Chapter 25 #3
Dana hit the wall by the door with a cry, eyes closed and slumped even before she hit the floor.
I watched to make sure she was breathing as the snow settled, covering her in a faint white.
Three of the four men were down as well, but the fourth, the one I’d downed before, had dropped at my warning.
Eyes wide, he stared at me from the floor.
“Well?” I said, and he rolled the remaining three sticks to me.
Ticked, I scooped them up, fingers cramping at the icy chill that had taken them.
“Petra,” Benedict croaked.
I spun, sticks an awkward tangle as I lurched to help him. His head was down, and his eyes were streaming. Shadow spit, he had his eyes open, I thought as I grabbed his shoulder. He jerked, shoving me as I shouted, “It’s me! It’s me!”
His breath came in with a rasp, and he blinked as he wobbled to his feet. “I couldn’t look away,” he said, his sight clearly returning as he focused on the man still conscious. “Petra. You tuned the entire drift.”
“And then exploded it,” I added, wondering if doing magic would always leave me this cold.
Dana groaned, a shaky hand rising to touch the back of her head. Lips pressed, I tugged Benedict toward the hall. Pluck…“We have to find Pluck.”
But Benedict pulled from my grip to bend low over Dana, roughly searching her until he found both our lodestones.
The woman was beginning to come to, and Benedict tossed Marty’s moldavite amulet to me before putting his lodestone ring on.
Grabbing the woman’s shoulder, he shook her awake.
“Pluck!” he shouted, and she ineffectively pushed at him, little breathy swears passing her lips.
Her eyes, too, were blurry and red as she tried to focus.
“Where is Pluck!” he asked again, thumping her shoulder against the wall to get her attention. The snow fell from her, leaving wet marks.
“Van,” she said, and I jammed Marty’s amulet into my pocket, anxious to leave. “You’re going down for this, Strom,” she panted, and Benedict backed off.
“Yeah?” he said bitterly. “If you have hurt Pluck, I’ll crush your lungs to wet paper myself.”
“Benny,” I whispered, not liking this side of him.
He gave her a last look. The mages were beginning to move; that is, all but the one who had ridden the blast out on the floor, ashen faced as he watched us.
“Van.” Benedict took my elbow to draw me into a quick jog. I could feel him tapping into his lodestone, sensed the energy gathering in his hands like spiderwebs on my face.
“Anderson! Get up!” I heard Dana demand faintly from the lab when we pushed through the double doors and out into the parking lot.
The sun hit me, and I faltered. I couldn’t feel Pluck, and I staggered after Benedict as the heat from the pavement spiraled up through me, driving the spell’s chill away.
“Wait,” Benedict said as we neared the black van and he drew me to a halt. “There might be someone here,” he added, and I nodded. The van looked empty, but we settled to either side of the sliding door. On the silent count of three, Benedict yanked it open. My pulse hammered. Pluck? Nothing.
“Marty!” Benedict blurted, then lurched up and into the van. “Where’s Pluck?”
“I couldn’t stop her!” Marty shrieked, and I pulled myself in to see that Benedict had practically pinned her to the middle bench seat. Her hands were zip-tied before her and she’d been crying. “I tried. She won’t listen.”
“Where is Pluck!” I demanded, then followed her gaze to the front of the van.
There in the cup of the console was a small thick-walled bottle.
No…I reached for it, feeling the icy hint of something within.
It was tinted black. I could see nothing past the glass.
Someone had sealed the lid by melting the glass top.
Experience said I could drop the thick-walled, lab-grade bottle from a one-story building onto pavement and the glass wouldn’t shatter.
But I was really pissed. I’d break it. Somehow.
Hang on, Pluck. I’m here, I thought as I lurched out of the van, glancing at the silent building before setting the bottle clinking onto the pavement. This might be messy, but it was going to take one hell of a tap and I didn’t want to break our ride.
“Start the van,” I said as Benedict snapped Marty’s zip-strip and the woman rubbed her wrists. “Wait. I need dross.”
He took a step down onto the pavement and into the sun. “Um, sure.”
Hang on, Pluck. My head snapped up when the main door to the building slammed open. It was Dana, yelling for the mages with her to stop us, demanding that we get away from the van. I felt the universe pulse when Benedict did something…and a cooling sensation of breaking threads whispered over me.
“It wasn’t me,” Marty pleaded. “I didn’t tell her where we were. I tried to stop her!”
Dana staggered into a slow run. The three men with her didn’t look eager to engage. “Start the van!” I shouted as Benedict’s dross burned my hand. This was going to be close.
Benedict made a frustrated noise, but he vanished back into the van.
Exhaling, I twined threads around the dross he’d left behind, wringing it like a wet rag until it broke.
Energy flooded me and I took it in, tuning it just slow enough that it wouldn’t burn me, fast enough that I could use it.
Green and pale, light streamed from my hands as I settled them around the top of the bottle and willed the cold to snap the glass.
Heat didn’t work for me, but cold? Cold I could do.
Please, please, please…Be okay, Pluck. My fingers turned blue and ice coated the bottle. My hands began to shake, and still I drew it colder, colder, until with a ping, the bottle shattered.
