I took a steadying breath. I could do this.
“Herbert needs somewhere to land,” Seradon said. “Velasquez, build him a platform. Make it strong. If he falls into the water, he might drown before we can save him.”
I struggled to focus on the physical world. Where Herbert needed to land between the water and the wood sections, the ground had eroded, and a waterfall cascaded along the purifier’s braid. The moment the line touched him, Herbert would be paralyzed and he’d plummet to the bottom of the churning water.
A platform of granite lifted from the ground, growing until it cleared the water by five feet. I felt for the magic creating it, surprised to find more than the cables of earth reshaping the rock—I could distinguish Marcus’s magic signature, a steady heat wrapped around a core of rosewood and sparking with lightning like a living jewel. It was a signature as impressive as the man himself. He wasn’t half bad with earth, either. I should have expected nothing less from an FSPP, even if he was a fire elemental. Nevertheless, I wasn’t taking any chances with Herbert’s life.
Any more chances, my guilty conscience accused.
“It needs to be stronger.” I twined my magic through Marcus’s, reinforcing the granite with a cage made from quartz I located from near the base of the pillar. Nothing short of a fire-fused thunderbolt would break the platform.
“You’re getting bossy,” Marcus said.
My rebuttal was cut short when Herbert landed on the platform and the purifier’s polarized wood and water magic sliced into him. Methodically, I beat it back, layering familiar patches to lessen the pain. His acute agony had barely faded to a dull ache when Quinn fell into the line of water and earth.
“Too fast,” I gasped, but he was too far away to hear, and it was too late anyway. The purifier drew strength from all five gargoyles, eating into them. I siphoned magic from the link to combat it on five fronts, frustrated by the lag in the magic. When I tried to grab more, Grant growled.
“Work with what you’ve got,” he said, his voice coming from over my shoulder in the mirror sphere.
I growled right back, too focused on saving Quinn to form words. A giant shaft of air speared between one anchor and the next, consuming the magic in the link as Grant rebuilt the destructive pentagram. The extra boost the four gargoyles had given us had been cut off one by one as they’d sacrificed themselves to the purifier.
I seized all available remaining magic, and even though I wielded more than I could normally hold even when a gargoyle boosted me, it still didn’t feel like enough.
As soon as Quinn was safe, I hopped to Oliver, then Lydia, Anya, Herbert, and back to Quinn. Cycling through the gargoyles wasn’t fast enough. The purifier ate into them with mechanical relentlessness, and every time I slowed to fight it out of one gargoyle, it gained a deeper hold on the others.
Dividing my magic, I countered air in Anya and Lydia at once, then shifted to counter fire in Lydia and Oliver. Working my way around the circle fighting the purifier in two gargoyles at once proved more effective, but it still wasn’t enough. I split my focus again. Since earth was my strongest element, I kept a steady onslaught of earth against air in Lydia and Anya while countering an additional polarized element in a third gargoyle. Oliver, Quinn, Herbert, and back to Oliver, then to the fire in Lydia, the wood in Anya, and back to Oliver.
I lost all sensation of my body, dizzy inside the magic and unable to slow for even a second to gain my bearings. My world narrowed to the noxious rooting braids and the purifier’s unrelenting attack.
“Is she breathing?” Kylie asked. Her words bubbled out of the space between the gargoyles, and I dismissed them. They had nothing to do with saving the gargoyles.
“Don’t touch her. Don’t break her concentration,” Seradon said.
I wouldn’t break. I’d shatter. Or disintegrate. I existed in three places at once, fighting three different battles, and every so often, I found a spare thought for a fourth division of magic, and I wove a healing patch in a gargoyle. I was beyond being able to differentiate between them. They were simply five points, five homes for my consciousness. Five pieces of me, and all of them hurt.
The pain echoed through my magic, throbbing aches layered atop sharp stabs in discordant pulses that became my rhythm of movement. Jump to the sharp pain, fight, soothe, move on to the next.
Magic stuttered to me, its strength varied and always less than I needed. The only way I’d get ahead of the purifier was to work faster, and to work faster, I needed more magic.
