Chapter 12 #2
Torn, I hesitated. “Cameron, I won’t leave you here,” I started, gasping when he slung his arm around my waist and jumped us both into the water.
“Pluck!” I protested as his field wrapped around my mind, mirroring his arm around my waist as he pushed to the distant shore, foggy with an indistinct reality.
I looked back once to the slowly spinning car. Thoth had regained it, standing atop it to yell at Cameron as she watched us swim away, eyes fixed and holding a harsh hope.
“I’m sorry,” Pluck said, his rhythmic kicking moving us closer to the shore, but the closer we got, the more indistinct it became. “This is my fault.” I made a mistake.
My foot touched bottom and the gray of the shore enveloped us. I took a step toward the land, and the sound and stink of dirty water vanished as if a window had closed. The pain in my wrist was gone. I felt myself jerk as reality reset, and my eyes flashed open.
I was in the hospital, my hand lightly in Cameron’s. I held my breath as the woman frowned, and then her expression smoothed to a bland nothing. We’d failed.
“Pluck?” I said, surprised my voice was clear, not raspy with floodwater.
Cameron’s hand was hot, and I let it go.
She lives, fizzed through me, Pluck’s usual clear thoughts somewhat ragged. Thoth won’t hurt her as long as you exist. He knows you will return for her.
The image of a slim, soaked man flashed through me, and I quashed it before he could see it in my mind.
“Damn right,” I said, fingering my wrist. It was fine, but something had broken, and I stared at the room, wondering at the glitter of dross skirting the corners like dust in a sunbeam.
It hadn’t been there before. Lev must have checked on us. Brought it in. “Thoth is a dick.”
In a word. Pluck collapsed into a black puddle, not even an eye showing.
“Lev?” I turned as the door swung open, but it was Benedict, his shoulders hunched in worry, eyes holding a heavy concern for me.
“Hey…” he said, gaze going to Cameron unmoving and still on the bed. “Lev brought me up-to-date. He took Marty down to the cafeteria. He said you were going to try to bring Cameron out of her coma.” His eyes went to the woman, clearly asleep. “I’m sorry.”
I stood, my arms going around him in a needed hug.
My eyes closed and I lingered despite Pluck’s annoyance fizzing lightly through my thoughts, breathing Benedict in and soaking in his belief in me.
“It was Thoth,” I said, voice muffled by his shirt, and then I pushed back, my grip easing.
“We found her, Benny. Thoth did this to her to get to me. I can’t believe I left her there, but as long as I’m alive, he won’t hurt her any more than he has. ”
A drift of dross glinted like a sunbeam in his hair, and I let go to reach for it, thinking it looked especially bright.
Benedict’s smile was thin but honest. “Then there’s hope. Pluck, you okay?”
The black puddle took on the hint of a dog, flicking an ear to send a splat of dark matter to hit the IV stanchion.
The knot in my gut eased at the ofttimes-used show of annoyance.
“He’s okay,” I said, remembering the slim man atop the SUV.
“I need to talk to Ryan. Cameron is trapped in a dream state, but we saw Thoth, and he admitted to attacking her.” I reached to arrange Benedict’s hair, running my fingers through it to catch the dross drift before it could break on him.
“Not that anyone will believe what I say,” I muttered, then yelped, jerking away when the dross haze burned my fingertips like fire.
Shocked, I wildly shook my hand to fling it off, staring at my fingers now a bright red.
Dross had always burned, but this? This had been like touching fire.
Benedict stared at me. “You okay?”
“Ahhh,” I hedged as the dross drifted to the floor, then I jerked at the odd rasp across my senses, jumping clear when Cameron’s bed rail crashed into the lowest setting.
“Petra! Oh, my gosh.” Worry creased Benedict’s brow as he yanked me clear. “Are you okay? It must not have been fastened securely.”
Still under the bed, Pluck sank deeper into himself, almost disappearing.
“Um, I’m fine,” I said, gingerly rubbing my burned fingertips as I eyed the dross eddying about the floor.
It was the same drift I’d pulled from Benedict—but there was less of it.
Disbelief swirled about my mind as I remembered the odd rasping sensation, like the cogs of the universe catching—balancing its books.
My pulse quickened. “I think that dross just broke on me.”
“No way!” Benedict exclaimed.
Brow furrowed, I reached for the small wisp, steeling myself against the unusually hot feel. It prickled along my fingers as it usually did…and then, when I touched it, it went hot.
Yelping, I jerked clear, my hand whapping against the rolling bedtable and bruising my knuckles. Shocked, I held my wrist tight to my chest, remembering the feel of Thoth breaking it in Cameron’s nightmare. Shadow spit, what if…
I am sorry, Petra, fizzed through me, and I jumped yet again, startled at the flush of prickly sensation on my ankle. I never should have suggested we try to free her. It was a trap, and I led you into it.
“Petra?” Concern pinched Benedict’s voice. But I couldn’t look from Pluck as I remembered trying to wall Thoth off from my thoughts that second time…and failing. He’d done something, broken something. Weavers couldn’t be bested by shadow, but he’d done something to me.
“Um…” I waved Benedict’s concerned hunch away, the beginnings of horror trickling through me. “Give me a sec,” I whispered, then exhaled to make a small, tidy field.
My shoulders slumped in relief when I felt it begin to form, but it didn’t last, and panic edged in when the entire thing unraveled into a massive tangle of unusable threads.
I could hear the weft of it ringing like a giant bell, the soundless boom of the big bang echoing off the edges of the universe—but the weave that came from me didn’t follow, and without that, I wasn’t making a field.
I was making a long, useless, tangled string.
I can’t make a field, I thought in panic as my gaze rose to Benedict’s. I can’t make a field and dross is breaking on me.
“Petra?” Benedict took my elbow and bent close. “What is it?”
I licked my lips, my gaze going to Pluck slouched with his ears pinned. “I can’t make a field,” I whispered.