Chapter 25 #2
No, they wouldn’t, and I swallowed hard as I bumped into Benedict. The four balanced sticks were slung over his shoulder, but they weren’t much good unless I wanted to hit someone with them. “Where’s Pluck?” I said. They knew he wasn’t with me or they wouldn’t be so brazen.
And with that, I got it. They have Pluck. The thought struck through me like fire, terrifying me.
Smug, the mage held a glass lodestone draped around her neck, little glints of light leaking from between her fingers.
“Resisting will only make you look guilty,” she said as we kept backing up.
“I’m detaining you both for questioning concerning the recent vault destructions.
” Her eyes narrowed. “Amulet, Grady,” she added, voice harsh. “Set it down. Now! Strom, you too.”
If you have hurt Pluck…Benedict was at my shoulder.
I had to get out of here. Find Pluck. Fear tightened my spine.
“Think about what you’re doing, Dana,” I said as Benedict guided me around a workbench.
“We know Marty told you Thoth was destroying the vaults. So did Cameron. You keep this up, people are going to think you’re with Thoth. ” Pluck!
Dana’s eye twitched. There were too many rifles pointed at us. Benedict might be able to explode the shells in the chambers but not all at once. Not spaced out as they were.
“Lodestones off! Now!” Dana barked. “I won’t tell you again.”
She’d already taken my lodestone. I wasn’t going to let her take Marty’s. My foot burned. I glanced down expecting dross but seeing only sun. Benedict’s lodestone glittered and I froze, startled when the sensation of breaking threads rolled over me like a wave. He was doing magic.
“Benny…” I reached out, fumbling to take my dad’s sticks when he shoved them at me.
The knotted dross burned as it bumped through my fingers, and then my head snapped up when his lodestone flashed into play and one of the mages facing us cried out and dropped his rifle.
It hit the cement floor with a crack and broke in two, condensation icing the metal.
He’d quick-frozen it. His practice in freezing dross was paying off.
“Take them! Move!” Dana shouted as she ducked behind a workbench.
The four men rushed us. I panicked, slipping as I spun to flee.
Arms flailing, I hit the floor, gasping when a spell zipped over my head where I’d just been.
“Let go!” I shouted when someone reached for me, and I swung the bundle of my dad’s sticks at him.
They hit with a solid smack, breaking the tie and sending sticks rolling everywhere.
Benedict bellowed in anger. Someone grabbed my ankle when I tried to stand, yanking me down again. Kicking out, I stretched for a stick.
My breath exploded from me as I got it. Turning where I sat, I swung my stick.
It hit the man’s shoulder with a pop of magic, and I gasped when Marty’s lodestone, safe around my neck, flashed green.
Dark matter iced through my mind, my hand.
I hadn’t willed it to come forth. I wouldn’t even know how.
But I felt it pour from me to the guard.
The man cried out and fell back, wreathed in a green haze.
Pluck? I thought, but it hadn’t been him. It had been me. I had done it. How?!
I watched in horror as half-seen threads coiled and hissed about me with the transparent color of the aurora borealis, lashing out with the cold crack of ice breaking until the heat of the room evaporated them. The man lay face down on the floor, ice rimming his ears and hair.
Stunned, I did nothing even when someone yanked me to my feet and pried the stick from my hand.
I looked up, startled when I realized it wasn’t Benedict.
“Wait,” I protested as the chain raked across my ear and they took Marty’s lodestone.
The man I’d downed shuddered, taking a gasping breath and curling into a ball, cold.
He was okay. But what in the sweet hell had I done?
I wasn’t a mage. I didn’t know how to make a cold spell.
And yet I had. Twice now. First to escape that cell, and then now.
“Benedict?” I warbled, surprised to see him kneeling with his hands behind his head in a tiny patch of sun. Dana had his lodestone as well, but she didn’t seem happy as she stood before us dabbing a shop towel against her jawline.
“Get the sticks. Put them with her amulet,” she demanded. “And don’t let Strom near any glass!” she barked when one of the mages with her went to gather them. He was limping. Benedict must have kicked some serious mage ass.
“You just keep digging yourself in deeper,” she said to me, but I was still trying to figure out what I’d done. I had been holding a stick and had an amulet full of dark matter, and then…
“Where’s Pluck?” I whispered at her mocking expression.
