Chapter 31 #3
“He’s out!” Cameron exclaimed, clearly sensing Thoth leave Dana’s body. “Petra! Snag him!”
My breath caught at the haze of gray energy darting to the shadows. Thoth had evaporated. Pluck! I thought as I opened my mind, pulling the roar of the universe into me and inhaling to draw a massive wad of dark matter threads to me.
Pluck’s thoughts strengthened in mine, weaving through the weft of dark matter to make a net…and with a decisive twist of presence, he pulled it from my hands and physically threw it at the shadow.
Scintillating in the moonlight like thought itself, the spell sped across the garden trailing ribbons of energy. “We got him!” I crowed as Pluck’s aim was true and it snapped about the shadow.
And we did have him. For about two seconds.
Eyes glowing, Thoth coalesced into his usual human form, shredding the net to mere sparkles. “You should have stayed where you were, rotting,” he intoned, then jumped at Cameron, evaporating even as he moved.
“Flaming yeth!” Pluck swore.
Thoth vanished inside the marshal. Stiffening, Cameron went down on one knee.
“No!” I reached out as Cameron convulsed once and her head snapped up, her unnatural intensity landing on me.
“Fools. Five sticks is a myth I started,” Thoth said with Cameron’s voice as her hand clasped her lodestone and a brilliant glow seeped between her fingers. “It makes it easier to find those who would stop me. No one ever makes five sticks.”
It’s happening again…rasped through me, agony and regret coloring the harsh cold. My gaze shot to Pluck, but the shadow looked as confused as I was. It hadn’t been him in my head, and I turned to Marty. Aasta? Was I hearing all shadow voices?
I heard her, too, Pluck fizzed, his wonder genuine.
“He’s got Cameron!” Herm exclaimed, and Lev choked, his prepared magic faltering. He couldn’t hurt the woman. The arguments, the waiting outside her hospital room: he’d been quietly carrying a torch for her since finding her on the floor of my apartment. Thoth knew it.
“Let go of me, you cretin!” Dana was shouting. “It’s me! Get off!”
Herm yelped when Dana backhanded him, the older man handing her a stick when she got up. She was clearly aware, pissed off, tired, cranky, and a hundred percent ready to kick some shadow ass as she got to her feet, hunched and angry.
“Where is he?” the disheveled woman intoned, and both Herm and Pluck pointed to Cameron.
“You!” she added, the word almost a curse.
She might not trust Pluck or me, but she knew that Thoth was garbage, and her lodestone gave a weak glimmer and hiccuped to nothing.
“You used up my lodestone!” Angry, she patted her clothes for a replacement, her eyes alight when she pulled an amulet from her pocket—only to realize it was mine.
“I can’t use this. This is yours. What did you do with my lodestones? ”
“Dana!” I shouted as I wrapped my fingers around nothing and made a light. “Here!”
“You can make a light?” Dana said, clearly shocked as her lodestone flashed with a renewed energy.
I nodded, my motion to catch my lodestone slow with cold when she threw it at me.
Cold. I was so cold—until my lodestone smacked into my palm and the waste energy zipped into the ancient glass.
The heat of the night slammed into me, and my head snapped up.
Much better…fizzed through me, but I wasn’t sure who thought it.
“You can make light,” Thoth whispered through Cameron, and then he turned the woman’s eyes to Pluck. “I can’t allow you to exist,” Thoth said through Cameron, moving the woman’s hand as he made a spell to snuff us to sleep with Cameron’s ether magic.
I took a step back, inhaling to find more dark matter, shocked when a wad of dross hit him/her right across the face.
It was Marty, the woman looking scared but determined as Aasta twined a tendril of sparking gray around her heel.
Cameron stiffened and, with a cry of outrage, tripped on a raised paver and went down, arms pinwheeling.
“Drive him out!” Herm shouted, and he and Marty sprang forward, a weird laugh coming from the old Spinner as they flung more dross at him until the shadow pulled from Cameron in an ugly black haze.
“It’s me!” Cameron shouted when Dana sank her into the ground, but it was too late. The marshal was now in the grotto as well, her pained cry of surprise echoing up from the well.
Thoth coalesced as himself, indignant and angry as he stood on a bench to keep his feet clear of the drifting dross. “Two down,” Thoth said, his gaze alighting on Lev.
“Lev! Move!” I shouted, and the light between my hands went out as I brought forth a mass of threads for Pluck to make a field to shield the man, but it was too late and Lev’s gathered energy fizzled to nothing as he collapsed.
“Lev!” I ran to him, not knowing why Thoth kept going for my friends, not me—unless he was scared. I fell to a kneel before Lev as Herm continued to bombard Thoth with dross that Dana kept making as she tried to get a spell on the swiftly darting shadow.
