by Amie Gibbons
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I ran. Faster than I had even when I was fleeing the gods that first time. Apparently I had some power left because speed poured through my muscles, making them flow like that dinky little brook.
Not as fast as I could go, maybe about as much as I did when that flower attacked my dogs.
Human fast, Apollo had called it.
Good enough. Now if only I knew where I was.
Whatever portal that shimmer had been had closed because I ran straight back the way I’d come through and I still ran by the brook. There was nothing but grass to my right and the brook to my left.
Took me a second to realize I wasn’t seeing what was past the brook to the left. It wasn’t that there was a wall or anything. The brook hit something and the world just ceased to be. It wasn’t black or white or any shape or color my mind could grasp. It was something that wasn’t.
So I ran faster, changing course so I went through the water, straight for the apparent nothingness. I had to lift my knees and half hop, slogging through the water, but made it to the other side. I didn’t allow myself to slow as I hit the other bank because I knew if I did, I’d never be able to make myself run into nothingness.
I ran through the non-existent wall of non-existence and the wide expanse of meadow with a few patches of wildflowers continued up to a line of bungalows.
“You can’t run from me!” came from behind.
I focused, willing my legs to pump faster. I could book it on a normal day so fast it’d make the Guinness World Record holder for sprinting jealous, but today? Today I wasn’t competing with any mere human.
I needed to run so fast light couldn’t catch me.
I could practically hear Millie correcting me, saying I couldn’t race at the speed of light. Where was she? What if Ravena did something to her?
Ravena appeared in front of me.
“Shit!” I changed course with a sharp turn, legs tangling. The human body wasn’t meant to go that fast, especially with little legs. I slipped.
I curled my arm up, tucking the cell phone to my breasts and managing to keep my head up and not bouncing on the grass. My shoulder and hip hit the ground. Hard.
Crrrrrrunch, my shoulder complained a warning a second before exploding.
The pain didn’t start in one spot and travel. It was my entire shoulder, all at once, blinding. The dull, blunt bruising pain of slamming your shoulder or knee into a doorway or a table, times a hundred.
I rolled onto my back, holding my phone in my left hand and my shoulder with my right. Ravena stood over me, blocking out the too bright sun and staring down. He crouched.
“Argmmm,” I moaned against the light back in my eyes, barely keeping them open a slit.
“I will take that,” he said. I felt a tug on the phone.
Nope. I held it fast.
He pulled harder, making me hang onto it even more. How I was able to keep a good grip was beyond me. It should have just slipped out. But it didn’t.
It wanted to stay with me.
Everything stopped.
It wanted to stay with me. It was mine. My power. This was it. This was the representation, or doorway, or for all I knew the whole damn thing of that pocket reality.
This was it. It was mine.
So how did I get it back into me?
The tugging stopped and I rolled to my good side with speed, using the momentum to roll to my feet, still holding my shoulder. My hip wasn’t nearly as bad but I could tell I bruised it in a way that would probably hurt tomorrow. Hey, at least I could see now without the sun directly in my eyes.
“Mine,” I said.
“You never wanted it,” Ravena said. “I could tell, even before I figured out what you were. You never grasped the full extent of your powers because you never wanted to. I did you a favor taking it out of you.”
He held out his hand. “Give it to me and I’ll leave you be. I will even leave Apollo alone.”
“Not going to happen.” Big words for a little girl with a crushed shoulder and no idea how to get my powers out of the tiny electronic reality and back into me.
“I could just take it again.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Otherwise you would have. Once I realized this was my power, it belonged to me. You can’t take it without my consent.”
How the hell did I know that?
I looked down at the phone still clutched to my breast like a baby chick. I was accessing my powers, somehow they were in it and coming into me. I switched the phone to my other hand, keeping my left tucked against me, and lifted it to my ear.
I’m sure Apple never thought up this use when they were making the iPhone Five.
“Phone,” I said even though I’d never turned on the voice activation. “How do I get my powers out of you?”
Accept them, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Henry came out. It was barely audible, like he was going through a tunnel or the volume had been turned down to the lowest setting above mute.
“I do,” I said out loud. Screw Ravena overhearing.
He just stood there, watching me. What was he waiting for?
“Finally admitting what you are?” Henry’s voice echoed in my head, or came from the phone. I couldn’t tell.
“What? I have no problems with being a psychic,” my own voice said. Only a week ago, wasn’t it? Maybe eight days.
“I do hate to break this bubble you have built for yourself,” Apollo’s voice this time. “I really do, but you are not human!”
“Let’s not go there,” I’d said to him. “Any kind of talk about my power and me being immortal and outliving my family and friends is just going to freak me out. Let me be in denial, okay?”
I didn’t want my full powers.
Not really. At the end of the day, I wanted to be a magic wielding human. A lawyer who happened to have a little extra help when dealing with witnesses. A woman who could give her friends advice because I could see into them and those they were asking about.
