I inhale as deeply as I can with the thick smoke and close my eyes trying to focus on what I’m about to do. Sharp pain runs through me, my body freezes in place. I can’t open my eyes. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. Pain sears into my flesh, every fiber of me screaming.
The second the black lightning releases its grasp on me, I fall to my knees, my eyes shooting open. More bolts speed down from the sky like a bullet from a gun. With one impact after another, it strikes me. Again and again and again. The power entombed within each one shreds at my body like I’m nothing more than a thin piece of paper.
I want to scream. I need to scream. But every ounce of air I have is ripped from me with each assault. The pain is more than I can bear. More than I’ve ever imagined anyone could feel while still remaining alive. Power surges inside my very blood, demanding release. It wants to tear its way out of me. To be free.
Just as quickly as it all started, the lightning shifts away from me and back to the camp. The veins on the backs of my hands darken to a deep black and I know something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.
Lincoln stands just below me. Tears flow down his cheeks, leaving trails of wet skin showing through the blood and ash covering his face.
The edges of my vision cloud in a deep black haze and a surge of hatred builds within me. The emotions coming from him make me sick. My mind screams, demanding I show him how much I hate pity. There’s something inside of me that is longing to make him hurt instead. That needs to make him hurt.
Like the Watcher speaking into my mind, I hear a bodiless voice that pushes at me, trying to get me to act upon the impulse.
Gritting my teeth to the point of even more pain, I fight it, refusing to give into the violence it wants to me to take part in. The blackness in my veins recedes for only a moment then comes back that much stronger. I lunge towards him. Falling short, I fall onto a large, thick branch. I hiss towards him.
Flashes of Lincoln screaming out in agony and my hands covered in the red blood leaking from him flash through my mind, giving short glimpses at what I could do. Of what I could savor. I smile. I can’t help but smile because that’s what the voice tells me to do.
Grunts of determination leave my lips as I fight against whatever was in that magic, whatever is infecting me and turning into this mindless monster.
Is this what affects the members of Aetheries? Is that what they have urging their behavior?
I push and push against the voice telling me to hurt Lincoln, my thoughts become more my own with each passing moment. Aetheries aren’t heartless monsters, they are victims against whatever evil magic this is, just like I am.
Magical energy presses against my skin, trying to get free of me until I scream from the pain of holding it in. Ability born of power and light will protect her from becoming the night. What the hell does it even mean? I try to focus on the telling, try to ignore the urges flowing through me. The energy though, the energy I absorbed is too much. It’s too much and I can’t think.
The voices have faded down to a very faint whisper. My body acts the way I want it to and I force myself back onto my feet. No one ever told me that you can absorb energy. Not once did the Watcher or Lincoln tell me it was possible. I feel like I’m about to burst from the inside out. Like there’s too much power rumbling around inside of me. What does this fucking mean!
My body answers as the magic explodes from me. Sparks spring from my skin. Endless streams of lightning force their way out of my palms until my back arches. My arms fling over my read, releasing the dark magic that planted itself inside of me. As the seconds pass, the black power fades to my own whitish blue. I keep the flow going until I’ve expelled every last thread of blackness.
My magic collides with the dark bolts still striking the camp. Electricity meets electricity, light meets the dark.
The sheer energy within me pulls me off my feet until I’m hovering inches off the fallen tree trunk.
Pain radiates through my back, searing out of my spine as the last remnants of the dark magic fades entirely.
And then my body falls, slamming into the tree below me before falling off the side. Lincoln catches me before I hit the ground and my back is screaming. My mind is a tired mess from the overload in power. The last thing I see are Lincoln’s blue eyes and then the exhaustion takes me.
25
“I told you to bring more potions!” a woman yells. The shrillness of the words, the grunts and moans in the background pry me out of my exhausted slumber. My lids are too heavy to open, my entire body feels like lead.
“And I told you that we are out of potions.” Emmy. I know her voice and tone better than I know my own.
The first woman tries to catch her breath, long inhalations following even longer exhalations. “That’s not possible.”
“There’s no time to question it, Ivy,” Emmy explains in her understanding voice. “Most of the vials were destroyed. The ones we had left have been used.”
Ivy, the Prime Healer of Pensatore, breaks. Even from my nearly comatose state, I can hear a sob. “There aren’t enough Healers here. We don’t have enough strength to save them all.”
“Magic isn’t the only way to save people, you know this. Do whatever you can for them.”
I open my eyes just enough to make me want to close them again. There’s no white tent around us, nothing but trees and more trees. Dozens of cots are around me, soldiers in each of them. Blood has stained the leafy ground red. “Emmy.” My voice is so faint I’m not even sure I actually spoke.
She spins around, lunging towards my cot, her eyes wide and already filled with tears. “Oh, thank God.”
