Grant cussed. “Stand on the dividing lines and try again.”
We all shifted to the right. Sweat trickled down my neck, stinging my cuts. Keeping my eyes on the marmot, I aligned myself in the middle of the purifier’s wall, with polarized fire encasing the right side of my body and earth the left side. The helixes moved harmlessly through me—until I tried to grab an element. I reached for earth first, and magic pounded out of control against my brain. Refining my draw down to a slender strand enabled me to manipulate the element, but the moment I opened myself to more, earth crashed through me, breaking my hold and leaving my metaphysical pathways bruised. Reversing tactics, I reached for fire. It roared into me, overwhelming and unchecked, then guttering to a mere flutter too soft to grasp. Heat beat against my right side and charred my elemental senses. Through sheer determination, I clung to a whipcord of fire and yanked it to me.
Between one second and the next, the fire element morphed into earth inside me. With a cry, I threw the wild energy from me before it ripped me apart. I staggered into Seradon, gasping for air. Pain speared through my skull, subsiding to a dull headache as I clutched my temples. Elements didn’t do that. It would have been like having a real flame in a fireplace turn spontaneously into molten lava. The elements could feed and support each other, but they didn’t transform.
“You okay?” Seradon asked.
I straightened and nodded. To the right, Velasquez collapsed to one knee, a beam of raw fire shooting from his palm into the sky. Shaking his head, he surged to his feet. Marciano knocked himself flat on his back, and grass sprang up around the left side of his body, covering him in seconds. Around the circle, the polarized bubble surged and churned, eating across more parkland.
“Stop!” Grant ordered. “This is useless. We need to be on the outside where we can get some damn control.”
The squad convened in the earth section. Sweat matted Velasquez’s shirt to his chest and ran down his neck. He stuck an arm back into the hot air of the fire section, then retracted it.
“That’s not natural,” he muttered.
“We can’t predict how this’ll mutate, but we should be safest in our element,” the captain said. “Divide up and get to the outside. We’ll link up once we’re clear.”
“I prefer not to cook,” Velasquez said. “I’ll go with Mika.”
“Good. She’ll need your help. Seradon, you’re with Winnigan until you’re clear, then get to a healer and get back here ASAP.”
“Aye, sir.”
I fervently hoped Seradon’s recovery could be sped up by a healer. With any luck, she’d be back to assist with the link, because I was far out of my league. So far all I’d managed to do was buy the marmot gargoyle a little time, and in the process I’d unleashed a diabolical energy intent on unraveling the very structure of magic. I hadn’t exactly proven myself to be a competent stand-in.
Oliver paced the purifier’s braid between earth and fire, working himself up to jump through. He’d been hanging back out of the way since he couldn’t assist us. I wished I could do the same.
“Captain, I’d like Oliver to go with you,” I said, motioning the young gargoyle to stay put. I was tempted to keep Oliver at my side for our mutual comfort in this bizarre situation, but I had to think of his safety. With access to only one element, we were all vulnerable to unknown dangers. Oliver would be a lot safer under Grant’s protection than mine. A person didn’t become captain of an FPD squad without learning how to defend himself with and without magic. If things got dangerous, Grant would be able to take care of the adolescent gargoyle.
Grant gave me an assessing look, and his nod said he approved. “Oliver, you’re with me. Clear out.”
“Mika?” Oliver asked, and the confusion in his tone made my heart hurt.
“It’s okay. You’ll be safe with Captain Monaghan.”
“What about you?”
“Are you really doubting this guy?” I hooked a thumb in the direction of Velasquez’s broad chest. “We’ll meet up on the outside. Hurry but stay safe.”
The squad split into their elements and moved out at a jog. Oliver darted through the braid between the air and fire section and shook off the pain, then broke into a lope, easily keeping up with the captain.
As much as I wanted to watch them until they disappeared, I forced myself to turn back to the marmot. Planting a hand on his cool stomach, I said, “Hang in there. I’ll be back for you.”
