I was kneeling on damp grass.
I sneered. “Mystic of the Golden Peninsula. Please. You’re seriously outclassed by your so-called creations.”
The sky above me was dark.
Opal was safe.
The mystic was touching my face.
I raised my hands before me, clawing at nothing with my fingers. I imagined my magic — the ability to drain power through touch — flowing down my arms, coating my fingers. I had never wielded my power that way before, but I’d just figured out — clearly — where I was.
I was in my own mind.
The mystic had been shifting me from memory to memory, trying to hold me and using the stolen magic of the Five to do so.
But in my mind, I reigned supreme, and my magic worked as I willed it.
I grasped the empty air before me, visualizing it as a psychic construction. I had visited Bee often in similar mental dimensions. We Five used to meet in her room — or rather, the room she wished she could have had — away from the ever-present cameras and the tracking of the Collective. In Bee’s mind, the concrete had felt solid under my feet. In Bee’s mind, the air hadn’t been stagnant or deadened.
Like I’d already recognized, Bee was the more powerful telepath. More convincing.
Opal spun around on the bench, facing me. Her bright-blue eyes pooled with tears. “What are you doing?” she cried. “You can’t leave me here … all alone.”
Anger flashed through me — my emotion this time.
“That’s low, Chenda,” I said. Then I addressed the Opal of my heart, not the construct created by the mystic. “I’ll never leave you alone if you don’t want to be.”
I tore through the magic holding me, ripping it asunder … and belatedly hoping I wasn’t giving myself a lobotomy at the same time.
I sat up in my bed.
It was dark.
I was wearing a moss-green linen dress I’d bought for next summer, which left my arms and most of my legs bare. Lying on top of the tautly tucked quilt, instead of underneath. The pink-and-green flowers decorating the bedding were slightly raised — a comforting texture against my skin as I spread my fingers across worn cotton.
The house felt empty around me, silence echoing back.
I slid off the bed, noting the hardness of the fir flooring under my bare feet, then the smooth brass doorknob under my hand. I stepped out into the hall. The door to the sitting room Christopher had made for me was open, but the repurposed bedroom was empty.
I padded down the hall, already knowing that the house should have felt cooler, even with the fire Christopher kept stoked throughout the day. Both guest rooms were empty, even the one claimed by Opal. The beds were bare of blankets.
I continued down the hall.
Christopher’s room was empty. The bed was neatly made, his sword set across his bureau. The gemstones scattered across its pommel and cross guard glowed softly blue.
I crossed to the window, gazing down into the yard.
A pentagram set within double circles was etched in white into the grass. From three of its points, brilliant lines of magic streaked across the snowy lawn. The other ends of those glowing streams were anchored at three separate points, getting progressively closer to the house.
Two figures knelt at the center of the pentagram.
The mystic.
And me.
I had broken free from her hold, but she still had me under some kind of control, contained within my own mind. She was still pulling magic from me, amplifying her casting.
But I could move within this construct.
Shape it.
And magic I could touch, I could use.
I spun away from the window, heading for the hall.
The air — no, the reality — around me compressed, darkening at the edges. I lost sense of the fir flooring under my feet. I couldn’t move forward … or back.
I released my magic. I’d been holding it tightly, as I always did. I flooded the mental construct with my own power.
And I could suddenly feel the mystic touching me, her hands splayed across my face.
I bared my teeth.
The floor firmed under my feet.
I exited the room, heading for the stairs.
I made it unimpeded to the front door, but found it locked. The handle wouldn’t even turn. I peered out the inset window, picking up other figures on the grass between me and the mystic. Samantha was closest to the house, then Aiden, and then Christopher farthest away across the lawn.
I couldn’t see Paisley or the black witches, so I wasn’t certain that this was a reflection of real life. Or whether it was some sort of amalgamation of the mystic’s projection and my own mind. Specifically, my mind trying to comprehend what was happening in the real world.
Three tendrils of magic snaked out from the points of the encircled pentagram toward those figures, binding them.
I couldn’t see their faces or their expressions. But their limbs were splayed as if they’d fallen.
Fallen to … my magic?
Was that what the mystic was doing? Feeding my power into the pentagram so she could quell the others?
I tried the door again, but still couldn’t budge it.
I backed up, giving myself a running start. I dashed down the hall, past the empty study and the silent sitting room. I thrust my clenched hands before me, leaping toward the inset glass window.
The glass shattered around me. I flew through the window, landing on my hands, then rolling, stopping crouched at the top of the front patio stairs.
The glass hadn’t cut me.
Everything was happening in my own mind after all. And I was too arrogant to ever be a masochist.
I straightened, glass tinkling from the folds of my linen dress as I traversed the steps, then the path, then the snow-covered yard.
The house wasn’t warded.
Because this house existed only in my mind.
The moon was high in the sky, but the shadows were unnaturally deep. A product of my thoughts? Or perhaps a manifestation of the mystic’s continued influence, trying to fight my forward progress.
But I never had been scared of the dark.
