Chapter 17 #2
Two familiar, gleaming purple eyes ignite within the shape.
But this time, they are joined by a buzzing, like nails on a chalkboard, vibrating through the concrete.
Its distended appendages, now tipped with claws of sharpened ebony, are wrapped around a massive vertical support column.
The beam groans in protest, slowly twisting in place as if it were soft clay.
Rivets pop from the ceiling with cracks like gunshots, leaving the mangled steel hanging by a thread.
The phantom we’ve been dealing with is gone—replaced by this terrifying leviathan of destruction.
I blanch. But Kade doesn’t even flinch. He just raises his knife, shifting onto the balls of his feet.
The beast stops its grotesque wringing of the metal beam, its inky eyes snapping directly to Kade.
Does it recognize him, or simply sense a threat?
One of its clawed appendages lifts, the condensed shadow within it churning as it gathers energy for a strike.
This is it. Instead of lunging forward, Kade takes a single, deliberate step sideways, his focus never leaving the creature. His hand, low by his side, gives an urgent flick of two fingers. Now. It’s my cue. Trusting him, I take a shaky breath and call forth my magic.
My instincts scream at me to lash out with a blast of violent power, but I leash the urge, instead pulling on the core of my abilities to reach for a sense of inner harmony, of order. Then I let it flow outward in a smooth diffusion, aimed at the deranged beast in front of me.
The pulse of harmony leaves me, silent and invisible, and crosses the space in an instant.
The moment it connects, sickening feedback reverberates through me as the beast’s chaotic, jagged wrongness collides with the clean order of my magic.
The aberrant combination thrums through my body, feeling like a violation.
But the effect on the beast is immediate too. With a shrill hiss, like steam shrieking from a pressurized vent, it recoils, and its spectral form contracts as if in pain.
Kade’s expression flashes with stunned relief—and respect—as he repositions himself in front of my hiding place, ready to press the advantage.
But before he can, the hiss subsides. I can’t let it regain its footing, so I carefully push more of my stabilizing magic into it.
As I do, its body, though smaller now, somehow grows more defined.
The churning, oily void tightens, its edges sharpening until it looks like a creature carved from obsidian.
No, no, no. This doesn’t make sense. I try to apply some kind of logic to it, but it’s like watching fire freeze water. My magic is making it weaker and stronger at the same time?
The dissonant feeling intensifies as I remain connected to it, threatening to scatter my very being to the winds.
The static is working its way into the crevices of my mind.
I have to break the connection but—there’s a flash of something.
What is that? I hold on a moment longer than I should—it’s a faint sensation of regularity amid the chaos, crisp .
. . mechanical? The beast shudders, and a small black device falls from its tightening mass, hitting the wet asphalt with a tiny metallic tink.
I lose sight of it when the creature, now totally solidified, unleashes a furious roar that echoes through the railyard, and whips around to face Kade, who is standing between it and me.
The connection shatters, leaving me disoriented by the sudden, jarring silence in my mind where the static used to be.
“Go!” Kade yells, but before I can even start to move, the creature seizes the warped metal column it was mangling when we arrived. With a tortured screech of tearing metal, it rips the beam free from the ceiling and hurls the giant, multi-ton mass straight at us.
Time slows. Kade is fast, inhumanly so, and my mind expects him to simply blur out of the way.
But his eyes flick for a fraction of a second to the engine block.
A clean dodge is impossible; the beam is too wide, its path too destructive.
If he moves, the full force of the impact will obliterate my only cover—and me.
In that split second, he makes his choice.
Instead of dodging, he braces himself, raising his arms to absorb and deflect as much of the impact as he can.
The steel column smashes into him with a bone-jarring crunch, driving him sideways into a rusted train car. Pinned against the metal, he slumps, his chest caved in at a stomach-turning angle. His knife clatters to the ground, and then . . . he goes unnaturally still.
He’s down.
The beast lifts its head, sweeping the railyard, searching.
For me. For the source of the magic. Terror, icy and absolute, threatens to paralyze me.
I could stay hidden. I could wait. Then a low wheeze escapes Kade’s lips and the creature’s attention snaps back to him.
It takes a slow, deliberate step toward him, its scythe-like claws grinding against the asphalt.
And a sense of knowing sweeps over me. It intends to finish him off.
Kade is verging on unconsciousness, trapped beneath the beam. Defenseless. And this thing is stronger than ever.
My terror is burned away by a surge of adrenaline. I have to do something, anything.
Ignoring every survival instinct I possess, I push myself up from behind the engine block, stepping out into the open.
“Hey!” I yell, my voice ripping through the rain-soaked air.
The beast pivots toward the sound, its purple eyes fixing me in place. Kade’s head lifts and his eyelids flutter open, his eyes wide with horror and disbelief when they lock onto me. He tries to speak, to yell, but the warped column presses on his chest, and only a bubble of blood comes out.
My simple distraction isn’t enough. The beast hesitates for only a second, its glowing eyes flicking between me and the easier, wounded prey on the ground. Can it sense whatever magic it is that makes Kade so fast, his senses so sharp? It takes another scraping step toward him.
I have to do more than just get its attention.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to Kade, holding his panicked gaze for one more moment.
Then, I turn my focus to the creature. I drop all pretense of control, all the careful walls I’ve built, and let my untamed magic burst out from me like a solar flare—a cacophonous, irresistible beacon of pure energy.
The effect is instantaneous. The beast’s head twists to me, its glowing eyes widening with a slavering, ecstatic hunger.
It lets out a piercing wail, not of rage this time, but of unbridled desire.
Forgetting Kade entirely, it coils its powerful, newly solidified form and launches itself across the railyard.
Directly at me.