I grunt out as something tugs at my back. She glances down towards her feet, mumbles an apology and shifts her leg. The tug immediately stops. That’s when I see it. See them.
Black feathered wings dangle over the side of my cot. Wings. She doesn’t even need to tell me what happened. Memories of the searing pain just before Lincoln caught me … that was from the wings growing out of my damn back.
I gulp down the fear of what this means, choosing to ignore it for the time being as a man several cots away screams as Ivy does something to him. Wings are the least of the problems going on around here. Dark red smears cover Em’s cheeks, like wet blood was on her hands as she tried to wipe tears away. “How bad?”
What I see in her eyes is enough to fill me with adrenaline and I sit up on the cot. The weight of the wings tugs at my back, making me grimace. “I need your help,” I mutter to her.
Half an hour later, an angel Emmy’s found has taught me how to fold my wings back into my back, hiding them from sight completely. No longer being weighed down, I jump up to help anyone I can.
By all appearances, I was taken to a triage location after I passed out. It seems that all the injured are being taken here into the dense part of the forest surrounding the camp. Uninjured soldiers surround the area, their focus staying in the forest, their eyes flicking back and forth looking for a threat of any kind.
The majority of those who survived are either helping the Healers or helping those still alive get to the Healers. It took me all of a few seconds to run back to the camp and begin my own search. Lincoln and Ben are alive, fine excluding some minor injuries. Damon was found about an hour ago. He was hurt but he’ll survive. He’s up and walking around, helping Ivy and the other Healers bandage up those who can be saved but haven’t yet been given healing potions.
I allow myself a moment to take in the devastation before lunging into what was our camp. Fires still rage, debris is everywhere, horses run loose and trample over the dead.
Hundreds. There have to be hundreds dead.
Refusing to stop and let it all sink in, I start sifting though the debris, realizing that the three Reapers that were already here are searching right alongside me. Fallen trees and branches have pinned dozens of people under them. The trees in Strega aren’t like the ones in the human realm. They are massive, the size of 18 whe
elers if not bigger. Even with a dozen of us, we were never going to be able to move them. Giants and pushers band together to shift them as others, myself included, drag the injured out from underneath. One by one we collect our injured.
Hours pass and my body aches. I should give myself more recovery time after what I did with the lightning, but I’m an able body and I can’t just lay there taking up space when there are others who truly need the help.
Seeing as all the ingredients for more potions have been burned or damaged in some way, the handful of Alchemists that are here, are out of their element. Eventually they make themselves useful and starting hauling water out to those of us searching and start making food with whatever they can find.
It’s not until the sun sets that I drag my way into the forest once again. I crumple at a campfire triage, my body finally giving out. I don’t know how long I sleep but when someone nudges my shoulder, I wake up in a still tired haze.
Icy blue eyes greet me and I leap into his chest, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Lincoln.” Despite searching for injured people for the last ten or so hours, I never once crossed paths with him or Ben. “Are you okay?”
He nods. “We both are.” Glancing to the right, I find Ben standing there. He looks worn down both mentally and physically and I know that me and Lincoln aren’t much better off. “Maddox is dead.”
“I know.” Guilt grinds at me. I never liked the man but I also judged him before knowing what he had gone through. “He saved three witches though.” He had carried the weight of five hundred and thirty two deaths with him for five years. At least he was able to save three of them.
“We have to get out of here as soon as possible,” Ben says as he sinks down next to the fire. “We have no way of protecting ourselves here. Not with the damage that was done.”
“How many? How many died?”
Ben shrugs. “There’s no way to know that yet.” His tongue flicks over his bottom lip, wetting it. “What did you do?”
My initial interpretation of the question makes me want to jump up and defend myself, but there’s no accusation in his voice – no indication that this was my fault. “I have no idea.” I haven’t let myself think back and try to figure it all out yet. Part of me never wants to remember it.
“We need to get out of here as soon as possible and head back home,” Ben says, changing the topic. “For all we know, whoever did this to us is still out there, waiting for the energy to build back up to hit us again.”
Lincoln crosses his arms against his wide chest. “You’re right, if they hit us again … there might not be anyone left.”
Looking around at just how much damage the attack caused, I’m in agreement with them. How will we move this many injured? Most of our wagons were destroyed, we were able to wrangle in a few dozen horses but that’s it. Most of the food we brought with us was burned. “Any word from Seraphina?” Was she close enough to see the lightning? She could be here any minute and help us move these people to safety.
“I had a telepath try to reach her,” Ben says as he stares at the ground. “It didn’t go through.”
There’s no need to ask him what that means. The same thing had happened when they tried to reach out to Kaleb. She’s dead too … that’s the only logical answer.
With a heavy sigh, I glance at each of them. “Then let’s go home.”
