Heartache (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 5) (18 page)

I reached for the node beneath me as I ran forward. Forcing myself not to look at Alek, not to think about what might be happening to my lover, I opened my body to the raw power of the ley lines.

It felt like I was trying to swallow the ocean. Power filled me, stretching my metaphysical skin until I felt like a magic sausage. A magic pressure cooker ready to explode.

I hit him full force before he’d gained his feet, slamming my body into his, locking us together with my arms as I fought a war with the node, trying to channel all the power toward one purpose. Total and utter annihilation of Samir.

We tumbled to the ground and he tried to fight me off, but I clung with every ounce of strength left in me.

Something inside broke open, like a joint popping into place. Pain faded away. My mind cleared. All at once the raging ocean of power became a spear in my hand, bent and shaped to my will, ready for use.

I opened my eyes.

We had rolled and turned, so that I could see most of the grove beyond Samir’s shoulder. Harper was down in a bleeding heap, her mother standing over her, also bleeding from too many cuts and bites to count. Yosemite lay still, his hands no longer stemming the blood flowing from the wound in his throat. Even as time seemed to slow and hang around me, I watched as the bear smashed Levi to the ground, fur and flesh flying.

Then I saw Alek. He was back in human form, blood gushing from a gaping wound in his chest. Deep cuts oozed and smoked in his face. He stretched a hand toward me, trying to rise.

Samir and I were pressed body to body, heart to heart. I heard his heartbeat, felt his magic battering me. I let go of him and space opened between us as we both struggled to our knees. He was still in arms reach. His heart in arms reach.

And I hesitated.

This was my future. I had the node at my fingertips, ready to smash through Samir’s chest. To drag his heart from his body and end him forever. Mind-Tess screamed inside me to act, to do it.

And then what? Watch Alek die? My friends had fallen. I had failed every single one of them. Again.

What kind of life would I lead? Was this my fate, to watch everyone I loved die over and over. To fail to protect anything at all? I would triumph, perhaps. Be safe, perhaps. But the price. Oh the price.

It was too high.

My hesitation cost me.

Samir struck, his hand growing glowing claws as he plunged it into my chest, smashing apart the remnants of my shields, and pulled my still-beating heart from my body.

Just as it had when I’d fought and killed Tess, time slowed down even more. The world went silent other than the roaring of my own heartbeat in my ears. I clung to the node magic even as Samir laughed. Clung to the magic and formed a desperate plan that was so idiotic even Tess stopped yelling inside my mind, shocked to silence.

“Stupid girl,” he said, raising my heart to his lips.

I moved my lips, trying to speak, and he hesitated.

“What? Last words? Come on then.” All illusion of sanity and beauty was gone from his features. His handsome face was twisted into a mocking grimace, his eyes blazing molten gold. Lucifer, indeed.

Harper had asked me what I thought would have happened if I hadn’t come to Wylde. She’d pointed out that there would be a lot of dead people. Perhaps she’d been right. There were too many dead already. I was the cause, no matter what she’d said. Samir had once again taken everything I loved, had broken me completely.

I didn’t want to live anymore. Not in this world, the one where even if I won, I lost. Lost too much. Too many.

It was not better to have loved and lost. The poet got that totally wrong.

It was better to love and win.

I turned the node power from a spear into a portal, reaching deep into Tess’s memories, into her mother’s memories. A beautiful dark-haired woman giving her life for a baby, so that her baby in turn could give her life to a stranger.

My lips moved again, and this time I managed the words.

“Control-Z, motherfucker.”

The world went black. Not the black of night or when you squeeze your eyes shut, but a deep and unending darkness that stared into me with Nietzschen horror. An abyss as complete as I could ever have envisioned, glaring into what some might call my soul.

I came apart, the magic unraveling. I felt my body burning away, my essence dispersing into that darkness. There was no pain, no sense of hot or cold. Just… nothingness.

Clinging to the thought of a new future, of undoing what I had done, of saving my friends, I fought the unmaking. I held tight to the tiny kernel of hope, of belief that I could change the world, that I was strong enough to affect the entire universe.

Nothingness faded and was replaced by a presence that terrified me more. Something squeezed on whatever remained of me, pressing in on the ember of my life. Every dream I’d had—every wish, every heartache, every memory—compressed into that tiny spark.

