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She said the words of the invulnerability spell for the third time.
It was the only one that came to her. The only thing she could think to say from the moment they were boxed in on the isolated country road leading back to Chicago.
They were returning from her father’s where they had risked everything, William more than Christina. Recently, rumors had begun to circulate that she knew magic, and the order was in a tizzy. They had gone to Sam in a desperate and idealistic campaign to let Christina practice.
It would take time, but she was a blood relative of the great Titus Braithwhite. Her ascension to sorcerer could turn things around. Help with the dwindling membership and finally make room for women in magic. Sam himself was highly regarded as a sorcerer and businessman. With Samuel’s blessing she could be the first woman to join the Order.
But Samuel did not give his blessing; not even when his assistant had begun to stir. The split gash in his bald head had closed. The typically hooded man gingerly tapped it, and checked his own fingers to find there was no more blood.
Christina had discovered healing magic in Sam’s invulnerability spell. A secret kept between her and William. That is, until her father phoned William for a favor and sent her into action.
“Frederick had an accident, William. He has 2 maybe 3 days. Terrible. He will be missed. I’ll be seeking a new assistant in his absence…”
By the time their conversation was over, Christina had mapped out a loose plan to show her father how she deserved a place in his organization even as his assistant. She knew he’d heard the rumors — the ones about William teaching her magic in exchange for…
…fucking her everyday, his perpetual sex slave.
…access to underground deviant sex parties where he had the only real prick in the room.
…bringing him an endless stream of bodies to experiment on.
She blamed his time spent with Hiram for the last one.
Certainly she hadn’t heard them all, but she heard a lot and none of them were true. Still, the talk had trickled up the Order’s grapevine and all the way to her father.
He hadn’t even looked at her. Instead he’d taken a scalpel and cut his own hand. Then, like a priest sprinkling holy water during an exorcism, he flicked his fingers at William, causing droplets of blood to dot the taller man’s face. Christina watched in horror and then horror still, as her father spoke in the language of Adam. She recognized the words, of course. Her child-self had been the only witness to Samuel’s work perfecting the invulnerability spell. She would sit pretending to read magazines as she’d learned the words, at times mouthing them along with him.
Now, he spoke them at William.
The blood splattered golden boy clawed at his chest, awkwardly exposing it with his ascot still tied around his neck. The horned mark of cain splayed across his chest began to blister and then dissolved. It disappeared leaving William as vulnerable as any common man. He ran his own palms over the smoothed pecs where the raised flesh used to be.
Samuel continued speaking in English, but this time with his eyes trained on Christina.
“I trusted you with my wayward daughter because I thought that you understood the natural order,” His voice was low and dangerous as he wrapped his hand with a cloth. ”What you’ve allowed her to do is an abomination. For what it’s worth, if you had managed to complete your so-called practicum, perhaps you would have some leverage. We chose to overlook your indiscretions with Hiram. I will not ask the others to ignore your persistence this time. Not with my daughter."
He turned is back to them, "Saboteur, you are intent on desecrating our organization rather than preserving our bylaws. Both of you are to leave the property at once.”
He’d sent them away, binding William from using his trademark invulnerability spell. Christina begged, but Samuel was a brick wall. That mark was all that stood between William and his rivals and with the rumors swirling that William was her teacher they were bound to make a play for his spot soon.
So when she noticed them being followed she had broken the silence, “Shoot them.” William had been driving nonstop since they’d left that morning. He hadn’t said a word after losing invulnerability. Now he spoke.
“Lancaster’s men. Not Mr. Braithwhite.”
Christina had warned William about Hiram Epstein’s business partner, Lieutenant Lancaster. William had been Epstein’s apprentice and during that time he had used his position on the force to personally assist Hiram. He made Frankenstein-esque versions of existing spells. The first generation Irish-American was jealous of William being the heir to the lodge. The real William wasn’t worried, he believed that he could control the world through money and business connections. He was gullible, almost stupid in the way that he could be manipulated by those who wormed their way into his life.