I was the monster, after all.
Zans had fallen, crumpled on her side, three strides past the stairs. A tendril of glowing white magic was wrapped around her neck. I knelt, touching her shoulder. She didn’t stir. I couldn’t feel the hum of her power. I shifted her slightly forward, tracing the magical binding. I tugged her shirt away from the back of her neck. The magic was attached to the tattoo on her T1 vertebra.
The mystic was using me to quell and hold her.
The encircled pentagram was a complicated, layered spell. Too intricate to be meant to merely hold me, it was intended to bind the others through me. The placement of the anchor point to the blood tattoo on Zans’s T1 vertebra — my blood bound to her skin and nerves and bone — told me that much.
But the mystic had committed a large amount of her own power — and that of the twin black witches — to the casting. Destroying the charms she’d made years ago, and which she had used to great effect against us on the rooftop in LA, in the process. She might have been able to pull my magic from me to amplify the spell, but she was draining her own resources while holding me — or holding my mind, anyway — in check.
She had assumed the blood of the Five would quell me. So she’d forgotten, or had dismissed, the fact that I gained immunity to any spell held against me for long enough.
I straightened, leaving Zans and finding Aiden a couple of meters ahead of the telekinetic. The sorcerer had lost hold of his notepad and marker. His bright-blue eyes were staring sightlessly into the dark sky, rimmed with his power. The tendril of magic from the pentagram was wrapped around his head, pulsing at the temples. I pressed the notepad and pen into his hand, curling his fingers closed around them.
Then I forced myself to straighten, to move on.
Christopher had fallen closest to the outer circle. His sword had s
unk into the snow, only the glow of its gems visible. His feet were bare. He’d been crawling, his knees still curled under him.
I crouched, aligning my gaze with his. Seeing the bright beacon of my red hair where I was kneeling before the mystic.
He’d been crawling toward me.
As with Zans, the tendril of magic emanating from the pentagram was attached to his T1 vertebra. My magic embedded under his skin.
I settled my hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be right back for you, Knox.”
The tendril of magic that bound him to the pentagram thinned as if in response.
I laughed quietly.
Samantha was doubtlessly more vulnerable because of the separate binding Chenda had placed on her mind. But even strengthened with my magic, the mystic didn’t have a good hold on the clairvoyant. She’d also forgotten — or perhaps had never known — that we couldn’t be turned against each other. Not magically anyway.
Having now experienced Chenda’s power myself, I understood that I’d perhaps been too harsh blaming Christopher for when he’d hesitated, stopping me from killing the mystic outright.
No matter.
I was about to fix that misstep. For both of us.
I straightened, crossing through the outer circle without effort, aware that the twin black witches were still missing from my mental construct. As was Paisley.
In the physical world, where the other three actually lay sprawled in the snow, that wouldn’t be the case. There, Paisley would be standing alone against the witches.
I needed to hurry.
I crossed through the inner circle, moving to stand at my own back. I could see the entire working of the spell. Three of the five tendrils were snaked out behind me, but two others were attached to the blood tattoos on the back of my spine. The binding on my forehead had disappeared, presumably when I’d broken free of the mystic’s overriding influence.
I pulled on the collar of the sweater the other me wore, noting that the attachments were embedded to my T2 and T3 vertebrae. The mystic had chosen to use the power of the charms she’d made with Christopher’s and Bee’s blood to quell me.
That made sense. Their powers were the nearest to her own.
I closed my eyes. Then I knelt, visualizing myself folding into the version of me that the mystic was trying to control.
The version of me that the mystic was currently draining power from.
The version of me the mystic was touching.
I opened my eyes, meeting Chenda’s gaze.
Her hands were pressed to either side of my face.
Nothing else had changed.
I was still in the mental construct.
My mental construct.
I smiled.
The mystic frowned, confusion slowly spreading over her face. “How …? This isn’t possible.”
“You’ve forgotten three things, oh Mystic of the Golden Peninsula,” I said, my tone even. “Things that someone who claims to be a primogenitor of the Five should never have forgotten.”
She sneered. Power pressed against me, squeezing and twisting through my mind.
I waited. I had always been patient when I was in the line of fire.
Her hold eased.
The first flicker of fear appeared in her eyes.
“One. I develop immunity. To any and all magic,” I said. “So whatever you thought you were going to do with me, you should have done it quickly.”
“I’ve got you in my grasp, don’t I?” she snarled. “And there will be no rescue. All the others have fallen to me.” She smiled smugly. “Thanks to you, no one will ever be able to stand against me again.”
“Two,” I continued, assessing the strength of our connection from where she held me. I couldn’t seem to move my own arms yet. And my empathy wasn’t triggering. “The power of any one of the Five cannot be used against any of the other Five.”
“Nonsense. How do you think I brought you, the clairvoyant, and the telekinetic down? How do you think I knocked you all out on the rooftop in LA?”
“You didn’t.”
“What?”
