Chapter 16
I couldn’t feel Pluck fizzing in my thoughts. I turned to Marty, my worry tightening at the outright fear on the woman’s pale face.
“Pluck?” I sent my awareness out as if to make a field, knowing full well it wouldn’t form, but it might help me to listen…
to feel. Golden and scintillating, a casting of threads gusted out from me, visible only in my imagination.
A second thump and crash came from the living room, and I stared at the ceiling as the thrum of the universe seemed to pulse, pushing on the threads I’d thrown—dissolving them.
For one agonizing moment I froze until I figured out what I’d just felt. Someone had broken the laws of nature. Someone had done magic.
“Stay here.” Not knowing if Marty listened or not, I bolted upstairs, cursing myself for having left my stick by the door. I took the old steps two at a time, gasping as my foot slipped in some dross, sending me down, and I fell, palms breaking my fall. Benedict…
I clawed my way upstairs and ran to the front room, pulled by the sounds of desperation.
Fire burned my foot, dross snaking up my calf as I slid to a halt in the open archway.
I tried to beat the dross off, and it clung to my hand like living fire.
Bottles of dross lay broken between me and Benedict.
The man was pressed into the far corner, pinned by a shadowy figure, but I couldn’t move, in agony until I found a trap stick and used it to pull the dross from me.
The pain became bearable, and I stood, panting with a dross-coated stick in hand.
Dross hazed the room, glowing on the floor, dripping from the ceiling.
Nog was covered in it, out cold on the floor, but it was Benny I ached to reach as he fended off a wrathful shadow with my dad’s old trap stick.
It, too, was hazed with dross, and whereas the shadow clearly could shrug off Benedict’s magic, the waste created by it was another story.
“Nog!” Benedict shouted, his face pinched in heartache. “Is he alive? Petra, is he okay?”
My stick dripped lava, and I picked my way to him between the broken glass and glints of living pain. How does Pluck deal with this? drifted through me, and then, Where are you, Pluck? Because that wasn’t him weaving and dipping a threatening arc before Benedict.
Nog was breathing. “He’s alive,” I said as I pulled what dross I could from him, then yelped, my shoulder burning when a drop of it fell from the ceiling.
The shadow spun at my cry, the hazy outline coalescing into the shape of a man, hooded and cloaked, boots hazing to nothing before they touched the floor. Thoth.
“Where’s Pluck?” I demanded, scared. My shoulder burned, and then relief found me when Benedict’s field pulled the dross away and a spiny ball of inert dross plinked against the tiled floor.
“If you have hurt Pluck, I will vault you myself,” I vowed, then gasped, jerking when my foot found another drift of dross. Damn it all to hell, this is misery!
Dross was everywhere; I could hardly move without running into it.
Thoth pushed back his hood with a long-fingered hand to show a shock of black spiky hair.
His face was darkly sallow, the only color to him being his eyes, the bright green of them finding mine when he took his dark glasses off and they misted to nothing in his hands.
He was exactly how I remembered him from Cameron’s dream, angry and disdainful, his feet hazing above the dross-covered floor as he stood between Benedict and me.
Be careful, Petra, fizzed through me, and I almost cried in relief. He’s most dangerous when cornered.
Thoth sneered as his icy green gaze found Pluck twining about me in a weird mix of snake and cat. “You betray us again, Kahu,” he said, his voice low and brittle, like dirty ice. “You call it balance. I call it death. And like dross calls dross, death calls death.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I breathed, trying to keep him distracted as Benedict stood behind him, my dad’s trap stick still in his hand when he drew his fists apart.
A field so strong I could begin to see it formed between them, and Benedict’s lodestone on his ring sparkled as he filled it with energy.
“Clear!” he shouted as he threw the spell at the shadow.
Thoth’s expression melted, his entire construct collapsing in to avoid Benedict’s spell. The energy hit the wall beside me to collapse the rack of sticks, pulling it to the floor with a gravity sink. Sticks rolled everywhere, gathering dross as they went. I could move again.
But so could Thoth, and I shouted a warning as the shadow coiled into a snake and lunged at Benedict. One touch, and he’d be comatose.
Face white, Benedict scrambled back, jabbing out with the dross-coated stick to keep him at bay. It struck Thoth, and the snake recoiled, thrashing into a tight ball, glittering, black sparkles of pain falling from him.
