Chapter 39 #2
Fire in my veins. If I was afraid, I didn’t feel it. I only felt the wild beating of my heart and was focused on only one goal—to get to the others, and to bring the wraiths with us.
We did.
We found them as we left them—Seth on the right, Mimi on the left, the others ahead, just a couple feet behind the pile of Life Clocks on the floor.
Screams. Levana and Helen had their eyes closed while the others looked about ready to die standing.
“Over here! Over here!” Cook called, jumping up and down, waving his hands for us, but March and I moved to the other side of the tree because we still needed to be close to help Seth and Mimi.
They were Clubs, and they could probably magic plants better than everyone else, but these were actual timewraiths.
For a second there, as we turned to the left of the trunk, I thought the wraiths would keep following us.
They had their eyes on March and me, all four of them, but the moment they were close to where the branches waited to cage them in, someone threw something that hit the first wraith on the shoulder.
Cook—and his boot rolled on the floor as the wraith stopped to look at what had hit him.
“Here—over here! We’ve got Life Clocks, over here!”
The wraiths changed course instantly.
March and I turned and ran back just as fast. Mimi and Seth were already working the branches and the cords while Cook still called for the wraiths who continued to move right into the trap we’d set for them.
I dropped the piece of wood, my hand already covered in purple smoke, my magic at the ready, coming easier to me than it had ever before. Must have had something to do with the fact that my life literally depended on this.
Green around the branches as the wraiths kept moving, mindless things, reaching out their hands for the Life Clocks, for the other Hands standing behind them.
A scream—Levana.
The branches snapped together all at once, slamming against the bodies of the wraiths, pushing them all the way to the trunk, trapping them in.
It worked, it worked, it worked!
Then I saw exactly why the wraiths were as feared as they were in the Clockrealm.
A hand with four long fingers had slipped out of the branches that had trapped the wraiths in—a single hand, and the darkened tips of those fingers were leaking shadows. Black like ink, like silk ribbons, and they were extending toward the other Hands, slow at first, then all at once.
We all saw it when they latched onto the Life Clocks gathered on the floor.
We all saw it when Erith choked on thin air, and her eyes turned in their sockets and she began to shake.
“Move them now!” said someone, either March or I, and we were both running toward the other side, but Mimi and Seth had gotten there first.
They kicked the Life Clocks away, farther from those shadows that looked so wrong, so damn disgusting—until the connection broke.
Then the ribbon latched onto Seth’s foot.
I didn’t think. There was no time. I was running like there was no ground underneath my feet, and then I jumped and I slammed onto Seth with all my strength, taking him down.
The look on his face, though, a split-second before I crashed onto him would remain with me for the rest of my life.
The way his eyes turned in their sockets, became all white.
The way his mouth opened wide and he choked—that sound.
The way the color of his skin changed to gray—just like that of the wraiths.
Then we were rolling and rolling on the floor, and I held on tight with all my strength, not really sure what was even happening. I was pure instinct. I had no control over my body—it operated on its own.
“Let go, Velvet. Let go.”
March’s voice slipped into the center of my mind long before I realized I’d stopped rolling, or that I was still holding onto a body with all my might.
I let go—safe enough to do. My body remained at March’s command more than my own, it seemed, even in moments I wasn’t sure I was entirely conscious.
Hands on my arms, and I was pulled up as if I weighed nothing. Hands on my face, and March’s beautiful eyes pulled me out of whatever trance I’d been in. Red and brown and a whole universe in between, I focused on him until I was aware of my surroundings again.
The other Hands. The timewraiths. The let’s go-let’s go-let’s get out of here!
“Can you run?” March asked, his voice thick, hoarse.
The best I could do was nod.
Cold enveloped me when he let go of my face and stepped back.
I only allowed myself a moment to look around, to see that the Life Clocks were no longer on the floor, and the other Hands were moving, Russ and Anika helping Erith, Mimi and Cook helping Seth—both of whom were slightly limping as they went.
Meanwhile, the timewraiths were trapped between the branches and the trunk, and they were trying to free their hands—another branch had trapped the hand of the one who’d latched onto Erith and Seth, it seemed.
They were there, all four of them. We were free to go.
“Come on!” March called.
I turned my back to them and ran.