But I obviously could do that with my powers outside me. I’d just have to keep the phone on me and extract power when I needed it. I didn’t have to live with it literally forever!
I could be human with it.
Ravena did something with his hand, no more than a fancy flick really.
Millie appeared in front of him. Eyes wide and wrists tied in front of her, she looked around with quick jerks of her head, her breathing so loud and rough she was probably in the middle of an asthma attack and about a minute away from passing out.
Ravena grabbed her by the back of her neck and she squealed, high and startled like a caught mouse.
She squelched the squeal, face red and eyes puffy. “Get off me, prick,” she said, too high and winded to come off as tough as I’m sure she wanted to sound.
Oh God, she was shaking.
No. Not little Millie. How could I let this happen?
“Your powers for your friend, your love and your life,” Ravena said. “A fair trade, I think. What do you say?”
“You’re one of us,” Apollo’s words echoed in my head.
I don’t want to be. Tears burned the bottom of my eyes and I wiped them away with the back of my hand.
Wait, what the hell happened to my glasses?
I’d had them on when I came here because I hadn’t felt like popping in my contacts that morning before work, hadn’t I? When did they disappear and why could I see now?
You’re one of us.
When did my glasses disappear?
You’re one of us. So if the echo heard me, it really didn’t care to answer.
Or that was the answer.
I looked at my phone. Accept it.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” a clear soprano note shook me back to reality.
“I wouldn’t,” Ravena said, making me hop and look at him.
Millie’s song cut off with a shriek. She gurgled, squeezing her eyes closed and curling up on herself in midair. Raven
a didn’t so much as flick a finger but I knew he’d done something to crunch down on her.
“Stop it!” I yelled.
“I know a siren when I see one.” He held up a fist and shook it, shaking her in midair. “And hear one. Try a spell again, and I’ll yank out your voice box.”
Millie twitched her fingers, twirling them in time to her hips. No, she wouldn’t be that stupid. She channeled magic through song and dance like witches did through chants, but unless she could pull off something in two seconds.
“Et,” Ravena said, again barely twitching, but Millie froze in place. “Such fierce fight for such a tiny dog. Do you want to see real power, little siren? I can see the sorrow around you, the fear at being so helpless. Not the first time a man’s held you down, is it?”
Millie’s eyes jerked to me.
“One more word, Ravena,” I said, low and slow, “and even if I can’t kill you, I guarantee you Tyler will.”
He didn’t take his eyes off me, but I may as well as have been invisible for all the attention he paid.
“I can see into your mind,” he said to Millie. “In the gaps in your memory. Do you want those memories, little one?”
I focused on my phone. Come on! What do I have to do to get you to work?
“Do you want to know what happened that night?” Ravena said. “If you were a stupid girl who got drunk and gave it up too easily, or if you were a stupid girl who got drunk and was raped? I can show you. Put you back in that memory. Wouldn’t you rather know if the man your heart’s tied to even now was merely a cad or a criminal?”
Millie made a small noise.
“A memory couldn’t hurt you,” I said to her, gripping my phone tighter.
“Oh, but it really could,” Ravena said, wide smile begging to eat some lead. “It’s in our darkest memories where our fears truly live, and once you’re paralyzed by fear, it does not matter if it’s real or not. What matters is what you believe.”
Believe. I looked down at my phone.
“It will take a moment to get your powers into you,” Ravena said. “And even if you succeed before I kill you, which is not likely, I will kill your friend.”
Your freedom for your mother, Apollo’s voice echoed in my head.
Your powers for your friend. Ravena this time.
Mother for freedom. Millie for powers. It was all the same damn thing.
Except it was so different.
Apollo gave me back someone that had been lost, Ravena was threatening to take someone away. It was different.
“How do I know you’ll let us go, just like that, once I don’t have any more leverage?” I asked. Whoa, lightbulb. “And why haven’t you killed me already?”
He stayed silent.
“Ravena,” I said, pulling a thread of power, not even that, a fiberglass amount of power out of my phone. A sliver. Less is more.
I pictured it landing on the ground and slithering to him, crawling up his loafers and under his pink suit cuff to wiggle into his leg.
“You are asking me to trust you. And I’m willing to make this trade for our lives. But once I don’t have power, how do I enforce your side of the bargain?”
I kept my voice low, reasonable, passionless. A lawyer speaking to a judge, asking for reason, pleading for it, because in the end, the judge had all the power.
Ravena had all the power here.
I wanted him to know that. To believe it with every fiber of his arrogant being. My string of magic sank into him, reinforcing the message.
“What would you like?” he said. “What would be a good guarantee?”
I breathed a sigh. “Well, some kind of spell that binds you to your word? I believe those exist. Apollo mentioned one.”
“A contract?”
“More like a restraining order, but yeah.” I shrugged. “A magical one that physically forces you to follow it. No offense, but a piece of paper is still just a piece of paper, even to a lawyer. They have no power of enforcement without a court. And here, there are none that would be able to force you to do anything once this is all over. I just want to keep us safe.”