“Nog,” I whispered, gingerly shaking his shoulder until he groaned, eyelids fluttering. What if he couldn’t form fields? What if my silence had condemned him to a life without magic? Clearly Benedict still could, but Benedict hadn’t been flat out on the floor.
Relief spilled into me when Nog sat up, his eyes widening as he saw Thoth writhing under the burning pain of a dross drift.
“Shadow spit. Is that…”
“Thoth,” I said as Benedict gathered more energy between his hands. “Can you move?” But what I really wanted to know was if he could make a field.
He nodded, and I shifted to stand between him and Thoth as the older man slowly got to his feet. Dross clung to him, ignored. Seeing as it burned me like fire, it was a good assumption that Thoth hadn’t broken him.
You okay? I thought, and Pluck’s grip on my arm eased until pinpricks of sensation began to return, painful all on their own.
Yes, fizzed through me. Use the freed dross. He’s terrified of it.
I ran the butt of the staff along the floor to gather dross and clear it from my feet. So am I.
Staff dripping pain, I faced Thoth. Behind him, Benedict stood ready. We couldn’t catch him with only two sticks. There was a clear path for Thoth to leave, and yet he didn’t, the shadow gathering himself again into a human form as if wanting to speak.
“I’m only saying this once. You need to leave,” I prompted. “Or you’re going to find yourself stuck in a bottle. We don’t tolerate shadow attacks in St. Unoc.”
A ragged, soul-shaking laugh bubbled up from Thoth.
It pushed against my mind as if looking for weakness, and I exhaled, not to make a field but to let the chiming of the universe flow through me to array a tangle of threads between us.
It wasn’t a field, but it was something between his mind and mine.
His thoughts retreated, his hazy edges finding definition until he was again solid, ragged gaps showing where he’d been burned. The shadow took a step closer, his foot going indistinct to avoid a haze of sparking dross.
Nog’s jaw was tight and his grip on the trap stick said he knew its power over Thoth. He hadn’t brought in shadow that I knew of, but he looked okay.
Three, I thought, glancing at Benedict, the mage also beneath Thoth’s concern. We had three trap sticks now, and Thoth was terrified of the dross they held. Three could hold him. Maybe.
“Nog, shift to my right to form a three-stick trap,” I whispered, and the man’s grim resolve changed to a confidence born in action. He instinctively knew my plan.
Thoth dissolved into a ribbon of blackness. I held my breath, thinking he was fleeing. But then he turned and headed for me.
“Get back!” I shouted as I swung the trap stick, spinning it right through the shadow to feel no resistance.
Icy vibrations ached up my arm when it hit the floor, and the ever-present chiming of the universe seemed to hesitate.
The solid hum collapsed into a wave that broke on me in a cascade of power and sparkles.
Dross eddied in the unseen wind, and I panicked, snatching up a second trap stick.
Thoth jerked free, clearly shaken as the tear I’d put in him folded in on itself, sparkling as he burned.
“You will stop!” I ordered. Pluck, get in the amulet, I demanded as dross burned my fingers where they held the staff. There’s too much dross.
Thoth took a step to the door, fear drawing him stiff when Nog shifted to block him. There were three of us. We could hold. With the dross clinging to the sticks, we could force him small enough such that Nog or Benedict could catch him in a field and, from there, a bottle.
“You would have us as thralls,” Thoth burbled and hissed, not entirely solid. “Your life will be forfeit before I allow us to be betrayed by your like again.”
I had time for a breath, nothing more. Thoth lashed out, his very substance parting to either side of me when I brought up a trap stick.
His edges curled in around it, burning me as he touched my hand.
Blackness threatened my mind, and then his presence was gone and he was again cowering from the sticks we held.
“Nog! Benny!” I shouted, worried for Pluck even as he curled ever tighter about my wrist, his mind fizzing in my own.
“We have him!” Pulse fast, I stared at the half man, half snake writhing on the floor trying to strike at us past the three sticks.
“On three, we take one step forward. We’re going to force him smaller.
If we can contain him in a field, we can put him in a bottle. ”
Green, glittering eyes focused on me, hatred flowing from them.
“On three,” Nog agreed. “We don’t need a vault to burn you to hell,” he whispered. “A bottle should hold you.”
This wasn’t who I wanted to be, but Thoth was out of control. I wouldn’t burn him in a vault, but we’d catch him, bottle him, and try to calm him down. He had followed Marty here. He could be reasoned with.
Can’t he? I thought, and Pluck’s thoughts frothed icily; he clearly believed otherwise.