Chapter 11 #3
Price … Price had assumed Luke had come crawling to him for money. Miranda and Goliath and their coworkers had been betting on how long Luke would take to beg for work, to reach for someone else to pull him out of a hole he’d dug himself into. And they’d been right. All of them had been right.
A sob choked Luke. He was losing feeling in his hips and shoulders.
“That’s it,” Oz crooned. “Give in to the despair.”
I’m nothing, a voice echoed in Luke’s mind. It tried to sound like him, but there was a coldness his voice never had.
No one had ever said he was nothing. Weird, a liar, a con man, a crook, a thief, a bastard, a heinous blight upon the name vampire, but never nothing.
Clint, the most honorable, heroic person Luke had ever met, had cradled him, fed him when he could have abandoned him.
If someone as good as Clint could see something worthwhile in him, then Luke was worthy.
Of what, he wasn’t sure, but that meant he wasn’t nothing.
But the realization, the fighting against the numbness, brought pain. But he couldn’t give up. Couldn’t surrender.
He screamed.
Clint snapped his fingers, sending another invisible bead of energy into the heart of another spell aimed at destroying his shield.
With a twist of his staff, he turned the planes of his shield so that the incoming bolts reflected toward the last chanting mage.
Miranda threw up a shield of her own, a clumsy, opaque thing, but it absorbed the shocks of the bolts and dissipated them.
Undisturbed, the last mage continued the ritual.
Red mist cascaded out from the box. In the midst of all the chaos, Clint saw a hand reaching out. Valgaruz pawed at the air, and his fingers brushed against the edge of the crumpled figure.
An acrid taste filled the back of Clint’s mouth. He had been reining in his power. Judicious use was better than wanton destruction. But they weren’t giving him an option. You can’t do it, Sloane had laughed. You won’t hurt me!
Clint had shown Sloane that he was wrong.
One blast and he could level the group in front of him, destroying Miranda, the mage fighting beside her, the mage who continued to chant, and the two that had fallen unconscious in the pitch of battle.
If those two weren’t dead, Clint’s spell would kill them.
A piercing scream shattered Clint’s battle fugue. The pitch of that scream, the desperation in it, made Clint turn his focus.
Luke.
Luke was on his knees in front of Oz. And Oz had four tentacles in the air around him. Their thicker ends were jutting out from holes that were tears in reality. Clint had seen such shreds before. Somehow, Oz had followed in Sloane’s footsteps. He’d summoned the tentacles from the Realm Beyond.
And he was attempting to shred Luke with them.
Clint could widen the blast of his spell, but in order to catch the tentacles, he’d have to catch Luke in the blaze as well. Arcane bolts wouldn’t have the power needed to overwhelm the summoned appendages, not in time to save Luke. Not unless Clint focused his energy on them.
And if Clint did that, the ritual would continue. The window for disruption was narrowing. He might not have another chance.
But Luke was dying.
Luke, who had chosen to dive into this mess, who had let Clint use him in a spell to find this place even though he was already weak from hunger, who had been clever enough to break into his goddamn tower without tripping a single ward until his impulses got the better of him.
Luke Gauthier, the only one who had stirred Clint’s heart in years.
I can’t let him die. With a growl, Clint ran forward, blocking a few more bolts with his shield, and came to a halt six feet from Oz. Holding his staff in both hands, he funneled every ounce of his fury into a sharp kinetic spell. He spun his staff and sent invisible blades of force outward.
One cut the tentacles. The four appendages wailed as their ends splatted into muck on Luke and the floor while the bulk of them withdrew into the tears into their own dimension.
Oz sputtered and started to turn toward Clint, hand raised as if to cast again.
But Clint was still moving and whipped his staff up to deliver another invisible blade.
It sliced through Oz’s wrist, and his hand dropped to the floor.
Clint rushed to Luke’s side. Down on one knee, he put his hand on Luke’s shoulder to steady him.
“Quickly!” Miranda shouted.
Clint readied his shield for a barrage of magic, but none came. Instead, Miranda and the two mages joined their chanting conspirator and strengthened the ritual.
“Damn it.” Clint started to stand.
Luke grabbed his arm and shook his head. He pointedly looked down to his other hand, where he had a slim vial of water.
“I have a vial of Stills water,” Luke had said.
When used against a ward or enchanted object, the Stills water would negate the stored energy without risk. Throwing it onto an active ritual would disrupt it, but the built-up energy would lash out. The greater the power, the greater the destruction.
The ritual was choking the air with the amount of energy the mages had poured into it. Clint shook his head. “The blast—”
“Can you contain it?” Luke asked.
Meaning he knew the danger, knew it could hurt him as well as everyone else in the room. He wasn’t foolishly resorting to this option. He was being brave and risking his life to stop the evil from escaping.
If Clint was fully rested, he might have been able to pull off such a feat. But he’d been running hard all night. The strain was starting to drain him, even with all his experience. There has to be another way.
“A little more, my loves,” Valgaruz crooned. His voice oozed outward, and a wave of psychic energy crashed against Clint’s mental walls.
Luke shivered. Miranda and the remaining cultists trembled, lust clouding their features.
Valgaruz’s power would be far worse once he was out. Clint wasn’t sure he’d be able to withstand it. If I become his puppet for even an instant, who knows how long it will take me to break free and what damage he’ll make me do in the meantime.
“I can protect us,” Clint said firmly. “Do it.”
Luke popped the rubber stopper from the end of the vial and sent the water out in an arc. Drops sprinkled down and struck the circles and chalked runes.