Chapter 16 #2
“Benny? One, two, three,” I said when he nodded, and we all took a step forward, our trap sticks angled to keep Thoth from darting to the ceiling to escape.
Nog’s wrinkled face brightened in hope as Thoth shrank, the shadow’s cohesion vanishing as we pinned him in a smaller space. “It’s working!” he crowed, arthritic hands coated in dross as he held his trap stick steady. “One, two, three!”
My fingers were burning, and I shifted my grip. The dross needed to hold Thoth was breaking on me, doing who knew what, but I couldn’t let go. Benedict, too, was suffering, and I took a breath to warn him when the energy hazing his fingers burst into a sudden light.
“Benny!” I called out, but it was too late and his foot came down on a stray trap stick. The stick rolled and Benedict went down hard.
“Back! Get back!” the mage said, teeth clenched as he waved the trap stick at Thoth, driving him into retreat as Benedict found his feet and angled the stick to match ours.
My pulse quickened. We had to finish it fast. My hands were going numb, shaking. One more step, and the tips would touch, pinning him.
“Again!” Nog directed. “We almost have him. One, two, three!”
We stepped forward, setting the butts of the trap sticks on the tile floor as one and slowly angling them together.
Those sticks aren’t balanced, frothed through my mind. It wasn’t Pluck. It was Thoth. I could hear him, in my mind, and I froze. Dark matter wove upward through the stick in my hand, threads of an angry alien presence and energy moving like lightning to find ground.
Gasping, I let go. The stick remained, propped against the other two.
But dark matter followed me, stretching until the distance was too great and it fell back into the stick.
Threads snapped and recoiled—and then the pulse of the universe rebounded, pushing the gossamer lines of energy into an uncontrolled reaction.
Petra! Pluck fizzed, and then I ducked, turning to hold Pluck close when the stick exploded, bursting from the inside.
Pinpricks of heat, dross, and wood fragments peppered me. I stumbled, gasping when my foot rolled on a stick and I went down. My head hit the low table and I saw stars.
“Petra!” Benedict pulled me upright. Dazed, I watched from the floor as the tripod slowly collapsed and the remaining two sticks slid to a harsh clatter on the tile. Thoth was gone. “Petra, look at me. Are you okay?”
I put a hand to the back of my head, immediately regretting my nod when a headache exploded, throbbing all the way to the base of my spine.
Shadow spit, we had trapped him, but I had a feeling Thoth had let us do it, knowing he could break out anytime he wanted.
“I’m fine,” I said, wishing Pluck would stop fizzing so loudly.
I could hardly hear real words at all. “I’m okay,” I said again, then jerked when a drift of dross clinging to Benedict burned me.
“Are you sure?” The man was panicking, totally unaware that he was glowing like a lava monster to my weaver-sensitive eyes.
“Y-You’re covered in dross,” I muttered, and he dropped his hand, clearly at a loss. Pluck? Amulet. Now, I thought as I put a hand on the table and used it to stand up.
Not happening. Pluck renewed his coils around my arm like a tiny snake, numbing it all the way to my elbow. He could return. I may not be strong enough to overpower him, but I can keep him out of your mind.
Nog, at least, knew better than to try to touch me. Of the three of us, he had fared the best, seeing as none of the dross hazing the room would dare break on him. Which also meant he could still make fields. Thoth hadn’t damaged him, and a knot of tension eased about my chest.
“We almost had him,” the older man said. Expression pensive, he picked up the stick he’d used, eyeing it for possible damage before propping it against the wall.
“Hey, could you…” I waved to the room, embarrassed. “I’m, ah, really tired,” I added to cover for why I didn’t just make a field and de-dross the room myself.
“Sure.” Nog glanced out the window as if looking for Thoth, then exhaled.
Sensation rippled over me, and Pluck’s grip on my arm tightened. It was Nog’s field, and I stifled a shudder when it passed over me again, this time going the other way as he drew in the dross from the entire room to leave the sporadic glints of dross dust too small to be caught.
Pluck? I questioned, but the shadow was humming his approval. Clearly he felt the cooling sensation that Nog’s field had left behind as well—which made me curious. I rarely felt a field other than my own, but this had been obvious. How blind, I wondered, had I been?
“He broke the stick,” Nog said in wonder, releasing his field when the glow it contained shrank into a rather large spiky ball of inert dross that fell to the floor thanks to Benedict.
Nog picked it up, brow furrowed as he tossed it into the box with the rest. “That’s the shadow who followed Marty here?
Ryan said he’s not bound to her. What’s his problem? ”
He has many, Pluck fizzed.
Is there a reason they have to become ours?
