The dark cloud of power around her parted, giving me a momentary glimpse of the bodies arrayed around the black witch. They were wearing the compound’s standard sweats. Cannon fodder. Without question, at least three had already been sacrificed to power the death curses Fish had thwarted. Maybe one more for the dimensional pocket that had blocked the stairwell to the main level, forcing us to take a path dictated by the overseer herself.
“I knew you were a problem from the moment of your birth, Amp5.” Silver Pine’s voice was laced with so much dark power that I had to suppress a shudder. “I begged the others to allow another amplifier to fully gestate. It would have made them the youngest of the fifth generation, but it would still have been manageable.”
I took another step forward. Zans set Fish on his feet behind me, and he placed his hand on my back over my tattoos. His magic smoothed around me, shielding me tightly.
Silver’s gaze flicked to the others, frowning as they stepped up tightly against me. The witch laughed harshly. “Do you honestly think the five of you are enough to get by one of the Collective?”
Within the darkness around her, I could suddenly make out creatures chittering, circling close. Demons at best guess, though I had never seen their specific type before. Sleek heads and spindly arms, possibly double-jointed. Sickle claws, powerful back legs. Somehow, as with the stairwell, the witch had summoned forth a pocket of another dimension, binding all the creatures within to her service.
Her malignant power expanded a few inches across the concrete floor. Then a few inches more. Muffled cries of pain seeped through to me.
The people on the floor … Silver’s sacrifices … some of them were still alive.
I faltered a step.
Fish shifted his hand up to the base of my neck, practically cradling my head. Bee slipped her fingers in from my left, as Knox did the same from the right. They pressed against my back, over the individual blood tattoos that tied them to me.
Zans stepped in front of me. I touched her back, as the others were touching me. Allowing my magic to well up, but not pumping it into the telekinetic yet.
Fish’s nullifying magic stretched out to cover all of us, chilling me through and through.
I welcomed the numbness.
I invited it.
Each of the three behind me were drained, their magic a whisper of what it usually was. I could power them up for a short burst. But I didn’t think it would be enough to get us through the black witch as well as the team arrayed across the security checkpoint.
“Knox?” Fish asked in a whisper.
“It’s up to Socks now,” the clairvoyant said.
I swept my gaze across the security station, noting the face of every single person standing against me. Against us. They bristled with their individual power, ready to back the black witch.
She was, after all, the current overseer of the compound. The representative of the Collective.
Standing on the far right, Mark Calhoun and Becca Jackson were also behind the bulletproof glass. They were obviously under guard, but not bound. And only steps away from freedom. Their escape would be easily facilitated, given a big enough distraction.
I met each of their furious gazes. Then I smiled.
“What exactly is so funny when you’re about to die, Amp5?” Silver Pine asked. “When you’re about to take responsibility for the deaths of your entire generation?”
Fish chuckled. Then Knox and Bee joined him.
Zans glanced back at me.
Instead of addressing the black witch, who didn’t deserve any more of my attention, I spoke to the tactical team standing behind her. “If you retreat now, I can’t promise that you’ll survive. But you will die if you remain.”
“Oh, please —” the black witch started to snarl.
I slammed my magic into Zans.
The telekinetic flung her arms wide out to the sides. Her magic blasted out of her in a storm of steel as she let loose with the ball bearings she’d taken from the weapons cache, tearing through and shattering every piece of furniture between us and the witch. Then Zans brought her hands together, shattering the bulletproof glass from its outer edges in toward the center.
The tactical team beyond the glass rushed for cover.
Silver Pine stood within the black cloud of her power, untouched. Magic glinted from a curved steel knife as the black witch crouched to grab one of the humans arrayed around her feet, then slashed her throat.
I pumped more magic into Zans. She grunted, gathering the ball bearings, the shattered glass, and the broken pieces of furniture. Then she used that debris to pummel the shield the witch held around her.
An inky-scaled, ragged-toothed creature reached out of the dark magic seething around the witch. The demon ate her victim. But Silver Pine remained focused on whatever spell she was pooling in her hands. Another creature dragged another of the witch’s sacrifices into the black pool of power.
I pushed Zans slightly. She stepped forward obligingly, continuing to batter all her magic against the black witch’s formidable shielding. The four of us followed in tight formation.
I had to get to the witch, to lay hands on her, before she released the spell she was preparing.
Fish faltered. I paused so he could give me more of his weight.
“Zans,” Knox whispered. “The spell is for Zans …”
I dropped my hold on Zans, spinning under and around Fish’s arm so he stood between me and the telekinetic.
The black witch released the spell.
It sped toward us.
Fish wrapped his hands around Zans’s shoulders, condensing his shield to concentrate solely around her.
I slammed my hand over the blood tattoo on his spine, amplifying him with everything I had. Bee shakily pulled her katana. Knox raised his shortsword. They crouched beside me, unshielded.
The spell hit Zans over her heart. She grunted, falling to her knees and dragging Fish with her.
Then I was the only one standing upright.
The ball bearings, the debris, and the glass shards that Zans had been holding all fell to the floor.