As if in response to my thought, a rush of magic filled me, and I jounced between the gargoyles so fast it felt as if I touched them all at once.
“I’m ready to activate the pentagram.”
The words struck like a gong in my head. I struggled to speak and managed, “Gnnnaaa.”
“She’s not ready, sir,” Seradon interpreted.
“I can see that, but she needs to get ready. Mika, can you hear me? The field is going to overwhelm those gargoyles if you don’t free them. Now.”
Trying. I’m trying, I thought, but I couldn’t get the words out.
With the influx of magic, I reversed my tactics and grabbed a braid, pulling it from one gargoyle—Lydia. Huge coils of air and fire ripped from her chest and writhed in my grip. The elements divided, some seeking a way back into Lydia, some angling over her. Like it had a mind, a predatory consciousness, the purifier’s braid hunted for the next life to suck dry. I strained to hold it in check, and it took all my concentration to box in the raw power. I wouldn’t be able to hold all five braids until the destructive pentagram destroyed them. Even if I had control of all the magic in our link, it would have been beyond me. As it was, I couldn’t even spare enough magic to grab another.
Yet I couldn’t make myself release the corrupted magic back into Lydia. She was free, but the moment I let go of the purifier, she’d be pinned and paralyzed again. We’d be right back where we started.
My heart squeezed. Lydia, Anya, Quinn, Herbert, and Oliver had all entrusted me with their lives. If I couldn’t break the purifier’s hold on all of them, they’d die. Because I wasn’t the healer they needed me to be.
Unless . . .
Unless the purifier wasn’t attached to Lydia. Unless I gave the purifier something else to latch on to.
I had already fractured into pieces. I could feel my five gargoyles more clearly than I could distinguish my body. I felt their pain and their lives as if they were my own. All it would take was a reversal. Not quite a swap. More like a transplant.
I released the air and fire braid, holding it at bay against Lydia’s skin, letting it hook into her only enough to prevent it from jumping to a more distant gargoyle.
“Mika. I’m activating the pentagram. We can’t wait.”
No. I’m not ready.
The purifier’s magic trembled, then surged tighter and stronger into the gargoyles, latching on and pulling magic from them as the pentagram drained the magic from the polarization fields.
I flung myself from gargoyle to gargoyle, tearing the purifier’s hooks from each one. I didn’t try to be gentle, and I forced myself to ignore the wash of pain echoing from them. I focused on myself. Me. The gargoyle healer.
I thought about the link, about how I’d felt when Marcus had coached me through finding myself. I paused my assault long enough to pull myself into one place; then I split my essence again and again into five perfect copies.
“Mika, what are— No! That’s a terrible idea,” Seradon cried.
My singular connection with the link fractured to five points, and I spun at the end of those points like five kites at the end of cobweb strings. Seradon was wrong. This was the only option, the only way to protect the gargoyles. It might not be the way the full-five FSPP squad would do things, but I wasn’t part of the squad and I wasn’t an FSPP. I was a gargoyle healer, and I wasn’t going to let a gargoyle die, not when I could prevent it.
“Mika, stop!” Marcus bellowed.
I flung myself in five directions, latching each piece of my essence onto a separate gargoyle. Burrowing into them, I reshaped my selves to resonate with each gargoyle.
My body fractured. Knives of pure fire cut through my skull. I screamed, or someone did. Someone felt that pain, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t all of me.
My five selves grabbed hold of the purifier in its five different forms and wrapped each in bands of countermagic. I was pure water and earth fighting fire and air. I was fire and air fighting wood and water. I was all five elemental pairings at once, and I was gargoyle, too. I was quartz and fire and a sprinkling of water and wood and air lifting my wings.
My teeth chattered. I could hear but not feel them clacking together. No, they had to be someone else’s teeth. My mouths were closed. My bodies were paralyzed.
The purifier’s hold on us weakened. It couldn’t pierce our magic. It retreated. Slowly at first, then it suctioned away from us, pulling free of our bodies. We clung to it. If we released it, it would find another gargoyle. It wouldn’t stop. Only we could stop it.
