Chapter 5 #2
It was pitch-black to my sun-blinded eyes, and I skidded to a halt.
Her silhouette stood dead center, me at one end, a huge black dog at the other.
It was too dark to see the dross without Pluck in my mind, but it was there.
I could almost smell it. Pulse pounding, I swung a leg over my bike and got off to look like less of a threat.
“I haven’t done anything! Leave me alone!”
Her high voice trembled. I took my sunglasses off and stuffed them in a pocket.
One hand up in placation, I propped my bike against the wall, then unslung my dross-cored stick and set it aside as a show of goodwill.
My eyes had finally adjusted, and it was obvious she was scared, her arms wrapped around her middle as she looked from me to Pluck and back again.
“I know what he is. Keep him away from me! I mean it!”
Pluck’s ears drooped and he sat down in the opening.
I didn’t dare move any closer, either. “I’m Petra. That’s Pluck. He won’t hurt you.” We had found one, or she had found us, and now we were scaring her. She was terrified.
“He’s shadow,” she whispered. “He’s your shadow. Get out of my way. This was a mistake.”
Hands raised for her patience, I tried to relax, remembering how scared I’d been when Pluck had been trailing me, the shadow desperate for connection. “I won’t stop you. You can go.”
Pluck whined, his not-there feet hazing. Clearly he disagreed.
“But you came to me. Maybe we can help you?” I added, and she glanced from me to Pluck. “What’s your name?”
“Marty.”
Her voice broke, and she jumped when Pluck flopped to the bike path as if harmless. I doubted she was buying into it, but at least she wasn’t pressed against the wall anymore.
Excitement tingled down to my toes. “And you’re a weaver?” I said, and tension pulled her shoulders to her ears. “Wait, this is good! Marty, I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’m not a weaver.” It was a bare breath of an answer. “I’m not!” she said, louder. “Please…can you make him go away?”
She wasn’t looking at Pluck as she said it, and suddenly I got it. A shadow was following her. She was trailing shadow, and neither she nor the shadow knew what to do.
I knew that fear, and yet it was elation that suffused me. “Oh, Marty…” I took a step forward, and she bolted for the sunlight behind me. “No! Wait!” I made a grab for her, missing.
The woman shrieked, shoving me into the curved wall. I hit with a thump, gasping when Pluck billowed up from the sandy floor beside me. “Pluck, don’t scare her!”
“Can you get rid of him!” Marty backed up, her gaze riveted to Pluck. “Yes or no! I can’t live like this!”
“Marty, it’s going to be okay,” I promised.
Until an icy froth raked my mind and Pluck’s fear twined about my own.
What…I thought, squinting as every haze of dross burst into a threatening glare through Pluck’s eyes.
The tunnel was nearly as bright as day, glints of latent energy clinging to the floor and ceiling like lava.
Stay behind me, Pluck fizzed, suddenly angry. Shifting form, he wrapped about my arm as a snake, his tight coils almost deadening my arm. Green eyes glittered, and I looked behind me, my breath catching when I realized we weren’t alone.
It was a man, tall, kind of goth-looking in black pants and matching shirt. Thin dark hair hung to his shoulders, and he had a dusky complexion. He didn’t take off his sunglasses, steps soundless as he moved forward until the darkness of the tunnel enveloped him.
“Kahu, you have done yourself well,” he said, his low voice seeming to insert itself into the folds of my brain. “Bestowing the long ache to you will be a pleasure. Again.”
What the hell? And then I jerked, a hand going to my head when Pluck’s frigid thought slammed into me, his usual sophistication gone.
It’s Thoth! Pluck fizzed and popped.
You know him? I stared as the man took off his glasses to show green eyes glinting with an inner light. Pluck had those same eyes, but I didn’t understand until Thoth shook his hand and the glasses he held simply…evaporated. He’s a shadow?
My arm was frozen solid under Pluck’s coils, aching as he hooded into a snake and hissed.
His anger was heady, but I was still trying to figure this out.
The shadow trailing Marty looked like a person?
I mean, I’d seen Pluck take on the image of Lev and some poor woman murdered in the 1800s, but it had been in a dream.
Shadow spit…this Thoth must be really powerful!
“Make him go away,” Marty whispered, her voice ragged as she scuffed two steps behind me. “I just want to go home. Please, can you make him go away?!”
The shadow man’s lip twitched as if in annoyance, and then he took a step forward, his feet hazy with dark matter. “Kahu, you know nothing ever changes.” Thoth misted, dark ribbons of energy brushing my awareness. “Leave. Save yourself. I have no wish to hurt you.”