“What did you do with Pluck!” I shouted, and the man who had taken my amulet nudged me to be quiet.
I spun, glaring at him. I was not going back to that cell.
“What…did you do to Pluck?” I said again, and Dana came closer, thinking she was safe, that I needed a lodestone to do magic.
That’s right. A little closer, babe, I thought, eyes narrowed.
“He’s been bottled,” she said, standing just out of my reach. “Like every shadow should be. He will be parceled into little tiny bits and put into dross-go sticks.”
Ice infused my spine, spreading to my fingers and toes until the air touching my face felt hot.
The chiming of the universe rolled over me in waves, each one a demand to do something.
Anything. My eyes flicked to the dross hazing the floor, undoubtedly created when they brought us down…
and a feeling of avarice slipped through me. It was not bad luck. It was power.
And I could use it.
“Petra…” Benedict whispered as my hands clenched.
“Get them to the van,” Dana demanded. “If they don’t tell us where Herm and the rest are, we burn the shadow right in front of her.”
“You can’t do this!” Benedict shouted, stumbling when someone pushed him, and I rocked into motion when one of the mages shoved me as well. “Pluck is smart. He thinks. He talks. Dana, it’s murder.”
“It’s not murder. You have to be a person for it to be murder.” Dana shoved Benedict into taking a step. “Tell me where Herm is and I might let it stay in a bottle.”
Someone pushed me with the end of my dad’s stick and I stumbled forward.
My senses tingled. Benedict was helpless without his lodestone, but I wasn’t, and I eyed the dross the mages had created curling up like heat waves in the desert.
None of it was close, and I couldn’t make a damn field to catch it.
“She can’t do anything without her shadow,” Dana said when someone shoved me to the door. “They can all go into the same van.”
I had to get to the dross. I didn’t care if it burned me or not. Pluck was in a bottle, and nothing else mattered.
Eyes narrowed, I looked to see who had my dad’s sticks.
It was the guy I’d frozen. Hunched and clearly still feeling the cold, he had them in a loose bundle.
My gaze slid to Benedict, my eyebrows high in question.
Benedict nodded, grim. We were almost to the door to the hall.
There wouldn’t be any dross out there. I had to move now.
“Be ready,” I said soundlessly to Benedict, and he tensed, not knowing what I was going to do. Hell, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Pluck wasn’t answering me, and I wasn’t sure I could intentionally duplicate what I’d done.
I stopped stock-still just before the door to the hall. Dross glittered out of my reach. This was the closest I’d get to it…and then my chance would be gone. “Where’s Pluck?”
Impatient, Dana stood next to the doorway. “Get her moving,” she said to the two mages behind me.
Either they would make the mistake of pushing me with their hands, or they would make the mistake of using one of my dad’s sticks. One would get the mage thrown into Benedict so I could reach the dross, the other would give me the reach I needed to get the dross with a little more finesse.
“Out,” one of them demanded, and the hard butt of the stick jammed between my shoulder blades.
Stick it is…I lurched forward, spinning to grasp the silver-shod end. Feet shifting, I found my center and yanked the staff with all my frustration, my grip sure because of the symbols my dad had etched into the smooth wood. The man let go, staggering until he fell, his lodestone clutched in fear.
“She’s got a stick!” someone yelled, and Dana ducked, thinking I was going to hit them with it.
“Damn it, Anderson!” she shouted, and then dark matter seemed to burst into existence in my mind’s eye as I inhaled.
Elated, I slammed the stick into the dross.
The latent energy burst into heat, breaking as I willed the threads of dark matter through it.
Heat flooded me; I tamed it as I inhaled, bringing more threads of dark matter into play, binding the power the breaking dross released until it was entirely mine.
“Down!” I shouted, and Benedict dropped, slipping from his guard’s grip to hit the floor.
Exuberant, I spun the staff to draw the released energy into me. It hummed louder than the universe. My heart beat once…and with a twist of thought, I tuned the breaking energy, turning it into something I could use—and shoved the force right back out again through the stick.
A fog of ice crystals exploded from the whirling stick, carried by a cold green light. The boom of energy was soundless, but the chime of the universe rocked with the release as everyone still standing was shoved backward by a burst of driving snow.