Lydia and Quinn were better off, not having suffered through the sandstorm and having been trapped in the purifier a shorter amount of time.
“You guys are incredible.”
“We’re heroes. We saved the other gargoyles,” Oliver said.
“You saved the whole city. That should be the title of Kylie’s next article: ‘The Gargoyles Who Saved Terra Haven.’”
Oliver trilled in agreement. I’d have nightmares, but he didn’t appear to have any regrets after the traumatic ordeal.
“You like this kind of excitement, don’t you?” I asked Oliver.
“Yes.”
“Even after everything you went through?”
He shrugged. “We saved lives.”
It was the kind of answer I would have expected from a member of the FPD squad.
The wind shifted, bringing with it the dry heat dissipating from the fire section along with an acrid scent of charred earth. If possible, the park looked worse than before. I sought out the rock boulder holding the fox gargoyle, relieved to see it unaffected by the magma bubbling against the base. I’d have to wait to check on the fox until the area cooled. The marmot needed my help, too, as did the other gargoyles who had been trapped at the end of the purifier’s braids. But first I had to convince my legs to move.
“Something’s wrong,” Marcus said. He stood a few feet away on a tall outcropping of rocks, surveying the park. “The magic doesn’t feel right.”
“Of course not,” Seradon said. “It’s going to take—”
“Squad. Convene on my signal,” Grant barked through the mirror sphere. A shaft of light shot upward from the center of the park, the captain hidden by the landscape.
Marcus hopped down and strode to my side. “Can you stand?”
“Yes.” Maybe. The gargoyles gave me space and I struggled to get my feet beneath me. Marcus gripped my arm and tugged me upright as if I weighed no more than a doll.
“What about walking?”
“No problem,” I said, all bluff. My legs were rubber. I wanted to lie down and take a nap and not wake until the pain in my head abated.
“Maybe you should stay here,” Kylie said. “I’ll go get a healer. You’re in no condition to—”
“No.” Grant’s tone brooked no argument. “Mika needs to come here.”
My heart sank. We weren’t linked, and the captain wasn’t likely to want to use me in a link again, anyway. A gargoyle had to be in trouble, and from Grant’s location, it had to be the marmot.
I took a step. My knees wobbled but didn’t collapse.
“I could carry you again,” Marcus offered.
“Again?” Kylie echoed.
I was tempted. My foot was still cut, even if I couldn’t feel it through Marcus’s field wrap. I was exhausted. I hurt. But he had taken injuries, too, and I wasn’t going to add to them if I didn’t have to. Plus, I was afraid that if I allowed myself a moment of weakness, my remaining willpower—the only thing holding me upright and conscious—would evaporate. The marmot gargoyle needed me; I’d be weak later.
My steps evened out, but Marcus kept a hand under my elbow. I must have looked as bad as I felt if he expected me to collapse at any moment. Quinn, Lydia, and Oliver trailed us for a few feet, then took flight when we started climbing the granite teeth. I would have preferred the flatter ground of the former fire section, but embers smoldering among the magma flow nixed that option. A small lake flooded the water section, and it would have taken too long—and too much energy—to circle around to the air section, where the dust cloud was settling to reveal a sand-blasted landscape a great deal smoother than the one through which we climbed.
Marcus lifted me up taller steps and carried me down the steep descent on the other side. I grumbled my thanks and pretended I’d managed the whole earthen obstacle course on my own. Marcus’s lips curled in a small smile. I was doing my best to appear stoic and strong, and he found me amusing. Great.
“Okay. We get it. You’re a tough little healer,” Seradon said when I paused to catch my breath. She grabbed my left arm and looped it over her shoulders, circling my waist with her right arm. “But it’s time to move.”
Marcus grinned and lifted my right arm around his shoulders, clutching the waistband of my pants with his left. Between the two of them, my feet touched the ground only every third or fifth step, and we covered the rest of the distance to the central pentagon at a run that somehow left me more winded than either of the squad members. Kylie ran in our wake, and I caught fragments of her panted words as she described the park to herself. I didn’t need to look to know she captured her words in a bubble of air that she’d use as notes when she wrote her article.