And for a moment, it was just me facing the black witch who had decided that I should die.
Why? I still had no idea.
And I didn’t really care.
Because the front doors were open. The tactical team had fled. And through those doors, I could see daylight. And greenery.
Knox wrapped his hand around one of my bare calves, Bee around the other. Fish reached up to me, sliding his hand around the back of one knee.
I glanced down, meeting Zans’s pained gaze. The black witch’s named death curse writhed across her chest, trying to find a way through Fish’s fading shield. A way to dig into her skin, to claim her life.
“You should know better, Silver Pine,” I said, looking up to meet her self-satisfied gaze. “You’ve just handed me the way through your shield.”
The witch scoffed. “You don’t have that kind of power, Amp5. First, you’d have to be able to tear the blood curse from Tek5 before it kills her.” She yanked another sacrifice victim before her curved steel blade. “And I’m already halfway to dropping you.”
Zans convulsed. But snarling against the pain, she slid her hand up my leg, settling it next to Knox’s.
I looked away. I looked past the destruction. I looked beyond the death the witch was preparing. My death.
It was sunny outside.
A breeze stirred the trees.
If I’d been closer, I might have been able to smell the air.
Was it moist and hot today? Dry and fragrant?
I let go. I released every barrier I held in place. Magic flared across my skin, down my limbs. Magic sparked between me and Bee, me and Knox, me and Zans, me and Fish, searing their skin to mine.
My arms floated to the sides as the magic rose through me, combining, intertwining. I gathered more and more power from the others, taking every last drop.
I closed my eye
s, throwing my head back as I allowed the power to fill me, to have its way.
And for a moment, I was Bee. I could hear the thoughts of the others, including those of the people who’d fled from the building, trying to clear the compound or readying last defenses.
For a moment, I was Knox — seeing in flashes everything the witch was going to throw at me, seeing the hurricane I was about to create, seeing me wipe out everything in my path.
Then I was Zans — and all the debris rose again to whirl around us.
And finally, I was Fish — taking the nullifying power and wrapping it around us, protecting us from anything and everything.
Well, everything but me.
I was about to kill everyone.
And I was okay with that.
I opened my eyes, snapping my hands out to the sides. The gathered magic moved with me. I flicked my fingers, commanding the power into a whirlwind around us. Nothing touched us as the tornado I commanded ravaged the room.
Creatures — demons — boiled from the black magic pooled around the witch. Springing forward with claws and teeth, ready to rend me limb from limb.
Effortlessly, I caught them each, one at a time, with a lick of energy, pulling them into the tornado and tearing them apart. I would have stolen their magic as well, but it wasn’t compatible. Or necessary.
My feet left the ground, until I was hovering a few inches above the floor. The others kept hold of me.
I reached out another lick of power, delicately. I caught the curse trying to kill Zans. I brought it even with me so I could whisper to it.
I met the gaze of the black witch, battering the edges of her shield with the whirlwind of power at my command.
I willed the tornado to move toward her, to carry us with it. It shifted forward, slipping around the witch’s pool of black magic, chipping away at her defenses.
I paused a few steps away from her.
“Silver Pine,” I said, my voice laden with magic not my own. “This death belongs to you.”
I thrust my hand forward, slamming her with the death curse that had been named for Zans. The curse I had renamed, thereby turning it on its creator, against the barrier of magic she still held between us.
The curse slithered through her shield, striking her in the chest. She screamed, collapsing into the seething black cloud of magic she’d fed with blood sacrifices.
I didn’t bother watching her die.
Thanks to Knox’s clairvoyance, I knew that the compound’s external defenses were about to be turned against us. And we’d have a better time surviving the onslaught outside of the concrete building.
I willed the tornado, the hurricane that was powered by all of us at once, to move. It tore through the entranceway, widening it as it transported us out of the building.
Magic pummeled my shielding, then explosions that were likely artillery. But the tornado of power consumed it all.
Knox’s hand fell from my ankle. I paused, not wanting to lose him by moving any farther. Then Bee dropped away. And Zans.
I pumped more and more of myself into the magic swirling around us. We remained untouched.
Fish’s hand fell away.
Unanchored, I drifted higher up into the vortex, fueling it. Losing control of the torrential power as it depleted the magic I’d gathered from the others … as it depleted me.
I threw my head back, adrift.
I could see blue sky above me.
I had made it out.
I would die on my own terms.
I’d be free.
The vortex tugged at me, draining the final licks of my power. I melted into it, giving it permission to consume me.
My first and last choice made solely for myself.
I was the vortex.
I was the Amplifier Protocol.
I slipped away, losing consciousness.
Death was peaceful and still.
And I wasn’t alone within it.
Chapter 10
The ground was hard. And I was desperately hungry.
Something moist and smooth pressed against my right cheekbone. Then again.
I opened my eyes, blinking up at a deep-blue sky streaked by the last vestiges of a pink-and-orange sunrise. That was supposed to be some sort of warning, wasn’t it? For sailors?
A blue-furred creature with a double row of sharply pointed teeth pounced on my chest. A long pinkish-blue tongue darted out of the little demon puppy’s mouth, licking my nose.
