The Copper Gauntlet (Magisterium #2)(6)

The Cold Massacre was where Call’s mother had died. Where his leg had been destroyed. It was where Constantine Madden had removed the soul of the child called Callum Hunt and put his own soul into the child’s body. But that wasn’t even the worst thing Call knew about it. The worst thing was what Master Joseph had told him about his mother.

“I know what she wrote in the snow,” Call said now. “She wrote ‘Kill the child.’ She meant me.”

His dad didn’t deny it.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Call, I’d never hurt you —”

“Seriously?” Call grabbed for one of the drawings of the gauntlet. “What’s this? What were you going to use it for? Gardening?”

Alastair’s expression turned grim. “Call, give that here.”

“Were you going to chain me up so I wouldn’t struggle when you pulled out Havoc’s heart?” Call pointed at the shackles. “Or so I wouldn’t struggle when you used it on me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

Alastair took a step forward, and that’s when Havoc leaped at him, snarling. Call shouted, and Havoc tried to arrest himself midjump, twisting his body desperately. He hit Alastair side-on, knocking him backward. Alastair crashed into a small table that broke under him. Wolf and man slammed against the floor.

“Havoc!” Call called. The wolf rolled off Alastair and resumed his place at Call’s side, still snarling. Alastair pushed himself up onto his knees and gradually stood, his balance unsteady.

Call lurched automatically toward his father. Alastair looked at him and there was something on his face that Call had never expected to see:

Fear.

It made Call furious.

“I’m leaving,” he spat. “Havoc and I are leaving and we’re never coming back. You missed your chance to kill us.”

“Call,” Alastair said, holding out a warning hand. “I can’t let you do that.”

Call wondered whether there had been something off for Alastair every time he’d ever looked at Call, some creeping horrible sense of wrongness. He’d always thought of Alastair as his dad, even after what Master Joseph had told him, but it was possible that Alastair no longer thought of Call as his son.

Call looked down at the knife in his hand. He remembered the day of the Trial and wondered whether Alastair had thrown Miri to him or at him. Kill the child. He remembered Alastair writing to Master Rufus to ask him to bind Call’s magic. Suddenly, everything Alastair had done made a horrible kind of sense.

“Go on,” Call said to Havoc, tipping his head toward the door that led to the sprawling mess of the rest of the basement. “We’re getting out of here.”

Havoc turned and padded away. Call began to carefully back out after his wolf.

“No! You can’t go!” Alastair lunged for Call, grabbing his arm. His father wasn’t a big man, but he was lean and long and wiry. Call slipped and went down hard on the concrete, landing the wrong way on his leg. Pain shot up his body, making his vision swim. Over Havoc’s barking, Call heard his father saying, “You can’t go back to the Magisterium. I have to fix this. I promise you I will fix it —”

He means he’s going to kill me, Call thought. He means I’ll be fixed when I’m dead.

Fury overcame him, fury at all the lies Alastair had told and was telling even now, at the cold knot of dread he’d been carrying around since Master Joseph had told him who he truly was, at the thought that everyone he cared about might hate him if they knew.

Rage poured out of him. The wall behind Alastair cracked suddenly, a fissure traveling up the side of it, and everything in the room began to move. Alastair’s desk went flying into one wall. The cot exploded toward the ceiling. Alastair looked around, stunned, just as Call sent the magic toward him. Alastair flew up into the air and hit the broken wall, his head making an awful thudding sound before his entire body slumped to the ground.

Call stood up shakily. His father was unconscious, unmoving, his eyes closed. He crept a little closer and stared. His father’s chest was still rising and falling. He was still breathing.

Letting your rage get so out of control that you knocked out your father with magic definitely went in the bad column of the Evil Overlord list.

Call knew he had to get out of the house before Alastair woke up. He staggered out of the room, pushing the door closed behind him, Havoc at his heels.

In the main basement there was a wooden chest full of puzzles and old board games with missing pieces sitting to one side of an odd assemblage of broken chairs. Call shoved it in front of the storage room door. At least that would slow down Alastair, Call thought, as he made his way up the steps.

He darted into his bedroom and threw on a jacket over his pajamas, shoving his feet into sneakers. Havoc pranced around him, barking softly, as he stuffed a canvas duffel bag with some random extra clothes, then went into the kitchen and grabbed a bunch of chips and cookies. He emptied out the tin box on top of the fridge where Alastair kept the grocery money — about forty dollars in crumpled ones and fives. He shoved it into the bag, sheathed Miri, and dropped the knife on top of his other belongings before zipping everything up.

He hoisted the bag up on his shoulder. His leg was aching and he felt shaky from the fall and the recoil of the magic that was still echoing through his body. The moonlight pouring in through the windows lit up everything in the room with white edging. Call stared around, wondering if he’d ever see the kitchen again, or the house, or his father.