At the heart of the park, the central pentagon plateau had suffered the most drastic alterations. The ground on the wood side was simply gone. The hole dropped away in a triangular wedge heavily eroded on the right by the air section and on the left by water. The plateau would have been submerged without the outlet the sinkhole provided, judging by the amount of water filling it. A V of ankle-high, razor-thin marble and granite defined the tip of the earth section, ending at the marmot’s toes. It cut a ridge straight through the broken marble pentagram, and below the plateau, it dammed the water on the left and the cooling ripples of magma on the right. The ring of sycamore trees around the pentagram had been reduced to two, both with roots submerged in the receding pool. The others had burned or toppled.
The marmot had survived better than I feared. A little water and heat couldn’t hurt him. The ground remained stable and flat under his feet. Only his side that had been exposed to the sandstorm had suffered.
But it wasn’t my need to heal the raw length of his body that spurred my steps. A sphere encased the marmot, and the elements swirled around the outside like the rainbow on a bubble of soap, only this bubble was twice my height and equally as wide. Inside, the elements simply didn’t exist.
Grant, Winnigan, and Marciano stood to one side, and above them, Herbert and Anya perched on the same pillar where Oliver had sat hours earlier when we’d first arrived. Short-lived relief flashed through me at the sight of them, safe and whole.
“What’s going on?” I asked, struggling free of Seradon and Marcus. I thought I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to be right.
“That’s the largest null pocket I’ve ever seen,” Seradon said, confirming my fear.
“Damn!” Marcus stopped short, steadying Kylie when she tripped into him.
I stared at the nothingness around the marmot, fighting back a tide of helplessness. The agony of just my legs trapped in a null field had been overwhelming. When I’d foolishly submerged myself in the tiny pocket, I had felt like I was dying. Gargoyles lived and breathed magic. Existing without it wouldn’t simply be agony; it’d kill the marmot. I didn’t know how much time he had left, but it couldn’t be long.
“We’ve got to get him out of there. How do we break it?”
“The same way I broke the one that trapped you,” Marcus answered. “We have to push magic from the center outward to destabilize the field.”
“We don’t have much time,” Grant said, taking the words from my mouth.
“It’s expanding!” Kylie gasped and backpedaled from her close examination of the null’s surface. Her wide eyes darted to Grant’s. “That’s not how a null field works. They dissipate.”
“In a normal world, yes, but this park was overwhelmed with pure elements. When the destructive pentagram drained it, it pulled all the balanced energy into one spot, and they negated each other.”
In a massive way. The gargoyle sat at the center of the null field, too far inside for me to reach, but I had to try. Every second of delay could cost the marmot his life.
“Boost me,” I ordered, glancing toward the gargoyles. Oliver, Lydia, and Quinn had joined their siblings, perching on nearby pillars. Magic from all five opened inside me, filling me with almost as much strength as I’d had in the link. I grabbed it all and stepped into
the null sphere.
10
Pain crumpled me and momentum alone propelled my next slow step deeper into the null field. The air coalesced around my body, tight as molasses and equally hard to breathe. My bones sprouted needles of agony, all pushing outward through my skin as magic leeched from my body. I stretched cramping fingers toward the marmot, pushing all my gargoyle-enhanced magic toward it, willing it to live. The other hand I left flung behind me in the normal air, pulling in every scrap of magic I could hold.
When Marcus had freed me from the small null pocket, he’d been able to direct his magic across the empty sphere to puncture it, but I couldn’t push the elements more than a few inches from my outstretched hand. No matter how much I strained, the magic oozed from me, the elements squiggling chaotically before dissipating into the dense air and its all-consuming nothingness.