That was decidedly unpleasant.
But for some unknown reason, laughter welled up in my chest. I scooped up the demon puppy — Paisley — and held her over my face. And I laughed.
Paisley twined her mane of tentacles around my fingers and chortled along with me.
Pressing the puppy against my chest, I sat up.
I was alive.
I could still feel the tender scars across my belly. My green dress was stained and torn in a dozen places, but I was otherwise unwounded. Knox, Bee, Zans, and Fish were sprawled unconscious around me. They were breathing, slowly but steadily, and didn’t appear to be badly injured.
The immediate area around us had been flattened into a circle of hard-packed, scoured dirt about four meters in diameter. But beyond that …
Where there should have been concrete structures — the compound as well as some half-dozen outbuildings … where there should have been a twenty-foot-high, wire-topped perimeter fence … where there should have been vehicles and … and …
Nothing but devastation surrounded me.
I scrambled to my feet, clutching Paisley. Slowly pivoting, I could see nothing … nothing but the shredded remains of the facility and the foliage within which the compound had been hidden.
The puppy wiggled in my hands and I loosened my grip. She wiggled some more and I put her down. She hustled over to Knox, pressing her nose against his face, then darting back.
“No magic,” I murmured as the realization hit me. I stretched my arms out before me. I felt … different. Weaker but healthy. Drained but not tired. I couldn’t feel any magic from Knox or Bee or Zans or Fish.
I couldn’t feel any magic from Paisley. The demon puppy currently looked like a regular gray-blue-furred dog. Yet I’d previously seen her tentacles, her red-hued eyes, and her too-wide, tooth-filled mouth. So she was some sort of shapeshifter, or she could mask her appearance. Either way, I should have been able to feel her magic, feel the magic that had drawn me to her in the depths of the compound.
I had drained myself. Completely. Utterly.
Had I also drained the others?
I had destroyed everything, all the way to the horizon. Buildings, trees, animals, people …
Knox sat up, rubbing his face and head with both hands. Paisley dashed around him, howling victoriously. He chuckled, then he paused, gazing down at his hands. He looked up at me. His expression was confused, incredulous.
“Socks?” he whispered. “You … you don’t feel like you. And …” He trailed off, slowly standing as he cast his gaze around us, taking in the utter destruction I had wrought.
Fish woke up with a roar. One second, he was sprawled on the ground. The next, he was on his feet, fists raised, facing me.
I held my hands out, palms forward.
He faltered, shaking his head in confusion. “Socks?”
“Yes,” Knox said.
Fish spun, reacting as if he was being attacked from behind. “What the hell is going on? How the fuck did you just …” His gaze fell on Zans to his right, still sprawled across the ground. Then he looked up to take in our surroundings. “… sneak up on …” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Knox crouched down next to Bee, pressing his hand to her shoulder, then her cheek. She murmured under his touch, but didn’t wake.
The clairvoyant looked up at me in wonderment. “Nothing. I feel … nothing.”
I nodded, stepping over to retrieve one of my blades. I couldn’t even remember hanging on to it. The second was still i
n my sheath.
Paisley wandered over and sat on my foot.
“You …” Fish looked at me. “You took it all? You have all our power?”
I shook my head, then I gestured around us. I still couldn’t feel a drop of magic anywhere nearby. “I’m drained as well.” Then a thought occurred to me, and I raised my hand to my neck. “Do … do I still have the tattoos?” I turned my back to Fish, carefully keeping my foot in place so as to not displace Paisley.
Fish stepped closer, brushing his fingers along the top of my spine. No magic stirred at his touch. I turned to face him, brushing his hand away with the move.
“They’re still there,” he murmured, locking his dark-eyed gaze to mine. “But they don’t feel like anything.” He reached up and brushed his fingers against the bare skin of my upper arm. “Just like skin. Your skin.”
Zans rolled over onto her side, then sat up, muttering to herself disconcertedly.
Fish dropped his hand. “This isn’t going to be good.”
Zans raised her hands before her, clenching and unclenching them. Then she shrieked — an undulating, wild cry.
Bee woke with a gasp, grasping Knox’s arm.
Zans pinned her gaze to me, rolling into a crouch, then raising her fists before her again. “You! You did this!” She screamed again, a terrible howl filled with pain and frustration. Her entire body shook with the emotion, the realization.
“That’s enough,” Bee shouted, scrambling on all fours to insert herself between Zans and me.
Zans took a shaking, gulping breath.
Bee pressed her hands to Zans’s cheeks. She was smiling, practically glowing with joy. “We’re free,” she whispered. “We’re finally free.”
“We’re nothing,” Zans said. Her voice was a throaty growl, as if she’d damaged her vocal cords with her unnecessary shrieking. “We’re nothing without our powers. She did this … she was always jealous —”
“No. That was you, Zans,” Knox said mildly, stepping over to scoop up Paisley.
“We need to keep moving,” I said. “Standing in the middle of a wasteland is a little exposed for my comfort.”
Zans stood, dragging Bee with her. “You just destroyed everything around us. I think we’re safe.”
The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0) Page 12
