“Run,” he whispered in her ear, voice gone hoarse with its low and gritty tone.
The stone became weightless in her hand, flushing out into colors — passing through her, passing through him... enfolding them both while this time, Garrie kept her eyes wide open. She watched with fascination as the colors shifted around them, the starry black spots freckling and growing to suck away the light and cover them with darkness... and more darkness... and darkness yet.
She might have clutched Trevarr’s arm. Just a little.
The darkness fell away, shredding to make way for a new reality: the basement room where she’d started. No sign of Sklayne, Krevata everywhere, the stone in her hand and radiating warmth just the far side of pleasant.
Trevarr released her. He pushed her.
And she ran, because she’d promised.
She skirted the burbling patch of sucks-life nothing that had caught her up in the first place, she dodged the two startled Krevata just turning away from the floor portal, and she dove past the equally startled Krevata watching the door.
And then she stopped running.
She caught herself on the hallway corner as she passed it, and slingshot herself back toward the portal room where roaring chaos had broken out.
She’d done as promised. Now she’d do what she wanted.
But she didn’t go in, not with full battle already under way before her. She’d only distract Trevarr; she couldn’t risk it. Even if she’d never seen that kind of speed before, even if his ferocious speed with the blades stunned her — strike and block and slash, always in motion, leaving clear Krevata blood behind and keeping three of them at bay while two of them hovered frantically at the burbling portal.
Metal clashed against metal; metal clanged against stone. Trevarr’s eyes burned silver-cold and bright, his face fierce in what seemed like his very own light.
She forgot to breathe.
A reddish-buff cat popped into existence in the corner, yeowling an emphatic exclamation. ::Free!::
Sklayne! Safe!
Sklayne poofed out into a faintly reddish-buff patch of amorphous inexplicability, emanating highly ticklish waves of shimmering energy — and from that form he pounced, a fierce high-pitched growl in Garrie’s ears and mind as he enveloped the nothingness that had once swallowed her whole.
There was a brief tussle and the nothingness imploded, sucking a belch of energy from the room and then spitting it back out. Sklayne bounced away, hitting the wall as inexplicable color and brief claws, bouncing to the floor as cat — rolling to a stop in the hallway at Garrie’s feet with his fur sparking and his whiskers standing on end and his expression nothing but satisfied smug.
The Krevata at the portal took up a choral howl, full of juicy grunt and snort curses. Portal priests.
They cast vile glares at Sklayne, but the portal demanded attention — the rumbles and burbling reaching a crescendo of imminence, escalating into black lava flares. The Krevata scrambled for their trunk, scooping out brightly colored oval stones that of course weren’t actually stones and tossing them to one of the priests.
That Krevata arranged his awkward limbs just so, held the oval stone just so, and poised himself beside the portal with a partner to watch his back. Trevarr fought desperately behind him — a parry, a strike, dark blood on his knuckles and a wicked nick above one eye — and Garrie stared in stupefied wonder from the doorway as the priest held an oval out over the portal. Closer, closer...
Not just any lava flare, not just any oval. The two met with a snap of power. The Krevata achieved instant erection, colorfully emphasized; he jerked with it, paying no apparent attention to himself.
Nor did Garrie, not once the earth growled an instant response to the new connection, a rising sound as the ground escalated toward full-blown earthquake. She lost her balance, grabbed the hallway wall to keep herself upright, and braced herself.
It was, she realized, the same position the Krevata had taken up. They’d known to expect this. They’d known they were tearing her world apart.
They just didn’t care.
Above them, the house gave a mighty crack; bits of debris rained down.
Trevarr broke through the line of the three he fought, slapped aside the half-raised blade of the portal guard-priest, and slammed into the back of the priest with the oval.
Camel-like lips had the merest instant to form an oh! of surprise, beady black eyes open wide — and then suddenly the Krevata hit fast-forward frantic, limbs flailing; he hung suspended over the portal in a moment of impossibility before it sucked him in with audible force.
