Most of his Chaos energy worked to amplify his physical strength and speed, which was why he was so good at sports. His Water and Telekinesis abilities came second and third, and he was still learning to develop and master them.
I liked him as a person because I knew that, deep down, despite the frat boy allure, Dylan was sweet, caring, and sensitive. Our little Rag Team was growing on him, and he’d started spending more time with us, dedicating some of his weekends to additional coven work, just so we’d all be together. He was loyal and noble by nature. His adoptive parents had raised him to be a fine young man.
But none of that mattered at this point. The Dylan I knew was gone, and we needed to get him back. Most importantly, I felt guilty. This had happened under my watch. I should’ve known that Kenneth was trouble. I should’ve followed my gut and neutralized the kid before he even came into the kitchen, protocols be damned.
I didn’t, though. I thought I could handle it. I didn’t think there was all that darkness and toxic rot beneath the preppy boy façade that Kenneth had been wearing. My mistake. And Dylan was paying the price. I had to fix this.
When Alton came back with the cure from one of the Grimoires, Tobe and Wade immediately sprang into action and helped him gather all the ingredients in a copper bowl with ancient Chinese markings etched into the lip.
“Xiao Fei, former director of the Beijing Coven, came up with a cure back in the nineteenth century,” Alton explained as he laid out all the ingredients on a piece of cloth on the floor, kneeling before them and the bowl. “Before that, people afflicted by this particular hex were locked up for life. In some cases, they had to be killed. You see, the hex doesn’t stop at what you see now.”
Dylan had tremendous amounts of energy left in him, and he continued to wrestle against his restraints and roar furiously with each failure to free himself.
“Are you telling me it’ll get worse?” I asked, and couldn’t stop myself from giving Wade, Santana, Harley, Raffe, and Astrid a concerned frown. Part of me was trying to reach out to them for emotional support. I was genuinely overwhelmed, though it wasn’t in my nature to ask for help.
Out of them all, Harley was the first to give me a warm smile. She could feel me. She knew exactly what I was going through, and, at that moment, I couldn’t describe how nice it was to know that she was around.
“Much worse, I’m afraid,” Alton replied. He then proceeded to measure and add the spell ingredients into the copper bowl, one by one. Fig leaves, twigs of Oliver Plum’s Yew, angelica blossoms and cinnamon sticks, powdered green jade and salt from the Dead Sea, one ounce of Paris Green elixir—not the insecticide, but a magical substance made from extremely rare crystals—and a gallon of sweet water from TuoTuo, Yangtze’s headstream. Sloane Bellmore and Marianne Gracelyn had an impressive reserve of spell ingredients in their repositories. “His body will become insufficient for his rage. Unless he is permanently tied down, he’ll start hurting himself. All he knows now is to kill everything that moves. To wreck. To destroy.”
Tobe stood by Dylan’s box, with his feathered arms crossed, watching as he kept banging his shoulders into the glass. “Yes. I can see that.”
Something snapped. Dylan’s arms came out, finally free of their restraints. I held my breath, realizing he’d just managed to break through cable ties, industrial tape, and ropes. He punched and clawed at the box, until his legs were loose, too. His strength had finally overcome his physical limitations.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, making myself available to the spirit world. As a Kolduny, I could turn my spiritual ability on and off—otherwise I would’ve spent my entire life in extremely crowded places, even when I should’ve been alone. The coven was filled with ghosts, so there were plenty of people for me to talk to.
The darkness before me was gradually replaced by movement, wisps of bluish light, moving around us. All of them were spirits, lonely wanderers who couldn’t let go after they’d died in the coven. Sometimes, when I didn’t want anyone else to know and hear what I was doing, I reached out to the spirits without using my body. My mind just opened up and they picked up on my brainwaves. They could read my thoughts, if I let them.
It took just a few seconds out there, in the real world, but in the veil, where I’d just entered, time flowed differently.
“I need help!” I called out to the spirits walking around me. “I need your strength!”
Of all the wisps that seemed to be ignoring me, one stopped. I’d gotten its attention. That was usually the first step, asking for help and getting one of the dead to answer. The spirit moved toward me and gradually regained its humanoid shape.