Shaking the tingling pain of the inverted pentagram from my hand, I pivoted to face the expanding front line of the earth section. “Let’s get out there and break this thing once and for all.” My attempt at bravery made my words come out harsher than I intended.
With a faint smile curving his lips, Velasquez saluted me.
5
Once we cleared the sycamore trees around the central pentagon, the ground flattened into bisecting stone pathways and gravel mazes shaded by cottonwoods. The paths to the right led to the arched bridges and meandering trails of the water section, where willow trees lined the banks of intertwining streams. To the left, the shallow slope of the fire section Kylie and I had run down shimmered with unnatural heat.
Velasquez steered us up the middle toward the shallow-tiered rock gardens, and we jogged up the steps, me huffing, Velasquez silent. The polarized bubble had advanced over a hundred yards from the center of the park, and at the rate we were moving, we’d clear it in a few minutes. Earth weighted my skin, shard-sharp and oppressive. I drew on it just to touch it. Even unlinked and unaided by a gargoyle, I held double the amount I normally could. The element was so pure it could pull the dust particles from the very air. I could reshape the ground with it as easy—
I jumped when Velasquez touched my arm.
“Hold up. It’s reached the reflection pool. I want to see what happens.”
Velasquez pointed to the fire section, but I scanned the air section beyond it, looking for Oliver. I found Grant first. He ran against a crosswind, and sand lifted and eddied around his ankles, partially obscuring Oliver loping at his side.
In the fire section, the leading edge of the polarized magic touched the edge of a shallow pool of water almost twenty feet across, and the magic stuttered around us. Water element rising from the physical liquid clashed with fire, extinguishing a patch of polarized element. The influx of fire magic feeding into the earth section slowed, and the advancing border of the entire polarization bubble halted. The weight of earth against my senses eased.
I spun. On the opposite side of the earth section, water still drank down the earth element through the earth–water seam. Magic continued to push through the constructive weave—water into wood, wood into air—draining the magic from each section. Before I could celebrate, the built-up energy hit the air–fire border and whooshed through, strengthening the fire element. The calm waters of the reflection pool burst into a boil. Steam gushed into the air as the entire pool evaporated. Fresh fire magic fed into the earth section, constricting earth around my skin again, and the outer rim of the bubble jumped several yards, negating the progress we’d made to the border.
“So much for that,” Velasquez said, turning back toward our goal and setting a ground-eating pace.
I fell in behind him, gasping when I caught sight of his back. Long rips in the shirt of his gray uniform exposed bleeding cuts and pebble-embedded abrasions.
“Good thing I came with you,” he said. “Otherwise it would have been Marcus flambé.” When I didn’t respond, he shot me a look over his shoulder. “What, too graphic?”
“Your back. I thought your uniform had protection weaves in it.”
“It did. That blast, this”—he gestured to the polarized energy around us—“burned through it.”
My hand lifted to my own torn sleeve, the only damage my unspelled clothing had taken during the explosion. My skin beneath it was unharmed. “Ah, did I thank you for . . .” Would it be too dramatic to say saving my life?
“Letting you use me
like an air cushion?” Velasquez grinned.
I caught my breath. The man needed a permit for a smile like that. Maybe that’s why he didn’t pull it out much. He should, though.
“I couldn’t invite you to the party, then let you get hurt,” he said.
“You have a weird idea of a party.” I stepped around a bench seat and into a well of pain.
Invisible bonds wrapped around my legs to my waist, and agony welled from my bones, burrowing outward through my joints and my skin. I screamed and wrenched to free myself. Nothing held me, yet I couldn’t move. I folded forward to clutch my legs—
“No! Don’t!”
—and the trap slid over my head. Pain pulled from my pores, and I flailed against the invisible bonds, gasping on air too thick to breathe. My foot shifted. I clawed for magic, but even earth didn’t respond. A hollow nothingness pressed back where magic should have existed, stunning me. I could see the element eddying above my head, but I couldn’t reach it and none penetrated the invisible spherical barrier holding me.
