Chapter ONE - Weebly

“Is it too late for that partnership you spoke of
earlier?”
Ethan barely listened to the man’s response. He
concentrated instead on maintaining the illusion spell
while at the same time casting again. Ambure ex cruore
evocatum! Scald, conjured from blood! It had worked
once; Darrow told him as much. Perhaps it would work
a second time.
Ethan felt a change in the pulse of his conjuring, and
knew that Darrow had, too. He had hoped that by
masking the power with his illusion spell, he would
catch the man off guard. And since Darrow wouldn’t
expect him to have access to blood, the spell should
have been strong enough to break through whatever
warding Darrow used.
For an instant, he thought that it would work.
Darrow stiffened suddenly, and he growled through
gritted teeth—he was obviously in agony.
And then he wasn’t. Ethan felt Darrow’s spell, too.
It had to have been a warding, cast with nothing more
than a thought, fueled by something other than blood. In
the span of a single heartbeat, the rictus of pain