26
There’s no way to carry everyone. We piled up the dead, Maddox along with them, and watched as their bodies burned to ash. Two days later, we leave the camp, still with no word from the Rovente army.
The Reapers left us, explaining how they needed to go back and make sure the Rovente army wasn’t dealing with the same issues we were. There were three of them that came to our aide: Elijah, the Commander and warlock I defeated in the duels; Travis, the air elemental that won his own duel; and a young-freckled faced teenage fire elemental named Jane. I barely spoke to her because she never stopped chatting long enough for me to. At 16, she’s very bouncy and energetic. It’s unsettling knowing that she is part of the Reapers. Regardless, I’m thankful they were all there to help us when we needed it the most.
Those of us able to walk do. The wagons and few horses are reserved for the injured, Damon amongst them. We use our magic to help as much as possible. Angels carry some of the injured, flying them over the rest of our heads. The pushers hover people in a flat positions much like invisible stretchers. Giants carry several people at a time in their large hands. It’s a group effort on everyone’s part, but eventually our energy will give out. It’s just a matter of when.
By the second day, my feet were blistered and bleeding, which, I can assume, is everyone’s situation. I don’t complain, not when so many people were way worse off than I am. Damon wasn’t the receiver of a potion and Emmy has been spending a lot of her time with him, helping him as best she can, even if it’s only keeping him company.
The Healers are phenomenal, not that I ever thought otherwise. Still, I’ve never seen people go above and beyond the way they continue to. Each one of them is covered in burns and scratches after using their magic to help the others. A Healer’s power takes an injured from one person and gives it to the Healer who then has to heal themselves. While this process is quicker for them, it’s not by any means fast. That’s why they rely so heavily on the potions, which we are out of. Now it’s down to old fashioned medicine … in other words, think happy thoughts until we get back to the settlement.
It took our army a week to get to that camp originally, I’m told. After ten days on the move, we’re still not back. We have to stop often and allow not only the soldiers to rest, but the animals as well. Food has been rationed since day one. With an unknown threat out there somewhere, we don’t want to risk sending anyone out to hunt. Water is another issue. We only have what we can carry and with the terrain being nothing but steep ass mountains, it quickly becomes problematic. Lincoln helps, but he’s only one person and there are thousands of soldiers.
During the journey, Lincoln, Ben, the Reapers and I talk about Aetheries until we’re blue in the face about Aetheries. We still know nothing more. There are no answers for the questions I have right now. There’s definitely two different types of evil in this realm. The biggest question mark is if one is Aetheries, then who is the other?
When the sun breaches the mountain peaks on the eleventh morning, we start to pack up so we can start the day. Food is distributed amongst us, a measly single slice of dried meat is on the menu apparently.
“We should be there by nightfall,” Ben says to us as he makes sure the Healers and injured in the wagons are ready to start moving.
All I know is that we are on a mountain, right at the peak based on the much colder temperatures and patches of snow. The trees are so thick that you can’t see past them. “This is the last day?” I ask with a smile. Even my feet perk up with that news.
“As long as there’s no delay, yes.” Ben stops at the front of the convoy, cupping his hands next to his mouth. “Let’s move out!” he yells to everyone behind us.
I didn’t know it was possible, but going down these mountains is so much worse than climbing up. The muscles in my legs throb from keeping me vertical. Almost there, I keep telling myself, forcing one more step out of my body. The horses neigh and rear up, not liking the steep incline we are forcing them to go down. The only reason Ben would take us along this dangerous route is if it shaved off a lot of time. He’s deemed it worth the risk, then I wasn’t about to argue with him.
Lincoln walks on my left side, his fingers grazing mine with each step he takes. We haven’t had a moment alone since we started back home. Hell, it was long before that that I had a chance to really talk to him. We started something back at the Watcher’s house, something that I’d be stupid to ignore.
Ben stops and falls back. I spin around to check on him and his eyes are glazed over. There’s a look of bewilderment that I have come to know so well. I have no doubt that my face looked ex
actly the same when the Watcher was sending me telepathic messages.
“What is it?” Lincoln asks once Ben comes out of his trance-like state. The convoy behind us is stopped, waiting to find out why we aren’t moving at the front.
Ben’s face turns into utter fear. “Tessa.” His voice is barely above a whisper and I know that something is wrong. Something is very wrong.
His eyes scan the length of the soldiers behind him. “Aetheries is at our settlement.”
“What?” Lincoln and I say at the same time. His words even catch the attention of the Reapers who have inched a little bit closer to the three of us.
“We’re still half a day away,” Ben says breathlessly. His chest heaves up and down as he realizes what this means.
“Are they attacking?” Lincoln asks.
Ben’s head jerks from side to side. “Not yet.”
Enemy Of My Enemy (Price Of Power Book 1) Page 26