Velasquez thrust his arm into the air beside me, fingers splayed. Thick bands of earth pushed from his fingertips, the movement of the element the most beautiful magic I’d ever seen. The trap eroded and distorted the magic, flattening it and almost extinguishing it before feathery tendrils brushed the inside edge of the invisible sphere. It imploded, and magic sucked into the void, the raw earth sharp and welcoming.
I collapsed sideways, rubbing the fading cramps from my legs as the pain ebbed from my body.
“What was that?” I asked, accepting Velasquez’s help up.
“A null pocket. When the purifier exploded, this nook of balanced elements must have canceled each other out.”
I glanced around. The five elements were equally represented in a tight circle around the stone bench. Dozens such setting existed throughout Focal Park. “Why didn’t it get consumed by the earth?”
Velasquez shrugged. “We’re dealing with bizarre magic. Somehow that tiny explosion took down the ward, too, which doesn’t make any sense.”
I was so used to seeing the park without the ward, I hadn’t noticed it was missing.
“We don’t know what we’re dealing with, so watch where you step.” He resumed his march toward the front edge of the polarization field.
“Sure. I’ll keep my eye out for invisible pockets of nothing,” I muttered as I trotted to catch up with his long-legged stride. I fell into step beside him. “Why did it hurt?” I asked, speaking loud enough for him to hear this time. I’d been cuffed with null bands before, and they’d slid a barrier between me and the elements, but they hadn’t inflicted pain.
“It was pulling the magic from you.”
“But why? Why couldn’t I walk through it?”
“Nulls are balanced voids. When you bungled into it, it reacted as if you were the enemy. It couldn’t let you keep walking. It had to destroy the magic inside you, so it trapped you.”
“You make it sound like it had the ability to think.”
“A poor analogy, then. It reacted to the magic in you the same way fire reacts to paper: You were consumable.”
What a pleasant thought.
“Usually null pockets deteriorate on their own, and pretty fast, but I don’t trust the elements to act normally right now.”
As if to reinforce his words, the earth moved beneath our feet like a blanket being shaken out. A low rumble rolled up the hill, drowning out the creaking protests of the cottonwoods. I flung out my arms for balance, managing to keep my feet beneath me. Velasquez widened his stance and rode the undulating ground like he’d done it a dozen times before. My legs continued to tremble even after the granite resumed its characteristic inert state.
“Stay close and stay behind me.”
Velasquez’s matter-of-fact tone snapped me into motion. Following in his footsteps, I jogged across sun-warmed rocks, my feet slapping the hard stone in tandem with his. We had at least another twenty feet to go before we reached the edge of the polarization field, all of it uphill, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were moving too slowly. It was all well and good to be safe and conserve our energy instead of making a headlong dash, but the longer we were inside the polarized magic, the more my skin crawled with the need to escape.
The granite shivered beneath my feet, the smooth wind-worn rock growing rough and uneven between one step and the next. I glanced around. None of the other rocks in our section were moving or reshaping. The earth was responding to our footsteps.
“Velasquez . . .”
“I see it.” The fire elemental altered his stride, his footsteps landing softer without him slowing. I tried to do the same and fell behind.
Velasquez jumped to a wide boulder a step above us. I’d barely cleared the step behind him when the boulder sprouted a short wall in front of Velasquez, solid rock reshaping as fast as a blink. With speed I’d never have accredited to the large man, he sprang to the right. A crest of speckled gray granite swirled behind his feet, the dense rock moving and re-forming like water but sounding like a landslide. When he landed, a sheet of schist shot skyward at his right side, dwarfing him. Velasquez slammed into it, the impact bouncing him back a half step. Schist bulged from the wall and frothed up the smooth surface, coating it in short, jagged peaks.
I slammed a knee into the protrusion Velasquez had avoided and windmilled my arms to counter my forward momentum. The granite beneath me lifted, carrying me toward Velasquez. He grabbed my arm, balancing me as the rocks ground to a halt.
Neither of us moved, our ragged breathing filling the space between us. Velasquez was a foot shorter than me, standing in a knee-deep hole and hemmed in on two sides by rock walls where moments before there’d been a flat expanse of granite. I swallowed hard.
