Chapter 1 #4
I don’t have time to check. Because while her push hasn’t touched me, it also hasn’t touched the Cataclysm. Though he looks amused by the attempt.
The four remaining berserkers stumble upright onto their clawed feet. The two nearest Reck target him while the other two lower their heads to charge toward me.
I gather the thickest ropes of the life force of everyone in the parking lot, holding those lines of energy loosely. Focusing on the berserkers’ threads of fate, I cinch my hands around that energy, pressing my own power to flood through those connections.
I note, a little detached, as Reck takes on the two other berserkers, continually shifting and spinning to keep the SUV protected at his back. And me, I suppose.
My hold on the berserkers’ threads firms. I flick all of them at once, as I would a lasso.
Not that I’ve ever roped a horse or cattle before.
My power thrums through those connections, cinching around the berserkers’ necks — as I’d earlier seen Bellamy’s final thread of fate roped around her own neck, slowly strangling her.
With that connection firmly forged, I yank all four of the berserkers to their knees. The pavement cracks under each of them.
I tug on those threads of fate again, toppling the berserkers over. Reclaiming the essence I infused into their threads, I start slowly dragging them by their necks toward me.
Even without direct guidance from the universe, I’m more steady, more connected to the Conduit power than I have ever been before.
Because I’ve claimed the intersection point?
Because of the soul bond with Rought and the gryphon?
But it still takes a moment for a flicker of disconcertion to cut through my focus.
I’m holding four ropes.
I only lassoed four.
Not five.
I’m not holding any of the Cataclysm’s threads?
Reck, bloodied and beaten from holding off two berserkers, lunges toward the nearest one. The half-human, half-beast assailant is still being slowly dragged toward me, writhing on his side and clawing at his throat. As if I’m actually strangling him.
In an impressive display of strength, Reck literally tears the head off the berserker. The grisly decapitation is the opposite of swift and smooth.
I stop actively pulling on the ropes of essence I’ve twisted around the other three berserkers. They still thrash and fight against me, but I hold them at bay in order to refocus my attention on the Cataclysm.
White dress shirt now soaked in dark-red blood and black suit half shredded, Reck stalks toward the next nearest berserker.
The cu-sith shifter’s hands are clawed, and his facial features are slightly distended.
He’s harnessing his beast without giving up any of the control by fully transforming. Also impressive.
Gaze riveted to me, the Cataclysm ignores his eldest children, both Reck and Bellamy. The dire awry is still crumpled on the pavement at my feet.
He’s … proud?
No. That’s what coveting looks like.
A thought of the cage Presh saw before she ran from the Cataclysm, before Bellamy possibly helped her escape Federation territory, slips through my mind.
I shove the thought, the mere flicker of an idea, away.
No one can cage the Conduit.
The universe wouldn’t allow it.
The back passenger door of the SUV slams open behind me. A hushed but intense argument between DeVille and Presh filters through the thick layer of disconnection I’m apparently encased within while fully wielding my power.
Reck’s focus snaps to the teens. He hesitates only steps away from the second berserker, who’s still fighting my hold. “Get back in the fucking vehicle!”
The teens, still arguing, ignore him. DeVille jumps out — or is possibly pushed by Presh — and scrambles over to Bellamy, grabbing her by the shoulders. He pauses, crouched beside me.
Without thinking, and not taking my full attention off the untethered Cataclysm or the lassoed berserkers, I brush my fingers through DeVille’s hair, smoothing it away from his eyes.
“Keep Presh close,” I murmur, power threading through each word. “Safe passage, Andy DeVille, and all the luck I can bestow.”
The young shifter shivers under the touch of my essence. It’s possible I’m wielding way too much power to be so casually twisting his fate, his luck. Not responsibly, at least.
“Go to Presh,” I say, trying to not make it a command that he can’t ignore. “She’ll be okay with you at her side.”
“Andy!” Presh snaps, half hanging out of the SUV by the proximity of her voice. “Zaya is too busy to baby you!”
DeVille grumbles under his breath, then visibly shakes himself as if settling his energy, or perhaps resetting his senses. Keeping low, he drags Bellamy back toward the SUV.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Reck snarls, torn between dispatching a second berserker and intervening with the teens rescuing Bellamy.
The Cataclysm laughs, darkly amused. Then he starts walking toward me, footfalls weighted but steady.