The two of them were dragged from the Pontiac. She was thrown in the back of a squad car, watching as the men swarmed him while he demanded that they get Lancaster immediately.
He got his wish when the Captain made a production of arriving to the scene. He’d walked right by her, tapping the glass as he passed, dipping down and tipping his hat as she kicked at the glass.
The crowd of men surrounding William spread robotically to make way.
She finally laid eyes on William, his clothing tattered and ripped. She slapped her palms against the glass, trying desperately to conjure something that could help them. His dress shirt hung from his waist band, leaving him bare chested in the bitter January cold. Still he held his ground with his revolver, keeping the men at bay. He dropped it to his side in relief as he saw the stocky, smiling policeman approaching. She couldn’t hear them, but Lancaster appeared to reprimand the men who gathered into formation behind him.
He patted William on the back congenially, gesturing to where Christina watched from the car. He nodded and shook Lancaster’s hand with a brotherly grasp.
The flashing blue and red lights cast the officers in a hedge of eery folded armed silhouettes with the captain at the forefront. They stood by as William strolled over to her. He opened the door for her, speaking in hushed tones, clearly shaken, but smiling for the first time since before meeting with her father.
Her panic had begun to settle and time had gone back to normal. “Magic, the currency of gentlem-“
She stepped from the vehicle just in time to catch him as the shot rang out and he fell into her. She held on as best she could, feeling for the wound, and doing her best to channel her energy into the spell. She couldn’t break her father’s binding and she couldn’t bring back his mark of Cain.
Lancaster stood over her scowling, and mocking her ineptitude at casting. The words were lost on her as were all, but William’s final words and her own crying.
As he faded away, she felt the tug and then the snatching as officers pulled at his legs. She held until she couldn’t, and then she leapt onto Lancaster, causing very little damage before she was pulled off and thrown to the ground. The knee in her back would have been crushing if not for her own invulnerability.
She lay there pinned, as Lancaster lifted William, throwing the blonde man’s arm over his own shoulders as if to help him stand. An eager police lackey ran up to help. He let William’s other arm drape over him as they drag-walked his limp body over to the edge of the bridge. They hoisted him forward and over the rail, toppling him head first into the river below.
A minute later, she was alone in the dark with only the lights from William’s Pontiac Star Chief, and the sound of the river rushing a few feet way.
Even a chaste woman has a tendency toward emotional hysteria. That reason among others will be the reason your gender will never be accepted into the Order, blood or not.
She’d heard every verse of her father’s mysogynist rhetoric over the years, and they came back to her as she pulled herself up. She looked over the railing, checking both sides frantically. His broken form was flattened by the pressure of the water against the ruins of an old wooden thing. It took some time, but she managed to drag him back up the embankment. She laid him face down before the car’s headlights before going to the trunk to dig through his travel bag. Inside, she found his kit and what she needed to attempt the transformation spell — most importantly a pestle and mortar.
One time. Only one time to get it right before William’s life force was completely drained.
She drew upon all of the knowledge that she’d gained as Samuel’s silent observer and as William’s muse. She fervently combined their hair, blood and nails. When she was satisfied with the gritty pink paste, she stood at the center of the bridge.
Intention, location, body.
Stretching over the water, she roared the spell. Her voice cracked, but the words were clear. She scooped the mixture from the mortar bowl with her fingertips and shoved them into her mouth, swallowing.
She didn’t feel anything at first. Then...pain. A lot.
She keeled over the railing as her bones began to grind and shift.
Her sticky gritty fingers began to thicken and elongate. She turned them over in amazement, almost losing the little bowl over the railing. When it was safely in her masculine hands, she brought it to her mouth and lapped up the rest of the mixture.
As every part of her body, lengthened and expanded she snatched off her suffocating feminine clothing. There, naked on the bridge, she cried and laughed at the same time having found a new kind of freedom in the Illinois country side.