I thought dryly, then gestured for Benedict to bring it in for a hug as I hobbled closer.
“You okay? You had dross breaking all over you.” It was a fact that Thoth had used to his advantage, I realized.
Perhaps it was dumb luck that no one had been left comatose.
“Headache the size of Montana.” Benedict’s arms enfolded me, and my eyes closed as I soaked in his warmth.
Pluck bubbled and fizzed his disapproval, but he never left my arm, even when Benedict pulled away, his eyes searching mine.
“Pluck kept him off me until you got up here. Otherwise, I’d be in the bed next to Marshal Owens. Nog, too.”
My lips parted and my focus blurred. Pluck?
You like the yeth. I did it for you, not him, Pluck fizzed, his embarrassment swirling through my gratitude. Nog is useful in getting rid of dross. That’s it.
“Seems like I owe you my life, Pluck. Thank you.” Nog sighted down each stick before carefully propping them against the wall.
“We almost had him,” he added in a mutter, but I knew better.
Thoth had allowed us to circle him. It would take more than three random, unbalanced sticks manned by a sweeper, a mage, and a broken weaver to catch Thoth.
The sticks, I mused. Perhaps if they were a balanced set…
“Benny…” I said, my voice tight with a new idea, but my next words faltered when that same universe bubble of sensation pushed up against me. Pluck’s grip tightened, and then he spilled from me to vanish into the hall, leaving only the memory of cold.
“Get away from me!” Marty shouted, her voice faint from downstairs.
Cheese and crackers. I’d forgotten about Marty.
“Marty?” I called, slipping when I tried to bolt. I grabbed a stick, almost rolling my ankle as I followed the faint fizz of Pluck’s thoughts to the stairway.
Benedict and Nog were right behind me, and I thundered down the stairs. “Marty!” I exclaimed as I shoved the unlatched fire door open.
Marty was in the corner, crouched and cowering with her face in her hands. The door from the loom to the vault was open. A new crack etched the wall like lightning. Pluck was nowhere, and I went to Marty, jumping when I touched her shoulder and she shrieked.
Her eyes were wide, and I swear she didn’t see me for a second before her expression cleared and she clutched at me, sobbing.
I knelt, holding the scared woman as she shook. “Marty, it’s okay. He’s gone.”
“He’ll be back…” she said between gasps for air. “He always comes back. Make him go away. Please, make him go away.”
But I couldn’t, and I held her as Nog and Benedict stared at the crack in the vault.
“He’s gone,” I mouthed silently, and the two men eased their stances.
“I’m so sorry,” Marty said as I drew her to her feet, her head down and her eyes red. “I tried to stop him. I tried to make a field. He just…” Wiping her nose, she looked at the cracked wall. “I am less than useless.”
“You’re okay. It’s a win,” I said, and Benedict extended a hand to her. “Let’s go.”
She nodded, and he and Nog helped her up the stairway.
This is not good. Mages will say we cracked the vault, not Thoth, fizzed through my thoughts, and I tensed until I realized the black scintillating haze pushing its way through the crack in the wall was Pluck, not Thoth.
A shudder shook both of us, born in his horror at having been in a vault—broken or not.
“Yeah? Well, we saw him do it,” I whispered as he coalesced into his dog form. The sound of Benedict’s and Nog’s voices filtered in from the ceiling, making the empty room even more creepy.
Pluck flicked an ear to send a drift of dark matter to hit the cement wall with a dull splat. You opened the vault. Thoth came and destroyed it. He waited until you were here. Waited until you opened it, not Herm. They will say we are in league with him.
Oh, for crying out loud…I closed my eyes in a long blink. He was right. Dana would be on this like hot on a pepper. Eyes opening, I shut the glass door to the loom and locked it. “I’m not taking the blame for this. Once we catch Thoth, we’ll get him to admit he’s working alone.”
Pluck fizzed, cocking his doggy head to eye me sourly. How? We just got our asses handed to us.
My lips parted at the modern phrase, then I managed a smile. “Not as bad as it might have been,” I said softly. “We’re figuring him out.” My gaze went to the soft sound of steps overhead, and then Nog’s uneasy, comforting laugh. “Thank you for protecting Nog and Benny.”
They were an unexpected asset, their liabilities amounting to less than the effort to keep them intact, bubbled faintly through my thoughts, and I started up the stairs, Pluck chilling my leg into a solid, cold nothing. Perhaps trying to do this alone was my original mistake.
“You mean like thousands of years ago?” I mused, my mind on what had gone wrong so I could piece out what had gone right. Three sticks had almost worked. Thoth’s fear had been real. Had it been the number of sticks that was the failure, or that they hadn’t been balanced? “I need to talk to Ryan.”