Chapter 28 #3
Eyebrows rising, Dana shifted her weight to one foot, a finger going to her jawline in a show of confidence and understanding.
“Ah. I see. All five aspects of magic working together,” she said, motion fast as she rocked into a smooth step-click, step-click to block our way out.
“That’s why you risked everything for a balanced stick.
Five would enable a more secure connection.
And an airologist would certainly widen your choice of…
bottles. What would the damaged weaver be doing?
” she asked, almost simpering at me. “She can’t protect you from him dipping into anyone’s mind and leaving them… addlebrained.”
Damaged weaver? I thought, not so much insulted as wondering why she didn’t use my name. Pluck, any progress?
I know where he isn’t. I’m circling in.
Benedict returned to my side, the mage clearly not liking Dana’s sudden shift in mood. “She and Pluck are the catalyst that will keep us all working together,” he said guardedly. “Through Pluck, she can communicate and coordinate our actions to hold Thoth safely until you can put him in a bottle.”
“Indeed…” she drawled. “And you’re certain it will work?”
“Enough to save your job,” Herm muttered.
Something was wrong. I could feel it—a shifting of threads, drifting as if in a fell wind.
Benedict’s presence beside me was as sure and confident as always as he frowned at Dana’s callous disregard. Herm was a few steps away, and both Dana and I stiffened when I felt a haze of threads brush against my awareness. Herm had sent out a field.
And Dana felt it?
Suddenly I had no idea what was going on, but I knew I wanted Pluck with me. Apart we were vulnerable; together, we might have a chance. Pluck!
Thoth is close, Pluck answered, his worry twining with mine as he saw my thoughts. Petra, be careful.
Face pale, I looked past Benedict to Herm. “We have to go,” I whispered. “We can convince her later. We have to go. Now!”
Herm spun to me. “Now?” he blurted, and then his expression hardened when saw Dana blocking our easy exit, the woman standing confidently with her hands loose at her sides—waiting. “Thirty minutes, Dana?” he said sourly. “You couldn’t even be truthful about that?”
“The clock has stopped,” Dana said, and Herm squinted at her in anger. “I have decided to help you. Yes. Of course.”
“You’ll help?” I said in surprise, but there was no relief. She didn’t look scared, or hopeful, or eager, or even afraid that Thoth might have a problem with this.
“I have no choice,” she said, her smile looking oily and fake.
“Where is Pluck? Sealing him into a bottle at the stick lab was a mistake. I…would like to apologize,” she said, her words faltering as if it was hard for her to do.
But she was an elitist mage. It probably was.
“I need to apologize. Especially if we’re going to work together. ”
“He’s on his way,” I said, mistrusting this.
“Good!” It was almost a shout, and I frowned at the soft echo hissing about.
I don’t feel Thoth anymore, fizzed through me, and that sinking sensation grew.
Did he leave? Is he cracking the other vault?
And then Dana beamed when Pluck walked in, my shadow’s glower of apprehension growing when he saw Herm’s unease, Dana’s confidence, and how close Benedict stood beside me.
“I see you found your uniform,” Dana said sarcastically, and my lips parted.
I’d heard that before. Aasta had said it.
“Too bad it’s a little too late,” she added—right before she wound her arm in a circle, gathering power.
“It’s him!” I shouted, voice echoing harshly as I backed into Benedict. “He’s in Dana!”
Petra! Down! thundered in my head as Pluck launched himself at me.
He hit and we crashed to the cold floor and out of the reach of Thoth’s magic.
It’s him! I thought as the floor where I’d been sort of went fizzy and indistinct under Dana’s magic, but Pluck already knew.
Thoth had taken the woman over, wearing her like Aasta wore a rez, knowing all the right responses because he was living rent-free in her mind.
Fool yeth, I berated myself. I’d known he could possess another without leaving them insane.
But to take her over so fast, with only a small shudder to show for it? No wonder no one could catch him.
Worse, we had just told him how an airologist could catch a reluctant shadow.
“Pluck, no,” I whispered, sitting up when Pluck coalesced into a snarling dog, dark matter hissing as it dripped from his jaws and spiky darts of energy hazed over his black skin. He stood between us and Dana, a sure and obvious threat.
Herm and Benedict were down, struggling to move with their feet stuck in the floor, having been snared by Dana’s abilities to sink them into it. It would take another airologist to get them out, and one hell of an etherologist to befuddle the memory of any mundane who saw.
I scrambled up. “Pluck,” I whispered as I tried to pull him to safety, but my hand went right through him.
Confident and sure within Dana’s body, Thoth walked toward me.
I could see it now, but he wasn’t trying to hide it anymore.
“I took you out of the game,” he said, Dana’s voice holding the shadow’s haughty cadence.
“You were supposed to live out your pathetic life pining for something I stole from you. And yet you leave me impressed. Your skills are not weaver, nor shadow. It almost pains me to do this, such a harsh sentence for one with so much potential. But I suppose it’s just, if you were going to do it to me. ”
My expression blanked. He was going to put me in a bottle? How?
You will not touch her, Pluck threatened, his thoughts icy in mine.
“That’s Thoth!” Herm shouted, the man sitting on the floor as he struggled to unlace his shoes. “Benedict…”
Thoth smacked Benedict’s magic down with half a thought even as the threads of Dana’s magic began to swirl about Pluck and me like migraine stars.
“You will never win, Pluck. You want a perfect balance, but mages kill perfection,” Thoth said through Dana, and then I gasped when Thoth harnessed the woman’s magic and the energy from her lodestone cascaded over us.
Vertigo hit me as I felt the world shift.
I gasped as the world turned inside out and I was floundering.
Energy poles flipped to align mass and make the space within them line up—and I sank into the floor.
“Pluck!” I shouted as I scrabbled for a handhold that no longer existed. Triumphant, Dana watched as I felt myself slip…And then I fell, sinking through cement and rebar as if they were clouds.
I hit the floor of the room below with a painful thump.
I struggled to breathe; my breath was knocked out of me.
I couldn’t see, and I forced myself onto my hands and knees and blinked to try to make my eyes work.
The echoes of my breath came back from distant walls, but there was no light.
There was nothing. All I could sense was a smooth perfection under my hands.
“Benny?” I rasped, thinking I had passed out, but he didn’t answer.
More rasping hisses rose as I shifted to sit. My head hurt, but I managed to inhale to create a mass of threaded dark matter between my hands. Choosing one strand, I pulled it tight, feeling a surge of cold when the light reflected off the glistening distant walls.
“Oh no,” I whispered as I looked up, not at the expected silver disk and collapsed diaphragm of Biosphere 2’s lung but at the shiny, smooth nothing of what had to be a vault, a glass-lined, unbreakable, sealed vault.
“Pluck?” I called, and then I saw him as he sat, knees pulled to his chin.
“I know of no way to get out,” he said.
We were caught, both of us, like shadows in the noon sun.