It was a man in his late twenties, with rich, curly black hair and wild green eyes. He’d broken a few hearts in his day, for sure. He wore jeans and a hockey jersey, stained with blood—most likely his. He’d died a violent death, yet his expression was one of curiosity, even slight amusement, as he stopped a couple of feet away from me. He was translucent, just like Will, the boy ghost I’d met back at the Travis house, but he seemed slightly more consistent. As if his spirit was more… condensed.
“I’m a Kolduny,” I said to him.
“I know you, Tatyana,” he replied with a smirk.
That made me shiver, but, then again, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. I’d been here for a few months now, and I’d called out to the spirits before.
“You do, huh?” I murmured.
“You’re the only spirit-talker in this place. Among the living, anyway,” the ghost said. “You’re quite a celebrity around here.”
“And who are you?” I asked.
He raised his chin with great pride. “I’m Oberon Marx,” he declared. “Star athlete of the San Diego Coven!”
I was tempted to roll my eyes at him, but, instead, I gave him a polite smile. “I’ve heard about you,” I replied. “You were a promising sportsman, right?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “Football, hockey, baseball, wrestling, swimming, mixed martial arts, and fencing. There wasn’t anything I didn’t excel at. Glad to hear I’ve left a legacy.”
“You most certainly have,” I said, remembering an article I’d read about him in one of the coven’s updated history books.
“You called for help. I’m here. What do you need?” he asked.
Even through the darkness, we could both see the silhouettes of the material world around us. I pointed at Dylan’s glass box. “He’s been hexed,” I said. “I need your strength to make him swallow the cure before he dies.”
Oberon grinned, enthusiasm glimmering in his eyes. “Well, I made the right call to stop then, didn’t I? That guy’s a Herculean, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes, he is,” I replied.
“Herculean” was the title given to magicals with enhanced strength and speed, the “athletes” of Chaos, whose magical energy fueled their physical features. They were infinitely stronger, faster, more flexible, and more resilient than most humans. In many cases, they could really stand out if they wanted to. They were, essentially, superhumans. They weren’t exactly rare, but their numbers weren’t high, either. On average, there were between fifty and seventy per coven, with varying degrees of athletic prowess.
According to the lore, Hercules himself had been real, a hero of ancient Greece and a magical who… stood out, as well. They’d made up legends about him, so the title sort of stuck.
“You’re in luck, Tatyana,” Oberon said. “I’m a Herculean, too. One of the best in my generation, in fact!”
That made all the sense in the world, given his athletic career and fame among the magicals. He’d died sometime about twenty years ago, but the circumstances of his death were unknown to me. I couldn’t remember much, but I could always look up articles about him in the archives. Either way, the day he passed away was a sad day for all the covens. That much I remembered.
“Tobe wants to go in there and give him the antidote, but it’s my fault Dylan is in this state to begin with. I need to fix this,” I murmured.
“Don’t be like that. You didn’t hex him.” Oberon chuckled, then stilled and turned serious all of a sudden. “Or did you?”
“No, it was someone else. But I wasn’t fast enough. I should’ve done more to stop it.”
“Okay, if we’re gonna do this, I need you to let go of that guilt. It ruins my vibe,” Oberon groaned, rolling his eyes. “I’ll help you. Tobe may be strong and whatnot, but he’s underestimating us Herculeans. I dropped him on his ass more than once during my living days. I had a three-month training season in New York, at one point. He was one of my favorite sparring partners.”
Back then, the Bestiary had been the New York Coven’s responsibility. The timeline matched.
“You know how a Kolduny functions, right?” I asked, mentally preparing myself for the next step. He nodded. “I will let you in, and I’ll lend you my body, but my mind is mine. You do as I say, okay?”
“Relax, Tatyana. You’re not the first Kolduny I’ve ridden,” Oberon said, grinning. That made me wonder who else he’d possessed among my kind, but there was no time for background checks. I had to help Dylan, and, as per Oberon’s statement, Tobe wasn’t enough to subdue him. “Open wide…”
That had come out wrong, and he knew it. “Ugh. Dude.”
“Sorry. You know what I mean,” Oberon replied, stifling a laugh.
I breathed deeply and opened my very being for occupation. Oberon stepped forward and into me, temporarily fusing with my flesh and bones. I felt cold, thousands of tiny electrical currents zapping through me at lightspeed. Oberon had taken over my body, but I’d retained my consciousness. It was rare for a Kolduny of my caliber to be overrun by a ghost. When it did happen, however, Santana and Dylan were always there to pull me back, so I could eject the wily spirit.