“You didn’t knock us all out. In fact, I’m fairly certain you didn’t even knock Zans down. Though that might have been due to the strength of her connection to Bee. Their magic wasn’t compatible at all until the blood tattoos you imposed upon us.” I managed to wiggle the fingers of my right hand. I was pulling focus from her. Slowly eroding her ability to hold me.
But I didn’t want to break free. Not just yet. I had people to collect before I left.
Chenda huffed. “And your third point, since you seem so keen to list my supposed missteps?”
“We don’t touch without permission in this house.” I wrenched my hands up, tearing through the magic holding me in place and wrapping my fingers around her wrists.
Then I tore her magic from her.
She started screaming.
Streaks of dark gray appeared on either side of me, resolving into cloaked figures — the twin witches. Magic crackled around their fingers.
I had no idea if they were simply psychic manifestations — a defense system that the mystic’s mind was throwing at me — or if the twins were actually somehow tied into this mental construct.
Bee was capable of pulling the Five into her mental space, but she was an exceptionally powerful telepath.
The witches attacked, hitting me with something dark and soul sucking from either side. I convulsed, losing control of my limbs and my magic.
I lost my hold on the mystic, falling back onto the grass. Arching up against the pain streaking through my bones, etching my entire being with a searing heat. I tried to scream, to release the agony, but couldn’t vocalize.
The witches laid hands on me, trying to shove me up and back into the mystic’s grasp.
Actually touching me — even in a mental construct — was always a bad idea. Still shuddering with the residual of the torture spell they’d hit me with, I wrapped my hands around their wrists, reaching for their magic.
I managed to grab that power, but it came to me sluggishly. I still wasn’t completely in control of my body yet. Though technically, in this space, it was my mind I wasn’t totally in control of.
The witches struggled against me, still trying to shove me back onto my knees before the mystic.
Chenda still knelt in the grass with the white lines of her spell crisscrossed around her.
I was still attached to that spell …
In the physical world, I could steal or wield magic only while touching someone. But if this was a shared mental space, then maybe I could bend the rules.
I dropped my hold on the witches, causing them to stumble as I scrambled to my feet. I wrapped my hands around the backs of their heads and slammed their foreheads together.
Darkly tinted power exploded between them, streaking agony through the bones of my hands and forearms.
Their figures flickered, as if the mystic couldn’t quite hold them within the mental space.
I lost hold of the witches.
And for a moment, I swore I could hear snarling. A dark energy sparked across my shoulders and neck.
Paisley.
Paisley was in the real world, the actual world. And she was fighting the actual witches. All on her own.
I had known that already.
The twins would kill the demon dog if I didn’t resolve this quickly. Working together and willing to cast death curses fueled by their own life force, they were too powerful for Paisley.
I lunged for the mystic.
She raised her hands to ward me off.
I grabbed her wrists.
Magic slammed against me, hitting my left rib cage and my right shoulder. The mental projections of the twins had recovered, enough to cast at least. Pain radiated out from the contact points, blistering me. It wasn’t as intense as before, but I still fell to my knees and had to blink away a wash of darkness that threatened my vision.
I was losing control of the men
tal construct, though I’d kept hold of the mystic. She twisted in my grasp.
I didn’t know how to wield this sort of power with any level of skill. I had to force myself through. Because I couldn’t hear Paisley anymore.
If nothing else, I needed to knock the twins out of the fight. If they were mentally tied to this psychic dimension strongly enough to cast spells as well as physically touch me, then I must be able to do the same to them.
It was only logical.
Power pulsed through the pentagram, pushed through by the mystic. I loosened my hold on one of her wrists, blindly reaching toward the tendrils of power that connected me to the pentagram. Forcing myself to believe that I could hold magic, that I could manipulate magic inside my own mind, though I couldn’t normally do so …
Except …
I had.
I had pulled the magic from the tattoo that bound me to Zans. Without touching the telekinetic. I’d manipulated that binding without any finesse or understanding. And the magic the mystic had called forth from the pentagram was attached to me in a similar way.
Therefore, I already owned it.
So I could wield it.
I wound the two white tendrils that connected me to the pentagram — and which therefore connected me to the mystic — around my right forearm. They felt substantial, like two ropes each the width of my thumb.
The mystic snarled, sending another pulse of power intended to quell me through the pentagram, trying to overwhelm and shut down my mind.
The witches hit me a third time. Same spell.
It hurt.
A lot.
But even on the mental plane, my magical immunity was strengthening.
Shuddering as agony raked through me, I clamped my hand on the tendrils of magic that connected my blood tattoos to the pentagram. I squeezed, choking off the power the mystic was trying to manipulate.
Chenda gasped. Her gaze darted to the witches at my back. The twins were muttering fervently, building another spell.
“I don’t think so,” I said, rasping through the pain. Holding the binding in check, I started draining magic from the mystic, still holding only one of her wrists.
Power pressed against me, battering all my senses, but I held against it. I pulled and pulled, taking all the magic I could from the mystic, harnessing it for myself.
Mystics and Mental Blocks (Amplifier 3) Page 23