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He furrowed his brow and gave me a slow nod. “I just… pushed back.”
The room shook again, and the color began to fade around us, the once vibrant memory turning to shades of grey. Derrick’s anger and fear pulsed through me, and I took a steady breath before stepping behind him. I needed as flat a space as I could get to draw the runes on him, and his back would have to do.
It wasn’t truly his back, it was a representation of him, but that wasn’t what was important. Whatever I drew would translate onto him, his true mind and soul, and I prayed that our combined power would be enough to drive out the creature.
Magic chased my fingertip, setting the runes to glowing against his skin until they blazed out at me: truth, clarity, willpower, fortitude, wrath.
“I need you to do it again,” I said to Derrick.
He took a deep breath, his focus stuck on the fading visage of our kiss. “I’m going to lose this, aren’t I.”
Because I didn’t know for sure, I exhaled. “I don’t know.”
“Will I lose you too?”
Around us, the room began trembling in earnest and where once there had been four walls there were suddenly only two, with a horrible nothingness an arm’s reach away. Only the corner remained, with its cot and the kissing couple, and I felt his grief as it pricked against him.
Swallowing hard, I fought for my voice. “You’ll just have to meet me again if you do.”
His shoulders were tense as I laid my hands on them. I could feel the bunch of his muscles under my palms and closed my eyes.
“Now, Derrick. Push back now.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Fury surged through Derrick. It was so intense I almost lost my hold on him and had to lean forward until my forehead touched the base of his neck. The contact seemed to ignite the runes I’d etched into him because they shone so brightly, I could see their shapes even with my eyes closed. And then I remembered that this wasn’t my real body and having my eyes closed wasn’t going to help either of us.
So I opened them.
It was like opening my whole self and I became aware of Derrick in a way that was equal parts humbling and intimate. I could hear him, not only the fear and the rage as he shoved his mind against the sluaghna’s presence, but the reasons and the thoughts behind them. I knew him in a way that I had never known anyone before: completely, as though we shared these memories he was fighting for, and in a way I suppose we did. I knew his grief as my own, a grief not only in the idea of losing who he was to this creature, but in the likelihood that I too would die beside him, merged as we were.
“Neither of us is dying today,” I whispered to him.
Fear was powerful, but so was rage, and Derrick had that in great quantity. Rage for his father’s death so long ago, for the life he could have had living with his parents in peace – a life that had been shattered by an attack that made no sense. Rage for the suspicions he harbored against his grandfather all these years because who else would benefit from Derrick being an orphan? Fury at the sight of his mother, who was lost to him as effectively as if she too were dead.
Hooking into all that rage, I poured my concentration onto the runes and felt his wrath grow. It swelled and burgeoned through us, a howling storm of heat that threatened to burn us, and I thought again of his mother. If we stayed here much longer, we risked burning out together, and then Montgomery would still have what he wanted. When I might have called a warning to him, Derrick’s focus honed onto the sluaghna, and he let loose a berserk scream that rocketed all that fury away from us.
It was several seconds before I realized I was screaming too.
We were wrath incarnate, our combined magics lashing out with full force. The worms closest to us burst into dust and as the wave of our magic rolled through Derrick’s mind, I could sense each tiny worm as they dissolved to nothing.
It was working.
We were shoving Montgomery out.
There was a sound like thunder cracking overhead and at once I was thrown out of Derrick’s mind. I felt myself airborne, my physical self, and for a disoriented moment had to fight to breathe. My back struck the ground and sparks swarmed my vision. The grove spun around me, familiar and changed, and I fought for some coherency.
The vines had released Derrick, I spotted that much. He was laying in the dirt, heaving in gulps of air, his eyes closed, and I nearly sobbed in relief.
He was still himself.
The sluaghna hadn’t taken him.
A sharp needle of pain pierced my left ear, so deep inside it could have been my eardrum itself, and all sound muffled. Without thinking, I tried to reach for my ear, but my arm would not move. A heartbeat later I felt the vine as it curled around my torso, pinning my arms down as it hauled me off the ground.
Montgomery was nod dead. He was more tree than man, but he was not dead. Not in the least. Brackish green blood snaked over his chin and mouth, and one of his hands was missing its talons, but he seemed to have complete control over the vines because he drew me closer.
Agony pulsed through my skull and my jaw ached. In my peripheral view I could see a single slender vine protruding from the side of my head, and I felt the needle point of it slide deeper into my ear. I might have made a sound, but my world was awash in agony, and I couldn’t hear much.