“I will write one up right now,” Ravena said with a bow of his head. “You are certainly more… rational than any human I have known.”
“Well, apparently I’m not human. That may have something to do with it.”
We were negotiating in a magical dimension while who knew what was going on in the world while my friend hung in the air watching us with big eyes.
The world could be covered in ash from a super volcano by now for all I knew. The gods could be overrun by the defectors somewhere in this dimension, or they could have crushed them by now and be singing their victory.
Life had gotten so weird.
Hadn’t I thought that just last week when the flower popped up?
Ha! That was downright normal now.
“Yes, perhaps,” Ravena said, keeping his eyes on me as he brought his hands up.
Come on. Come on. All he had to do was be distracted for a second. Maybe two… possibly. I really didn’t know. And it wasn’t like I could risk Millie’s life.
Ravena’s hands kept moving, almost independently from his arms, jerking and twitching, with the fingers joining in here or there like some tribal dance. He didn’t take his eyes off me. He knew something was up. Or at least suspected.
I forced myself to relax and pointed at Millie. “Okay if I go over there? Get her down?”
“Not until this is finished,” Ravena said with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t trust you any more than you trust me.”
“Fair enough.” I watched him. Dammit, look away! Do something!
Pop, pop, pop, sang out, almost like fireworks.
Ravena jerked back, hands batting at his face as the popping picked up the pace, nailing his chest and legs, making the dirt around him spray up. And it just kept coming. He flailed, swatting at it, little holes pockmarking his dark skin and loud suit.
Holy shit, someone was shooting an automatic at him! One with at least a fifty count drum if I had to guess.
Can you say great timing?
It had to be Tyler, back in human form obviously. Here to save our bacon.
I shoved my phone in my mouth, letting the plastic stretch my cheeks and strain my lips to cracking point. I crunched down on the phone.
I believe.
The phone held back then crumpled, like an air puff under a hard candy shell. It went down and dissolved on my tongue. If the chips, plastic, wires and whatever else was in a smartphone were there before, they were gone now.
I shoved the rest of the phone in, swallowing my magic. It tasted like peppermint as it slid over the back of my tongue. The rest of it crumbled into liquid faster and I swallowed.
And waited.
Waited some more.
Why didn’t I feel any different, dammit?
Can you say anticlimactic?
I licked my lips and refocused on the world. Maybe it really did take a minute to kick in.
Ravena danced in front of me, bullets and something longer, like little arrows, pinging into him at least one or two every second. Far too many for him to counter until he could get it to let up enough to put up a shield. He was so bullet-ridden, they started whizzing through the holes they’d already made.
He looked like Swiss cheese.
I giggled and bit down on it. Nope, not the time, but that was fucking funny.
He flopped a few centimeters to the side with every bullet. He’d be out of firing range soon. Nothing was funny here.
I pushed my lips together and covered them with my hand to keep from laughing as I turned to see our rescuer.
My hands and jaw dropped.
Mira sat on some contraption rigged up under a lightweight machine gun with a drum as big as her, filled with enough ammo to take down a battalion of soldiers… or one god.
The trigger was tied to a rope rigged up to the pressure pad underneath her tiny body. She hopped up and down, her p
ressure pulling the rope and making it fire one at a time, just very quickly.
It wasn’t a full automatic, which was good because those required more control to hold steady, just a rifle with one hell of an operator hopping up and down like a child skipping rope.
And my two flowers flanked her, throwing their needles every time she had to hop up to hit the pressure pad again, making sure Ravena didn’t have even a fraction of a second reprieve.
How did she know where we were? Something told me Millie’s impromptu E note was less about casting a spell and more about crying for help.
How the hell did she get that over here and set up?
It was the one Tyler was talking about and a teleportation potion would’ve gotten it here easily.
Whatever, I’d take the help.
Even if that help was a six pound black cat with wings and a smart mouth who should’ve been in school and not on a battlefield and two baby flowers.
I ran and pushed Millie out of the air, shaking whatever spell held her. You’d think Ravena would’ve put more oomph in his spell, huh?
Millie dropped to the ground, landing on her feet with a grunt.
Ravena roared, finally flopping out of firing range. Holes in head, arms, suit, everything just melted together and reformed.
Oh shit. I pushed Millie behind me. Where were my powers? “Millie, run.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You’re right, you’re not. You’re getting me help. Go!”
“Mira, go get help!”
Mira flew off and Millie stepped up next to me, pulling two vials out of her bag.
I squinted at Ravena. Whatever was going to happen, we weren’t going down without a fight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I glanced back just for enough time to see Mira making a fly for it.
Millie threw a potion and Ravena waved, knocking her to the ground and her potion away. Her head hit and bounced off the grass.
“Millie!”
Her life-force glowed around her. She was still alive, just unconscious. Dammit, why did she think I was trying to get her to leave?