“Still breathing,” I said as I patted Lev’s cheeks. “Pluck, can you break the spell?”
I handed Pluck Lev’s stick, and the shadow blinked in surprise. Clearly he’d never considered using one.
We were all again ourselves, but Benedict still hadn’t made it up the stairs, and now Cameron was there with him. How were we supposed to act together when he kept dropping into us?
“Petra!” Herm shouted, and I caught the thick-walled bottle he threw to me. “Marty and I will cover him in dross until he evaporates. Stuff him in a bottle!”
Pluck helped me up. Stuff him in a bottle. It was what we were down to.
Bottle in hand, I swung my stick in great arcs to gather dross, flicking it at Thoth to keep him distracted. Marty and Herm were doing the same, and my fingers began to burn as the energy threatened to break on me, little discharges prickling up the staff to find me.
“You are like flies!” Thoth screamed under the onslaught, and with a pop, the stick in Marty’s hand exploded. The woman cried out in shock, and Herm pulled her behind him. Eyes full of his hatred, Thoth gathered himself to break another.
Now, Pluck fizzed, and I exhaled to gather a mass of dark matter threads.
The night brightened as Pluck poured his thoughts into it, weaving order out of chaos and settling the net over the shadow.
“Pin him! Get the bottle!” Herm shouted as he flung a great, glowing ball of dross, and Thoth jerked clear. The very air flamed behind the shadow, and Thoth spun, snarling as Herm scooped up more dross. Lev wove between them, a spell within his hands as he looked for an opening.
“You will go into a bottle, you fetid worm,” Dana snarled, spell at the ready. “Hold him! Pluck, Petra, hold him!” she shouted as the shadow darted to evade Lev’s spell. “Hold him!”
But the shadow was in flux and nothing could catch him. Damn it all to hell! How could we get him into the bottle if we couldn’t even get a spell on him?
Thoth’s lip twitched, and then his gaze shot to where the fire door slammed.
My attention faltered as Benedict and Cameron limped forward. Benedict was grim, and Cameron held her arm close, pain etching her expression. Marty was scared but determined as she moved to stand beside Herm.
“You can’t best me,” Thoth scoffed, his outline glinting in the moonlight. “The legend of five balanced sticks is only to force out those brave enough to wield them, and not only are you weak and untrained, but you have no weaver.”
Benedict’s hand clenched in frustration. “Petra is a weaver,” he said, and Thoth laughed.
“No, she isn’t. Not anymore. If she dares to put her thoughts in mine, I will make her my puppet, same as anyone else.”
My pulse quickened and Pluck poured into my mind with the cold of an unending winter. We had lost, and a bitter realization smothered us both. Even Pluck’s and my net couldn’t hold him, and I looked at Benedict in anguish.
“There is always darkness.” Thoth smirked, green eyes sinking to pits as I felt a great massing of threads. “You can’t best me. Not alone, not together. Not without a weaver, and they are all…utterly gone.”
“I’m not gone.”
I spun at the tremulous voice as Pluck’s shock twined through mine. It was Marty.
Oh no. Get back, I thought, worried for the girl—until I saw emotion flash over Thoth’s face: frustration, anger…fear?
“You are no weaver,” Thoth said, chin high. “You are a pathetic need. No shadow will touch you. Your heart is traitorous and your will thin. I will crush you under my bootheel the very next time you sleep.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know that Aasta had again risked heartache to bond to Marty.
“You are nothing!” Thoth shouted, and Aasta’s form beside Marty flickered with a sickly green light. Vengeance flooded me, shocking in its strength. It was Aasta, and it was all the shadow had allowed herself to feel.
“I am shadow!” Aasta exclaimed, eyes wild with conviction. “And I will see you gone!”
“Marty!” I shouted, and Pluck gasped when I threw my long-stick to her.
It hit her hand with a solid thump, and the woman spun it to pull dark matter into existence.
Teeth clenched, she wove her will through the energy, making a solid net to hold Thoth as Aasta billowed into a haze and flung herself at him.
The shadows dissolved into each other, and I saw through Pluck’s eyes as Aasta fastened upon Marty’s field, taking it deep into Thoth.
Lev swore, retreating as sparks of sensation flew like shrapnel. A boom of presence lit the night, rocking us all in an unseen wave. Spinning like a mad thing, Aasta and Thoth rolled about the patio, everything they touched fracturing to dust as Aasta struggled to fasten Marty’s net around Thoth.
“Now! Do it now!” Marty gasped when the living ball of black lightning crashed into the well and a great slice of the wall dissolved to sand. Pluck’s astonishment filled me. Marty’s field was about Thoth. She had him.