I shuffled another constricted step, and pain slid up the arm behind me and closed over my fingertips. All magic vanished. It didn’t snap in a backlash. It didn’t trickle to a thin thread. It ceased to exist, leaving only pain, and I was still a yard from the gargoyle.
I gasped for air, my equilibrium lost in the saturation of agony. I stepped back, reaching for magic, and my fingers crunched against an invisible wall, bending backward, the sting indistinguishable from the stabbing pain invading my entire body.
A strong hand shot through the null field’s shell and clamped onto my forearm. Magic, sweet and soft, pulsed into me, and the wall softened. Marcus yanked me free of the null. I fell against him, limp, and he hooked his hands under my armpits to prevent me from collapsing at his feet. Every joint in my body ached as if I’d been sick with the flu for a week, but I could feel magic again. It settled against my skin like a balm, and I could have happily rolled in the feeling if I could have figured out how to work my muscles.
“What were you thinking?” Marcus bellowed.
“He’s going to die.” My words were breathy, and I tried to put more volume into them. I might have sounded stronger if I could have lifted my head from Marcus’s chest. Even better if tears didn’t thicken my voice. Hadn’t the marmot been through enough already? Every second it took us to save him was a moment of endless pain for him. “We have to save him. Can’t waste time.”
“Well, there goes my plan,” Grant said, sarcasm thick in his voice.
“Give her a break. She’s a healer. You know how they’re never right in the head,” Seradon said.
“Some less so than others,” Marcus growled.
Clutching my temples, I silently conceded that I’d been rash. Panic and guilt ate at me as I stared at the helpless marmot, but with the slowly ebbing pain forcing me to take a moment to think, I recognized the stupidity of my actions.
Not looking at anyone, I righted myself, only to grab for Marcus’s forearm when my left foot contacted the ground and the sharp pain stole my breath as if the granite spear had been driven anew through my sole. The null field had negated the field patch.
Gritting my teeth, I centered my balance on my right foot and finally managed to stand on my own. Marcus squinted at me, then let me go.
“We need to unbalance the null,” Grant said. “Velasquez, the hottest fire you’ve got.”
Marcus stepped away from me, and I swayed in place. Kylie darted forward to prop me up. She might have said something, but my whole being was focused on the squad’s rescue efforts.
Blue-white flame shot from Marcus’s hands, setting fire to a bushel of plants Marciano grew from a crack in the marble. Grant snapped branches thicker than his legs from the downed sycamores, and he and Winnigan used bands of air to pile them atop Marcus’s fire. Kylie directed a whirlwind of air through the surrounding area, collecting twigs and smaller branches to add to the flames. In less than a minute, the squad had built an unnaturally hot bonfire twice as tall as Marciano. Kylie helped me hobble backward away from the intense heat of the blue flames. Elemental fire magic flowed from the blaze, and it licked against the null field.
I held my breath, waiting for the first signs that the null was shrinking. Against the building power of the singular element, it should have destabilized.
The null crept across the burning logs, smothering the roaring fire to soft orange flickers. No elemental magic formed around the flames inside the null. Fire without the element? How was that even possible?
“So much for that plan,” Marcus said, dampening the fire to coals. Elemental strands shifted above the embers to twine up the outside edge of the null sphere.
“Are you up for linking yet?” Grant asked Seradon.
She shook her head. “Still can’t lift a pebble.”
“Okay. Mika, sit your ass down before you fall down and link up. We’re forming a bridge and getting to the heart of this.”
I didn’t wait until I was sitting; I thrust an equalized bundle of elements at Grant, and he deftly caught it, pulling me into a link. His thundercloud of magical strength swamped my thoughts; then Marcus’s heated rosewood shield snapped into the link, followed by the cool slap of Winnigan’s magic and a snarl of smoldering ironwood that must have been Marciano. Practice made it easier to distinguish each elemental in the link, but I didn’t take any pleasure in the new skill since it got me no closer to saving the marmot.