He disappeared into the black power without so much as a splash.
Instantly, the earth calmed. Instantly, Sklayne shouted, ::Nonono don’t kill them!::
But just as fast, the Krevata turned on Trevarr. Even as the second priest ditched his sword to grab up another oval from the leather trunk, the others wielded fury at Trevarr — and Trevarr had left himself exposed, badly positioned and completely surrounded.
They could have killed him then, had they come at him all at once. Instead they batted at him — a pommel-punch that sent him from one into the blow from another; a lightning-swift kick that spun him to the ground. His duster tore under slashing claws; the knife clattered away. Somehow he still held onto the sword Lukkas.
::Nonono don’t be killed!:: Sklayne cried, adding a good yowl of emphasis.
The second priest positioned his oval collecting device and woke the portal again, moving frantically — and Garrie could see why.
For all the intensity of the earth’s tooth-rattling rumbles, the edges of the portal had tightened up slightly. The round puddle of darkness in the floor wasn’t quite as round as it had been before. Bereft of the ghostly ethereal energy to fuel it, the thing was already shrinking.
Garrie staggered in the midst of a particularly intense earth-shudder, and looked at the loose knife inside the room with a fierce longing — but not enough nerve, combined with the hard knowledge that she would only make things worse. Bracing herself in the epicenter of the world’s anger, she told Sklayne, “You’re his bond-partner! Help him!”
::Can’t!:: Sklayne turned a glare of the highest power on her, green eyes glittering with the same sparks his coat shed. ::His fault! Glyph shackles! He did it!::
She’d promised to run. And she had. But now she was back, and she had no weapons, she had no skills, she had no strength — she had no breezes that would affect them, dammit.
Trevarr barreled straight into one of the Krevata, shoulder to gut. He fumbled at his coat, staggering back, his hand bleeding and swollen and obviously not working quite right, and before he could find the pocket he wanted, another of the Krevata grabbed him up from behind and swung him into a wall with a thump that would have shaken the foundations had not the portal already been doing just that.
“Stop it!” Garrie screamed at them, complete nonsense and she knew it and still couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “Leave him alone!”
But she had no breezes to affect them.
Oh, but wait. No breezes to hurt them. She couldn’t dissolve them, she couldn’t shove them around...
But she could damned well affect them. And it might be all the break Trevarr needed.
He’d slid down against the wall like a limp cat, dark and powerful and altogether battered; now he came to hands and knees, Lukkas still loosely held in one hand, loose hair hanging over his face — but not so much that she couldn’t see his expression, finding him dazed, that predatory light gone from his eyes. His face swelled around one eye and cheek; one arm didn’t quite seem to work right.
She could damned well affect them, but...
She wasn’t sure it would be worth the price he’d pay. She wasn’t even sure he could afford to pay it.
::Ysss,:: Sklayne said, a hiss of sound that went beyond language. He braced against the movement of the earth. The priest leaped into a happy dance beside the portal, oblivious to the unstable ground an
d the groaning house, and even to the bits and pieces of house now raining down upon them.
Black sunspots danced with him, leaping over the still narrowing mouth of the pond and exploding in silent bursts of power over the surface of the coruscating darkness. The oval stone seemed to have a life of its own, shuddering in time with the Krevata’s hooded erection, the metal latticework and colors glowing with preternatural intensity.
Not that the other Krevata paid attention to any of it as they closed in on Trevarr. Arrogant bastards, they were playing with him now. He raised his poorly functioning arm in a futile attempt to ward them off.
::Yesss!:: Sklayne cried. ::Do this thing!::
Garrie snapped. She opened herself to the angry, turbid storms of energy in this house, drawing so hard and fast that physical breezes whispered through the halls, stirring the corporeal world with the power of her touch. One great big inhalation of power, harvested from the roiling currents around them.
Sklayne gave her a startled look, his hair standing on end and his ears flattening back. ::Nonono changed my mind!::
Too late for that. She slung power into the embattled room — slung it so hard it bounced back and mixed and roiled around.
