needed this reserve of energy in order to manifest in the room, or maybe because he wished to stop them from ruining his plans.
Montserrat, weakening, could only grasp the stick like a baseball bat and swing it at Clarimonde as she approached. Swing left, and right, in an attempt to force her to stay back. Clarimonde laughed and held an elegant hand forward, pressing it against her chin, and opened her mouth, as if blowing cigarette smoke in her direction. A strong gust of wind shoved Montserrat. It made the chandelier above their heads tinkle and blew out the simmering flames that were chomping at the screen as easily as if they were birthday candles.
Montserrat slammed the stick down firmly to keep from losing her footing again, but the wind was growing stronger, whipping her hair around her face. She held up a hand trying to negate the spell with a haphazardly chosen rune.
“Cease,” she muttered.
The wind kept blowing, and the chandelier above shivered and groaned. Suddenly, Clarimonde was standing in front of Montserrat, her silver knife glinting dangerously, almost glowing. She recoiled, expecting a blow, but before metal bit flesh Clarimonde was shoved out of the way. Tristán pushed her back, and the woman landed on her knees, the knife tumbling from her hands, sliding by Tristán’s feet. He picked it up and held it up, a poor safeguard against the woman’s magic.
“Momo!” he yelled, the wind still whipping at them.
“The runes!” she yelled back.
The tails of the films made a flapping sound, the screen suddenly flooding with white light. Clarimonde pulled herself to her feet. She threw them a venomous look and closed one of her hands into a fist. The chandelier shook, its chain snapping and plummeting toward Montserrat and Tristán.
“Cease!” Montserrat ordered, and without a rune, with nothing but instinct and fury, she pushed back.
The chandelier exploded. Metal and glass bounced against the ceiling and the walls, rained down all around them. The cultists began yelling and rushing for the doors, frightened by the spectacle.
The blast had knocked Clarimonde off her feet. She lay on the floor, facedown, one of the sections of the chandelier pinning her in place, like a butterfly. Montserrat had a hand closed into a fist and trembled, holding the chandelier in place as Clarimonde grunted and scrabbled at the floor, attempting to push it off her, while Montserrat kept pushing down.
Tristán stared at Montserrat, surprised. “The runes,” she said, breathless, and pressed the stick against his chest. He grabbed it clumsily with one hand while he still clutched Clarimonde’s knife in the other. “Worry about the runes.”
“Right,” he replied.
Montserrat took another deep breath and pressed a hand against her throat. She bent her head down, trying to clear her mind, which was nothing but a tangle of black threads. Clarimonde was yelling, she was even scratching the floor, and although injured she was stronger than Montserrat.
“Stay,” Montserrat said, pushing down.