I lowered myself to sit on a blob of marble. At one point, it’d probably been a bench, but the polarization had reshaped it into a black-veined lump of rock. Kylie kept a hand on my arm as if she thought I’d tip off the seat. When the gargoyles dropped into the link, opening a seemingly bottomless well of magic, I thought Kylie’s concern might be justified. Magic roared through me, and I teetered on the edge of control. Losing myself in the magic was tempting. If I let go and lost myself, I’d be buffered from my pain.
I’d also be useless to the marmot.
I am a gargoyle healer. I didn’t really need the words to collect myself this time, but it helped me to hear it, even if it was only in my thoughts.
“Are you okay?” Kylie asked. “Can I do anything?”
I shook my head. At one time, I would have thought this amount of magic could solve any problem. Now I knew better. All magic had its limits.
Grant and Marcus clasped forearms, and Marciano grabbed hold of Marcus’s other arm. Winnigan trotted to my side and reached for me. She stood close enough for us to lock arms without me needing to stand; then she and Marciano linked up so we made a human chain. Seradon stood back out of the way, her face a mask of frustration. Not being able to help must have been tearing her up inside.
I glanced at the marmot. I knew exactly how she felt.
The captain eased into the null field, arms splayed, one toward the gargoyle, the other toward Marcus. Tight lines formed around his eyes and his face whitened, but if I hadn’t been inside the null myself, I never would have known pain ate through his body from the inside out.
Grant drew on all our magic, and I swayed toward him. I wasn’t the only one; the squad tilted toward the captain as the forcible suction of the elements through us tilted our equilibrium.
Grant funneled all the magic out of the palm he stretched toward the marmot. The captain’s long arms enabled him to progress a few feet closer to the marmot than I had, but despite the massive level of our combined power, little more magic escaped into the null. With another step, his fingers on Marcus’s arm slid past the invisible barrier, submerging Grant in the null field.
The link frayed and magic whiplashed. With a cry, I cut myself free of the wild energy, and an explosion of raw elements burst into the air. A backdraft of wind pressed me to the marble and knocked Kylie to her butt; then it dissipated. Down the line, elements bloomed from the squad, displacing the air with audible snaps and pops. Inside the bubble, the captain stood several feet from the center, not even close enough to touch the marmot.
“Grant!” Kylie picked herself up and darted toward the null field. Seradon intercepted her.
The captain turned, his body hunched, and reached for Marcus
, having lost contact in the wild release of magic. Marcus and Marciano both reached into the field, feeding their individual magic into Grant and yanking him free.
The marmot remained imprisoned in the middle of the null, as helpless to free himself as we were to reach him.
“It’s not dissipating or weakening,” Winnigan said, massaging her temples. “It’s eating magic and getting stronger.”
Chills tingled down my spine. Elsa had a lot to answer for. Her attempt to manufacture her own gargoyle-like enhancement had backfired in the worst way possible—and after having experienced the polarized magic, that was saying something.
“How big could the null field get?” Kylie asked.
I caught the anxious look Winnigan and Grant shared, and fresh dread weighted my stomach. If they were worried, I should be paralyzed with fear.
“It might stop where the polarization stopped,” Winnigan said. “It might not. We’ve never dealt with anything like this.”
If the null field got that big, the marmot would certainly die. The fox, too. If it didn’t stop expanding, all magic would cease to exist and everyone would die. We had to get magic to the center. But how? I looked around, desperately hoping a solution would drop out of the air.
“A bridge,” Marciano said. He was a man of few words, and he didn’t waste any now.
Grant snapped his fingers and pointed at Marciano. “Right. If we can’t be the bridge, we can make one. Something physical. With one of us on the inside guiding the magic, this could work.”
“Here.” Marciano wrapped wood, fire, and water around the branch of one of the remaining standing sycamores. The limb came free and Marciano’s magic stitched the bark together to repair the damage. Even as the limb floated toward us on hefty bands of air, Marciano reshaped it, stretching and growing the branch until it was thinner than my wrist and long enough to span the null field.
Curse of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 2) Page 12