“Pluck!” I exclaimed, then cried out in pain as his presence slammed into my thoughts.
Hand to my head, I staggered, struggling to see as the shadow boiled up, pissed to the ends of the earth.
From the building, shouts rose, but I couldn’t take my eyes from Pluck as he made a quick swirl around me.
You are alive. You are unhurt, he thought, his relief twining through mine as my ice cream headache vanished. Where. Is. Marty?
“Van,” I said, and he was gone.
“Pluck! Thank God!” Benedict shouted over the roar of the engine. “Petra, let’s go!”
I reached for the opening and pulled myself in, but my motion to roll the door closed faltered when Marty shrieked in fear.
“Pluck?” I froze. Marty cowered on the middle bench seat, pressed into the wall of the van with Pluck standing over her. He looked like a human, and his hands shook.
“It wasn’t me! I didn’t tell her where we were!” the scared woman said as a sparking green haze flickered over the shadow’s clenched fist.
“If I thought you had, you would be dead,” he intoned, then turned to me. “Warn Herm. Now,” he added. “He’s walking into a trap.”
Oh no. Herm…I glanced at Marty curled up on the seat, then rolled the door shut.
Out the front window, Dana skidded to a halt twenty feet back, yet another lodestone winking as three of her men clustered behind her.
“Benny, go!” I shouted, but he’d already put the van in motion, and I clutched the seat, wobbling as I sat in it and buckled up.
“Call him.” Pluck glared at Marty, his eyes flecked with rage. “Before it’s too late.”
Tires squeaking, Benedict spun the van. I gripped the dash, breath held until we were facing the right way and racing across the parking lines for the road. Through the side mirror, I watched Dana stand where she was, her head down over her phone even as she yelled at the men.
“Wow. That was close.” Benedict leaned forward to look both ways before bouncing out onto the road. “You okay, Pluck?” Twisting, he worked his phone from his back pocket and handed it to me.
My fingers shook as I tried to unlock it. Herm. I had to call Herm.
“I’m so sorry,” Marty half sobbed from behind Benedict. “Pluck, I am so sorry. I didn’t know what to do.”
“So you ran away?” Pluck shook, his frustration twining about my shock. “You left Petra and Benedict to be caught!”
“I’m sorry!” she wailed, making me wonder why Pluck was being so harsh. He had a right to be angry, but it felt displaced.
Feeling my question, the shadow turned from her, his balance perfect even when the van hit a pothole and bounced.
Kneeling behind the front seats, he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Benedict’s burner phone didn’t have a password, but my fingers were too cold to register on the screen and I rubbed them on my arm to make some friction heat, cursing the delay.
Shadow spit. “Do you think Marty told her where we were?” I asked, trying to figure out where Pluck’s anger was coming from.
“It wasn’t me!” she shouted, pressed into an almost fetal position in the middle seat. “They had guns! I didn’t know what to do, so I ran!”
Pluck’s anger, frustration…and a hint of chagrin flooded me.
Overlaying it was a solid belief that she hadn’t called Dana.
He believed her, but as I saw his furrowed brow and pinched eyes, I could tell it was tempered with the shadow’s bitter opinion that Marty was a coward.
She had run away when she could have run to warn us.
His eyes met mine, and a feeling of guilt sparked through him as he realized that the betrayal he felt wasn’t aimed entirely at Marty but someone else. Someone in his past.
Pluck? I thought, and he turned away.
Head down, I texted Herm to abort.
why? pinged onto my phone’s screen, and my shoulders eased. He was still free.
trap, I texted, then added, see you at aasta’s place.
“We’re good,” I said when Herm’s inventive swearing popped up onto my screen, banishing my worry that it wasn’t actually him texting me back. Relieved, I set Benedict’s phone on the dash. No one swore like the old Spinner.
“There’s a stick in Dana’s house,” Marty whispered, utterly miserable. “I know I saw one. It’s real. I’m not a liar. And I didn’t tell her where we were.”
His shoulders tense, Benedict scanned the oncoming traffic for any sign of blue and amber lights. Depressed, I glanced out the window at the passing buildings. “Pluck, it’s okay.”
“I should not have taken my hurt out on her,” Pluck whispered, hints of betrayal hazing our joined thoughts. “It’s an old pain, and though she did abandon us, she is not its cause.”
I shifted to sit sideways so I could see both Marty and Pluck.
The shadow was hazing, his green eyes holding a deep regret as he looked at Marty snuffling in the corner.
“Pluck…” I started, and then he dissolved into a shadow and slunk under my seat.
Please talk to me, I thought, and he closed his mind.
“Did you get to Herm in time?” Benedict asked, and I nodded, fingers tightening on Marty’s borrowed lodestone until they cramped with cold. “Where are we going?”
My brow furrowed. That Marty had abandoned us to capture hurt. I wasn’t sure how much we should expect from her, though. She didn’t owe us anything. Did she?
“The memorial garden,” I said, and Benedict flicked on the turn signal.
We had lost the fifth stick, but we would face Thoth all the same.