The earth growled behind me, and I twisted to look. A ridge of brown-and-black-banded hornfels pushed upward along the dividing line between the earth and fire section in an inches-high mountain range, with a few peaks sprouting as high as my thighs. Up and down the helix wall, the earth rumbled in an ever-growing and shifting barrier.
“What the—” A heavy crack louder than ten gargoyles landing on marble drowned out Velasquez’s curse. We both spun toward the sound. A waist-high block of granite large enough for me to stand on punched from the dirt at the leading edge of the bubble. In rapid succession, three more burst from the soil like jagged teeth in the mouth of the polarized bubble.
“The air,” I said, swallowing twice before I coaxed sound from my throat. “It’s damming it. Or trying to.” In the destructive cycle, earth stopped air. Based on the twisted logic of this polarized magic, it made sense that the raw earth wouldn’t tolerate the movement of air. When Velasquez had jumped, he’d created a breeze, and the granite had grown to halt it. When he’d jumped the second time to avoid the sudden growth, he’d created even more air displacement, and the rock had boxed him in to cut it off.
“Look.” I crouched. It hurt the cut on my shoulder to maintain my grip on Velasquez’s arm and bend down, but I couldn’t make myself let go. Leaning forward, I huffed out a sharp breath. Schist bubbled out of a vein in the granite and formed a shallow bowl around the puff of air, effectively stopping the wind.
“Crap,” Velasquez said.
“Yep.”
“Okay. I’m going to get out of this hole before it closes in on me.”
I straightened and braced myself. Velasquez planted one foot on the granite next to me, then eased himself free of the earthen trap. A sharp spiral of granite shot upward from the base of the hole, counteracting the downdraft of air Velasquez displaced. I yanked him toward me before the sharp tip could puncture his back.
Velasquez stumbled against me, catching me in his arms before I could move my feet.
“Maybe we should move to the water section,” I said, my nose pressed against his broad chest. He smelled of sweat and dirt, and it wasn’t a bad combination.
“I don’t think it would help.”
&nbs
p; We eased apart without moving our feet and I leaned to look around him at the water section. The ground had risen to create a crenelated wall along the water–earth boundary, damming overflowing streams that had previously lazed throughout the earth section. Deeper in the water section, a pond burbled, then fountained, fed from an underground geyser. It overflowed its banks and flooded the breadth of the water section. Seconds later, the magic influx cycled around the purifier’s constructive bubble and hit earth.
Velasquez and I staggered as the density of our air thickened with unnatural gravity. At the edge of the central pentagon, a sycamore tree toppled, and the ground rose up to break its fall. Cascading ridges of earth halted the rush of air up the tiers, curling back over the fallen tree and toppling a few cottonwoods, restarting the process. I pressed one ear to Velasquez’s chest, clapping a hand over the other to muffle the cacophony. Beneath us, the ground quaked and I rode it out on trembling knees.
Thick black smoke billowed into the sky where the top of the sycamore had fallen into the fire section. In rapid succession, three more smoke columns joined the first and heat tightened the air even as more power flooded into the earth section and the leading edge of the polarization jumped several yards.
I lifted my head from Velasquez’s chest to watch Winnigan and Seradon wade into the growing pond, then dive beneath the surface. Both women emerged a few feet away, arms paddling as they swam. A current pulled them away from us toward the wood section, where the pond cascaded down a waterfall that hadn’t existed ten minutes ago.
“What’s happening to the ground in the wood section?” I asked. The earth eroded under the falling water as if it were sand, not hardy granite, hornfels, and schist.
“The same thing that’s happening here. Wood destroys earth.”
With growing horror, I examined the wood section. The ground around the central pentagram was pockmarked with holes like empty graves. Farther away, the ground disappeared as if sheared off at the front edge of overgrown creosote bushes, and the gnarled roots of the botanical garden’s red maples twisted in the open air. The trees’ trunks were twice as thick as they’d started the day, and I realized the movement of the visible roots wasn’t caused by the wind; I was seeing the trees grow.
Curse of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 2) Page 6
