Page 24 of Blood Currents
“Let me help,” I said, reaching out with my power.“If it’s tied to suffering, my necromancy might be able to—”
“No.”Elio’s voice cut through the air, sharper than I’d expected.“This is my specialty.”
I pulled back instinctively, my throat tight.Not because of the command but the edge behind it—fear masquerading as control.
He didn’t meet my eyes.“If something goes wrong,” he added, more measured now, “I don’t want you getting pulled into whatever psychic trap they’ve built into this thing.”
Behind his poise, I could feel the desperation.The need to be the one who solved it.To prove his value after so many cracks in his mask.He didn’t want help.He wanted to win.And he wanted to protect me.He wanted to do both and couldn’t admit the difference.
His illusions shimmered, the silver strands weaving tighter, more exact.He wasn’t brute-forcing it; he was unraveling it thread by thread, like a surgeon tracing nerves.Patient.Surgical.Controlled.
The wall began to shimmer, the glamour faltering under Elio’s precise work.For a second, the air itself screamed—a thin, psychic shriek that clawed down my spine.I flinched.So did Scout, chittering wildly against my neck.
Then the concealment dissolved like mist, revealing the door behind it.
“Clever,” Elio murmured, his hands trembling from the effort.“They used the victims’ pain to fuel the concealment.Every scream, every broken moment—they fed them to the spell to make it stronger.”His voice was almost reverent, like he couldn’t help admiring the craftsmanship, even as it made him sick.
My stomach flipped.“That’s monstrous.”
Even the door seemed to breathe wrong.Wards crawled across the frame like scorched veins, twitching with remnants of defensive magic.Scout buried himself deeper against my throat.
“Locked from the inside,” Cyrus said, stepping forward.His jaw was tight, fire dancing along his knuckles—not showy just barely held back.Rage flickered behind his calm, but he kept it steady, focused.That’s what Cyrus did with anger.He aimed it.
He muttered something in a low, guttural tongue that vibrated against my bones.The wards sparked, sizzled, and then shattered with the brittle crack of breaking glass.
The door groaned open, slowly and deliberately.
The smell hit me first.Antiseptic.Copper.And something worse.Something like despair given form—clinging to the air like rot in a sealed tomb.
The laboratory beyond was a monument to clinical cruelty.Metal and stone.Cabinets full of surgical tools that hadn’t seen sunlight in decades.Everything perfectly organized.Perfectly sterile.Perfectly evil.
Diagrams covered every wall: anatomical renderings that looked more like battle plans than medical illustrations, notes written in cold, precise handwriting, maps showing ley flow disruptions across multiple sites.My eyes caught on one chart showing energy pathways through the human body with sections marked for “optimal intervention points” and “maximum compliance thresholds.”
In the center of the room stood an examination table that made my blood turn to ice.Restraint points gleamed at strategic intervals, designed to hold someone immobile while unspeakable things were done to them.
My gaze caught on the cart beside the table, where syringes lay in neat rows like surgical instruments.Most were empty, but one still contained a substance that looked almost like blood but wrong—too dark, too thick, with an iridescent quality that shifted when I moved.
“They were injecting him with something,” I said, my voice barely steady.
Cyrus leaned over my shoulder, his flames flickering.“They were pumping poison directly into his magical channels.”
“But what kind of poison?”Elio asked, studying the vials with clinical detachment that didn’t quite hide his fury.“If we knew what they used, we might be able to counteract it.”
I carefully lifted the vial, my magic instinctively pulling away from it.Whatever this was, it felt fundamentally wrong—not just corrupted but alien.Foreign to everything I understood about magical energy.
“We should take this,” I said, slipping the capped vial into my bag despite every instinct screaming at me not to touch it.“Keane will know what it is.He’s better at magical analysis than any of us.But…”
“But he can’t exactly help us identify the poison they used on him,” Cyrus finished.
“Maybe when he’s more recovered,” Elio said, though doubt colored his voice.“If we can get him stable enough to think clearly.”
I turned in a slow circle.“This is where they brought him,” I whispered, my voice breaking on the words.“This is where they strapped Keane down and hurt him.”
Forcing myself to move forward, I crossed to the desk.Neat stacks of charts were on top, labeled with session numbers and test subjects.I picked up one with shaking hands, my heart hammering as I read:
Subject A-3: Portal Magic Corruption, Session 47.Resistance to mental conditioning remains problematic.Recommend increased dosage of compound seven.
Subject A-3.Was that Keane?It had to be.It was the most recent.