“Hey, ah…” I said, raising my arm for his attention—the one Pluck wasn’t wrapped around. “I’m Petra, and you apparently know Pluck. This is all a misunder—”
No! Pluck sparked through my mind as Thoth evaporated. Cold lanced through my brain, alien and unfamiliar. Gasping, I fell to my knees. It wasn’t Pluck. As if from a distance, I could feel Pluck’s panic, billowing up around me as Thoth burrowed deeper into my mind with a single focus.
Fine, the hard way, I thought, barely able to breathe as I stared at my hands clenched against the cold, hard-packed sand floor of the tunnel. It hadn’t been that long ago that I had done this with Pluck. Shaking, I dropped my defenses.
I jerked, ice coating my lungs as Thoth cackled confidently and dove deeper.
I let him, throwing my memories at him in a torrential cascade to distract him as I inhaled and made a field about my mind.
Exhaling, I made it impenetrable. Who’s the yeth?
I thought, snaring him as easily as an errant drift of dross.
Not helpless…Thoth’s incredulity scraped like stones against the field imprisoning him in my mind, sparking until I twisted the field smaller. I had him.
At least, I thought I had him. A faint trickle of his cold, alien thought was probing my field as if it was a maze to be solved.
This is why you fail, the shadow mocked, its presence growing spiky and oily in my mind. This is why you will always fail.
And with that, my field broke from the inside with a soul-shattering ping. Winter coated my teeth and cracked my lips. A black swirl spun in my brain as the cold raced through my mind and was gone.
Shaken, I got to my feet, hand on the tunnel wall as Thoth rose up before me in a malevolent cloud. He wasn’t in my mind anymore, but I didn’t think this was over.
My stick, I thought as I backpedaled, unable to look from Pluck weaving a dangerous threat between me and Thoth. Oily coils of black streaked with green wound about themselves until he filled the tunnel—and then Pluck attacked, his presence sparkling with dark matter.
“Pluck!” I reached out when they met in a pop of conflicting energies, twining into one form as they thrashed. Great thumps, felt more than heard, echoed against the walls, and a cold green light burst from them when they crashed into the lingering dross, burning them both alike.
“Stop!” I shouted, and dark matter scattered like dust from a shaken rug.
Horrified, I stood before them, cord-draped stick in hand, unable to do a single damn thing. “Marty, tell your shadow to relax!” I cried. “We’re trying to help you!”
Marty stumbled out of the tunnel and into the light, her eyes wide in fear. “He’s not my shadow…I can’t…” she whispered, and when she tripped over my bike, she grabbed it and ran.
Pluck…I could not follow.
Dark matter hazed the air, and a high-pitched squeal echoed in the tight confines of the tunnel as the two shadows coiled and twisted about each other.
Frantic, I danced away when the coiled sparks of gray and black crashed into the wall and agony fizzed through me.
The larger was forcing the smaller into the dross, burning him.
“Pluck, break!” I demanded desperately. I had to stop them, and exhaling, I made a field, nebulous as I sent it out, then bettered it to a class five when I drew it in, harnessing the dark matter they were throwing off.
They had twined into a black, sparkling lump. I couldn’t see where one ended and the other began, and I reached out as I brought the ringing in my ears in line with the ringing of the universe. “Get off my shadow!” I said, blasting them both.
The twined ball rolled into the sun and split in two.
“Pluck!” I lurched forward, dropping my stick when one darted away, the flash of hazy nothing gone in an instant.
Shadows could kill one another by absorption.
It was one of the reasons they sought out a weaver for protection.
Was it Pluck before me, or Thoth? “Pluck!”
I jerked as an icy thread wrapped around my ankle, relaxing when a familiar thought foamed through my mind feeling somehow warmer than usual. I endure.
His relief twined through mine, washing the last ugly feel of Thoth from me. I sank to my knees to put Pluck in my shade, my hands tingling when I tried to gather him up. I had no amulet for him, and the loss hurt.
“Pocket. Now,” I demanded, and he pulled himself together, a thin snakelike form cocking his head at me. “Now!” I said louder. “Marty is scared out of her mind. We have to find her before Thoth does.”
She will find you. Pluck curved around my wrist, and I resigned myself to the frozen feel of him. Thoth is not her shadow. He followed her here, but he is not her shadow. Thoth would sunder himself in the light and die before taking a weaver.