The purifier fought us, tried to escape, but we held. We just had to hold.
“Let go, Mika. You’ve got to let go.”
“What did she do?”
“She’s going to kill herself.”
“Mika! Let GO!”
Marcus’s voice boomed against my eardrums. My eardrums. I jarred back to the tiny neglected sixth part of my self and snapped my eyes open.
Lapis lazuli eyes filled my blurry vision.
“Can you hear me? Break the link. Let go. Let the pentagram work.”
I fractured to pieces, most of me sucking toward the center of the park, pulled by the vortex of destructive magic in Grant’s pentagram and the purifier braids to which we—no I—clung.
If I released them now, would I survive the backlash? Would I be nullified?
I hesitated, my terror echoing through all the pieces of me.
“Shit, Mika. Break the link. Pull yourself together.”
My head jostled on my neck. Marcus was shaking me, and I wanted to tell him to stop. It hurt. All of me hurt. The pain seared through my brain, eating through the cobweb strings. I broke from the purifier and scrambled to reel myself in, but the cobwebs had morphed to razor wires, and each tug sliced through my skull.
My body convulsed in Marcus’s grip, the sky spun above me, and my consciousness imploded.
9
Warmth unfurled. I hadn’t known I was cold until I felt the heat’s steady, solid presence. I drifted closer to it, then burrowed into it, pulling it tight around myself. It expanded to cradle me.
An expansive hollowness opened inside me. It should have been terrifying, but I recognized it and the potential it represented. It wasn’t love, but it was something close.
A web of elements unfolded around me, each line of magic beckoning. I reached out and tentatively touched one. It hummed like a violin string beneath a bow. I strummed another element, and another. Each resonated through me, reshaping me.
A jagged line of fractured magic pulsed among the elements. I shied away, but the gentle warmth solidified around me, a cocoon of heated rosewood. Emboldened, I reached for the magic around the fracture and carefully knit it back together. Earth and fire and breaths of air made it whole.
I spotted another anomaly, and this time water and air and earth mended it. Again and again, I repaired the broken magic, bolstered by the solid heat holding me and the familiar hollowness engulfing it.
When I sealed the last fracture, I recognized the hollow sensation. Gargoyle. But not just any gargoyle. Oliver.
The cocoon trembled with my excitement. Oliver was alive. He was boosting me, which meant he wasn’t trapped in the purifier. He was safe.
My thoughts tumbled together, and I jolted to full consciousness.
I stared up at Marcus, the hard lines of his face haloed by the clear blue sky. Magic eased from me, taking with it his warmth.
“What happened?” I rasped.
“You were stupid.”
“What?” I squinted at those lapis lazuli eyes, then rolled my head to the side. Oliver hunched beside me, his muzzle pressed to my arm. I tried to reach for him, but my fingers only wiggled. Oliver nuzzled me, returning my pathetic attempt at a smile with a grin.
“You divided your spirit—a very stupid thing to do,” Marcus said, pulling my gaze back to him. “Then in a stroke of sheer idiocy, you anchored each piece separately to another living creature. But that wasn’t enough for you. You had to prove you were a master dimwit and you changed your resonance to match the gargoyles’.”
“That part was pretty impressive, if astronomically dumb,” Seradon said.
“You could have torn your brainless head to shreds with that stunt,” Marcus continued, talking over Seradon. “You would have. You would have killed yourself. You would be a goddamn null vegetable right now—”
“She doesn’t need you to yell at her,” Seradon said, stepping into view as she patted Marcus’s tense shoulders. “I’m sure her hearing is perfectly fine.”
The fire elemental took a deep breath and continued in a rough growl. “You’d be a meat sack right now if your gargoyles hadn’t buffered you.”
“It took all five,” Seradon said. “It was incredible. I didn’t know it was possible. They held you inside them. Like they wrapped you in magic. I think it only worked because you changed your resonance.”
“They’re all safe?” I asked.
“Yes, they’re all safe,” Seradon said.
Relief lifted me from my body. I closed my eyes until the dizziness passed. “If I sit up, are you going to shake me again?” I asked Marcus.