She got their attention, all right.
The portal sputtered with enthusiasm, spewing black plasmic energy as its borders widened out. The earth shook, splitting the far wall in two. The Krevata grunted and gestured and straightened, every line of their bodies shouting of startled glee.
Yes, every single line.
But Trevarr cried out in surprise, an anguished shout; his body twisted and fell out from beneath him. Writhing there beyond all endurance, his shoulders pinned and his back arching and his lingering cry of pain nothing human at all.
“No!” Garrie wailed. “No, not like that! Trevarr!” It shouldn’t have been that hard, not that bad. He’d handled it before. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
::Waiwaiwaiwai!:: Sklayne wailed, as blasted as any of them. He ran blind full speed across the narrow hallway to hit the cement block wall and crumple into a boneless heap.
The Krevata didn’t care. Not about Trevarr, not about the portal spreading across the floor — if you didn’t count the fellow who was now gathering up energy as fast as he could, whimpering, his body quite clearly torn between orgasmic influences.
Several Krevata exchanged a single unified gesture and charged for her, a lumbering stampede of face and nose and colorful bobbing parts.
Garrie screamed a fierce, stupid war cry and dove for those Krevata blocking entry to the room, slamming into hard leathery skin. She squirmed the rest of the way through to the room on her hands and toes, falling forward when she broke free and scrambling ahead even then.
By the time the Krevata got themselves turned around, Garrie’s hand had closed around the rough leather-wrapped hilt of Trevarr’s sword; by the time they returned to the room, she’d climbed to her unsteady feet beside him, legs braced and heavy sword drooping.
The Krevata crowded at the doorway, their swords drooping, too. A mistake to call them stupid or easily fooled; Garrie wouldn’t make it. They’d just now responded to instinct, overwhelmed by what she’d thrown at them.
She didn’t think they’d do it again.
Besides, she had nowhere to go. No convenient coal chutes, no dumbwaiters, just an oddball little room in the back corner of the basement, built taller than most, its original function lost and its current function not doing anyone any good at all.
::Bad idea,:: Sklayne said from the hallway, a loopy and dazed version of his usual mind-voice.
“Do something,” Garrie told him, a desperate and squeaky version of her usual throat-voice. “Do something now.”
::Told you. Can’t.::
“You said you couldn’t hurt them,” she corrected him, eyeing the distance to the bench, to the satchel, to the portal and to the Krevata priest frantically harvesting the black plasmic energy — hunting anything and everything that might help, finding nothing. Beside her on the floor, Trevarr made a rough noise. “Do something!”
::No need,:: Sklayne said, and though he sounded stronger, his voice had gone dry, dry, dry.
“Plenty of need!” Garrie said, ascending to a squeak. “Need everywhere!” She hefted the sword up, trying to look as fierce as Trevarr. Lifting her lip in a little snarl, just in case it helped.
::Facial tic,:: Sklayne told her, the whiskers of him alone visible at the edge of the doorway. ::Not fierce.::
“Shut up!” she cried. Trevarr groaned again, rolling over on his side, wood smoke gone to ash.
::In with portal. Need my help why?::
Okay, maybe not a bad point. The portal had reacted to her energy. Not in a good way, but then... she’d thrown a great big heaving ghost ball at it. What if she...
Inhaled.
“There’s a limit,” she told Sklayne, and she didn’t know if she was warning him or pleading with him.
::Plenty of need!:: Sklayne said, mimicking her.
“I’m going to kick your furry little ass,” Garrie said, a pretty bold statement considering Sklayne was on the freedom side of the Krevata and she was trapped as they closed in around her, their bold noses sniffing out the details of her.
::Live first.:: Sklayne advised.
Garrie cursed under her breath with great feeling. Trevarr made an uncoordinated attempt to find his feet. She put a hand on his shoulder, felt him fairly vibrating with pain.
Inhale.