There is something about the way the Cataclysm walks, the way he moves. As if he’s disconnected from the essence that fuels the —
“Zaya …” Reck says, suddenly wary.
I step away from the SUV as DeVille gets the unconscious Bellamy loaded into the back seat with Presh, then climbs in himself.
Even if I’m not yet certain how to hold him at bay, I close the space between me and the Guerra progenitor to keep him farther away from the teens — and the only readily available means of escape from this fight.
The portal cuts us off from the Authority agents’ SUV, and Bellamy’s sedan is crushed beyond use.
Still holding the three berserkers at bay with their own threads of fate, I reach for the energy that should surround the Cataclysm. I reach for his life force, his destiny.
My reach stretches out and around, latching onto nothing.
I blink, trying to refocus my sight, trying to see the grid that I called forth before.
The Cataclysm continues walking toward me, slowly but deliberately. He crosses right through that grid. Not a single thread of all that energy, of all that essence-fueled life force twined around us, touches him.
He’s not woven into the fabric of the universe.
I falter, stumbling over my own feet. That shouldn’t be possible. “You … you’re not …”
“Zaya?” Reck asks, closer now. Maybe back at the SUV, standing guard over the kids.
The Cataclysm has no threads.
The Cataclysm has no life force.
The Cataclysm has no fate.
Then he’s towering over me. Almost close enough to touch. “Stop playing with my minions, little Conduit. Be done with it.”
I should find his use of the word ‘minion’ laughable.
But I don’t.
I don’t because he’s an impossibility.
I don’t because I’m … powerless against him. If I can’t touch his essence, his life force —
He … he has to be shielding himself somehow. He knew my aunt, intimately. Could he have figured out a way to shield his essence from her and therefore from me?
But even if that’s the case, even if it’s just a shield or an innate ability I’ve never encountered, never even heard of, I’m just the human vessel for the Conduit power.
I’m not strong enough to take him in a physical fight.
I have no weapon that —
Utter terror streaks through me, clenching around my heart, wiping every thought but one from my mind.
I’m powerless against him.
I’m powerless against him.
I’m powerless against him.
Muta strikes, shoving off my shoulder so quickly and with such force that I stumble back.
The bushmaster moves in a blur, fangs already dripping with venom.
Just as quickly, the Cataclysm catches Muta under his broad, flat head, holding the snake at bay.
Red-edged eyes fix to mine. The Cataclysm curls his lip in a sneer. Then he deliberately squeezes his hand.
Muta writhes in his grip, helpless.
“Stop,” I whisper as energy visibly drains from the death god trapped in the body of a bushmaster.
Centuries old, pressed into service by my mother moments before her own death, my lifelong companion is slowly being strangled to death.
By an impossibility. “Please. He was only doing his duty, protecting me. I’ll send him away. ”
“Playing with your food is beneath you, Conduit.” The Cataclysm focuses on me with deadly intent. “Show me you’re in control. Show me you can wield the power the universe stripped from your aunt, abandoning her to settle it on you. Be done with it, Zaya.”
Without looking away from him, from him slowly killing Muta — something I also would have thought impossible, even with Muta only the aspect of a god — I reach for and tear all the threads of fate from the remaining three berserkers, snipping their lives short.
Though perhaps only by minutes had Reck continued to make his rounds.
The berserkers drop limply to the pavement.
All their unanchored energy rebounds, snapping back to me, lashing against me, against my soul. It hurts. I muffle a scream, swaying on my feet.
“Zaya!” Presh screams.
With her sight awakened, the young awry no doubt knows what I’ve done, as well as how it affects me on a soul-deep level. The SUV doors slam, and footfalls scramble behind me, but I don’t look to see who’s running or where.
“No!” Presh cries again. “Please. I’ll go. I’ll go with him!”
“Stop!” Reck grunts.
Muta goes limp, dangling from the Cataclysm’s hold. I have no idea if he’s dead or not. Because I’m already reaching for whatever threads I can still feel, still wield.
I grab hold of Presh, then DeVille, almost effortlessly. I get more of a sense of Reck than a hold, because we’re still not connected.
“Please,” I murmur, reaching a shaking hand for Muta and trying to cover what else I’m trying to wield. The others need to leave. I can’t focus for the fear of having them near.
Smirking, the Cataclysm drops the unmoving bushmaster. I scramble forward to catch him, wrapping my hand around Muta’s body a moment before the Cataclysm snags my wrist.
His discordant energy streaks up my arm.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.