He huffed a breath, then relaxed his grip on my shoulders and helped me up. Stone feet cracked against the granite boulders as Lydia and Quinn landed nearby. Quinn galloped to me, skidding to a stop when Marcus blocked him from barreling into me.
“Are you okay, Mika?” the young gargoyle asked, his goofy lion face scrunched with concern.
“I’m fine.” Okay, that was a lie. My head was going to split open if I moved too fast, and my entire body ached. The only part of me that didn’t hurt was my left foot, and that was because it was still wrapped in Marcus’s field patch.
Lydia snaked her head around Oliver, her glowing purple eyes scanning my body. “The fire elemental is right. That was stupid.”
“Lydia!” Kylie scolded. She pushed Marcus aside and knelt in his place. I missed the support of his hands on my shoulders. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been leaning on him. It hadn’t been just the gargoyles who had saved me. It’d been his warmth, his magic cradling me while I recovered.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“Five minutes. The longest five minutes of my life, too. You scared the crap out of me.” Kylie brushed a wisp of hair from my face with shaking fingers.
“Sorry about that.”
“But you did it. You saved Terra Haven.”
The way she said it made me groan. She was going to try to make me into a hero again.
“No, we did it. Marcus and Grant and Winnigan and Marciano—”
“And you,” Kylie insisted.
“And the gargoyles.”
The captain’s mirror sphere whirled through the air and halted less than a foot from my face.
“I specifically told you to stay out of this, Kylie Grayson. Who let you back in here?” Grant barked.
“And I’ve told you I answer to the public, not you,” Kylie said calmly.
“Journalism does not trump the law.”
“Sir, I recruited her,” Seradon said.
The mirror sphere shot back several paces so the captain could take in all of us. “Explain.”
“I knew you would need help and I figured our healer would have gargoyles who owed her a favor or two. I asked Kylie to contact them for me.”
“You called the others?” I asked.
Kylie nodded proudly. I curled my fingers int
o the rock. She’d meant well, but her rash decision had endangered all my gargoyles’ lives.
My swollen finger protested, the pain cutting temporarily through my headache, and I relaxed my hands. It’d all worked out. Berating Kylie now would be pointless. She couldn’t have predicted how dangerous the situation would be for the gargoyles.
“This still doesn’t explain why Kylie is back inside the park,” Grant said.
“Have you ever tried to argue with a mule?” Seradon asked.
“Hey!” Kylie protested. She had risen to her feet beside Seradon, and the mirror sphere rose with her so it floated well above my head. I let their words wash over me and turned to the gargoyles. I thanked them, knowing my words were inadequate. Quinn burrowed into my left side, and Lydia bustled around Oliver to rest against my thigh. I ran my fingers over their smooth sides—careful of Oliver’s rough patches—and it seemed like enough for them. I closed my eyes for a moment, savoring the peace of being surrounded by gargoyles, all of us safe.
“Where are Anya and Herbert?” I asked.
“With the captain,” Quinn said. He’d begun to purr, and it garbled his words. A tiny smile cracked my lips.
“How did you recover enough to provide a boost?” I asked Oliver. He’d curled his tail around my back and pressed up against my right side, so close that he had to tilt his head all the way back to look me in the eye. “When you got out of the air section, we hardly had time to balance you, yet you feel stronger than ever.”
“I opened myself to your link,” he said.
“While you were pinned by the purifier?”
“It was the only way to keep fighting,” Lydia said. She ran her beak through the long feathers of a wing, straightening ruffled rock quills.
I reached for the elements, gratified when earth came easily to my call. It was just my strength, no link or gargoyle enhancement, and it’d never been so wonderful to hold such a small amount of magic. I formed a basic test pentagram, refined it to resonate with a gargoyle, and slid it into Oliver. Pain echoed along the link from the laceration made by the purifier. The raw patches on his skin stung and a general soreness soaked his body. None of the injuries were serious, and he would heal from them all with time, but I planned to speed up his recovery. As soon as I felt stronger.
Curse of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 2) Page 11