She targeted the portal — gingerly at first, finding her way — and her courage. Inhaling. Everything she’d thrown at it, however inadvertently, she now took back.
The portal hissed and sputtered a protest; the Krevata priest sputtered along with it. The others gibbered in confusion quickly turned to alarm. All those disc ears went flat at once, all those tremendous camel noses wrinkled along their significant lengths, all those arms gesturing wildly and other body parts in complete retreat.
She inhaled again, and the portal shrank noticeably, the earth rumbling around it.
And again. The black lava retreated, sullen and dull. And again, but her head reeled and her chest felt stuffy and in truth it was getting hard to breathe at all, never mind inhale.
“Whoa,” she said, clamping her hand a little tighter on Trevarr’s shoulder.
The Krevata looked at the little punctuation mark remainder of their fine strong illicit plasma pool, and at the stunned priest beside it, and they decided.
They snarled in guttural unison, raising their blades... they began to stalk. Slow-mo and deliberate.
This is gonna hurt.
She dared a quick glance at the minimized portal. If she could pull in just a little more energy...
Bursting at the seams already. Lightheaded, barely connected to ground, swaying. Her ears buzzed, her skin tingled, and specks danced in her vision. She realized quite suddenly that even if she could close the portal, she could do nothing with this energy to save herself. To save Trevarr.
Sklayne... she thought, pure pleading desperation, braced against the weight of Lukkas and the ground shuddering around beneath her feet. A pebbly bit of something pinged off her shoulder.
::Can’t,:: he told her, misery personified — standing behind the Krevata, tail lashing, completely exposed and completely ignored.
Then at least distract them!
Silence. Either he couldn’t, or he wouldn’t, or he didn’t know how. The Krevata gurgled gently, advancing in a slow, stylized form — a dance, with gestures and blades held just so and synchronized movements and complete and utter focus on...
Her.
Somehow she had to absorb the remaining energy to close the portal. And she had to do it without releasing what she’d already gathered.
With the portal closed, the city would be safe.
With the cul-de-sac gone, the local spirits would settle.
And if not, everyone would die. Even Trevarr’s people, lost in their exile.
; Krevata feet shuffled against packed dirt, moving in unison. The gibbering sounded more like a chant now, broken only by the frantic snuffling from the priest.
“Well,” she said, to no one in particular. “I was looking for excitement.”
She reached for the portal. She inhaled.
The Krevata gave a giant choral shout and rushed her.
::Mowaiowaiowai!::
Sklayne dashed through the middle of them, all his energies held tightly to himself, his feline form winding sinuously between their feet. Giving her the space to draw in the power, giving her what little chance she had —
Garrie hiccupped on internalized ethereal breezes.
Farking hell! She lost a bubble of energy from her overstuffed self, energy that slipped away and splashed gently against the walls, the Krevata, the portal. Against Trevarr. The portal sputtered and sucked it back up, the Krevata stumbled around Sklayne, and Trevarr...
Trevarr lifted his head. His little shudders grew suddenly audible, until Garrie realized with numbing shock that he hadn’t been trembling, shivering, or shuddering at all.
He’d been growling.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 34
Blood Lust & Battle
Make the ethereal energies your own.
— RRose
Oh crap oh crap oh crap!
— Unidentified Reckoner
whose name begins with Lisa McGarrity
Garrie took a dazed step away from Trevarr.
The Krevata stuttered to a stop.
Sklayne poofed out into something vague with more claws than usual, poofed back into the cat, and ran between Trevarr and the Krevata. ::Nonono, don’t kill! Thinkthinkthink!::
Garrie didn’t get the impression that Trevarr was doing any such thing as thinking. Pupils slitted cat-narrow, eyes silvered bright and glowing... when he stood he seemed bigger somehow; more than he’d been.
The backs of his hands bore the same markings as those along his sides, darker and distinct. He bared his teeth in a terrible warning, and damned if he didn’t suddenly have modest fangs. His features were hard and beautiful and unrelenting.
The Reckoners Page 33