Rise of the Night Witch

Chapter 3.8 - Choice of Devils

Recap: Last time, Marissa realized that the Nuckelavee manifested in the real world and that she could do magic on it despite being seen by a mundane human.

The rainfall stopped. Sprinkles of water dripped from the skeletons of bookshelves, tables, and drawers that the now-headless slime monster had torn apart. Wet envelopes covered the ground like pus and amidst all this chaos stood Zane.

His scarf covered his expression, foggy glasses made his eyes unreadable, and beads of water dropped from his barrel as he pointed his revolver at my heart.

Darcy, her robe as blue as the water soaking through it, stabbed her staff's iron end at Zane. "Don't touch her, Jonathan!" she hissed.

He tilted his head in her direction.

"Don't play dumb! It wasn't hard to find your real name in the Academy's archives, Jonny!"

"I prefer 'Nathan'."

"And I hope you also prefer your body intact!"

In her fist, she revealed that she made Lyfa steal a piece of Zane's (well, Nathan's) hair - probably as he passed us and focused on the Nuckelavee. She pressed it against a man-shaped doll, grabbed its arms, and forced Nathan to point the gun away from me. He couldn't resist. A thin aether-line connected his body to the doll like strings connected a puppet to its puppeteer. His movements were so fluid, they might have been his own.

He opened his hand and the revolver hit the ground with a splash.

But Nathan had two hands. He pulled out a cardboard tube with a fuse that had already been burning just in case and dropped another smoke screen. The moment I focused on the smoke rather than on him, he vanished from my perception. Glamour's least-resistance principle worked like a magician's tricks; you distract your audience and act when they don't look.

Yet, I could outsmart him if I expected him at a certain location. He wasn't around me. But I looked at Darcy and I saw him there. He pointed his gun in her direction and Darcy, who probably felt him through her poppet, had an iron nail pointed at her doll.

"I can see you," I said.

"I know," Nathan explained, "and I can pull a trigger faster than your friend can stab that doll. You should listen to what I have to say."

Pure hatred shot through me as I looked that guy in his hazel eyes. I had enough of him threatening me. A voice spoke to me in my head that sounded like that of Siris' only more mature (more like a lion than a young housecat) and more feminine. It said two words.

"Kill him!"

What?

"You hear me right, kill him!"

"You now have a familiar," Nathan said, interrupting the voice in my head.

"I'm sure she had one before," Darcy said. "All practitioners have one, all human practitioners at least."

"I mean a familiar in the classical sense," Nathan said, ignoring her provocation. "It's not just a spirit, it's a higher entity serving you."

"What are you babbling about?" I yelled and felt an aching pain where the books hit my ribs. The painkiller called adrenaline had worn down.

"Kill him!" the voice in my head said.

Nathan felt my pain, my strife, and my conflict with the familiar. His brown eyes locked with mine and broke the ward formed by my bracelet and my weakened will. My mental wards had improved, yet I couldn't match him or Darcy in this regard. His spectacles made it look like he had four eyes, four times the power to break my defenses and make me his. As long as he watched my soul, my mind was naked to him.