I refused to let go. I wasn’t ready to die yet. I had too much work left to do, even though my burning brain couldn’t quite recall what all I was doing here.

Like a chewed up cherry pit, the universe spit me back out.

“Jade?” Yosemite’s voice called to me down a long tunnel and I opened my eyes with a gasp.

I was on my knees in the grove, clutching my D20 so tightly it had left a mark in my palm. Wildly I looked around.

Gunfire burst in the distance and owl-Junebug took flight from the oak.

I hadn’t gone back very far, but I was frozen for a moment with utter joy at seeing them alive. I had done it; I had undone the terrible future.

Now to change it, to keep the reality I’d just escaped from happening again. I’d watched Steve die twice, I wasn’t going to repeat that mistake. I reached for my magic and nearly passed out. Red dots swam across my vision. It was like reaching for Wolf after she had gone. Nothing responded, not even the tiniest ember of power.

“Fuck” I muttered. Then the future came flooding back to me full force and I struggled to my feet.

A shadow moved in the brambles beyond the grove.

“Iollan,” I cried. “Get us out.”

I didn’t know how I was going to fight Samir when my magic was drained, but escaping and living another day sounded good enough. I would come up with a new plan, after we were away. After my friends were safe and whole and alive.

I hadn’t fucking time-traveled just to watch them all die again. Not again. Not ever again.

A shot rang out and Junebug fell in a puff of feathers. I’d forgotten that part, my brain a mush of what was, what had been, and what might be.

Levi tried to run for her and I threw myself in his direction as Yosemite chanted.

The bear crashed through the brambles. I had no magic to stop him this time or slow his charge and he sprang at Harper and her mother.

Green light wrapped around Levi and jerked him backward. The druid was trying to hold us together, keep us close enough to transport away.

Samir. The exploding stones. That had been next, the glowing rock and the death and pain that had followed.

I twisted and threw my hands out, working on instinct and memory as the stone flew into the grove. I punched it with my fists like spiking a volleyball, knocking it away. Alek hit me from the side and we tumbled over. The stone exploded, but the tree and hut blocked the worst of it this time. Molten pain stung my leg but Iollan’s chant carried on.

He hadn’t been hit. I had already altered the future. Maybe we had a chance.

Green light enshrouded us and I clung to the giant tiger as hard as I clung to consciousness. Holding onto Alek was easier. My mind swam and reeled, bile rising in my throat. Ezee and Levi were wrapped in green tendrils, snapping at them with their teeth but unable to break free.

“Don’t fight it,” I screamed, hoping my friends would understand. “Trust me. We have to go.”

I watched a red form streak by us as Alek shifted to human, holding onto me with his arms, no longer fighting the druid’s magic. Harper.

“Harper,” I yelled.

She dodged around the bear, heading for where Junebug had fallen. She was too far, the green tendrils from the oak couldn’t reach her.

“Harper!” The ground started to swallow us, the earth shaking as the sky above because a strange and lazy spiral counter-clockwise.

She slammed into some kind of magical net and was thrown down. I watched her body spin. Samir stepped out of the brambles as the giant white bear backed away from the druid’s magic.

I clawed at Alek, trying to free myself. I couldn’t leave Harper behind. I felt so weak, my body full of lead and sand, unresponsive. I had no magic. I had no way to help her.

My eyes met her gaze as the white bear closed his jaws on her flank.

I screamed and shoved at Alek again, and then the green light pulled us down, covering us over. We fell through a spinning vortex of green fire, heat and cold licking at my skin.

No magic. I felt it, a void where my power should have been. I couldn’t protect them.

Samir would come at us again and again, hunting me, hurting me until there was no hurt left to inflict. Only then would he take my heart.

“I love you,” I whispered into Alek’s chest. “I love you forever.”

Then I let go of him and kicked him as hard as I could, thrusting him away from me.

I heard him call my name, and then the light engulfed me and I sank into oblivion.

Harper felt the bear’s teeth crush her hip. She ripped herself from his grasp, snarling and crawling away on broken limbs. Agony was a molten knife in her body and her spine gave out.

The green light had faded. Everyone was gone. Somewhere in the woods, Junebug was down, injured or dying. Or dead.

Anger smoldered inside her. They were supposed to fight.

Jade had promised they would fight. She had said she had a plan. Running was not the damned plan.

And they’d left her. Her and Junebug. To die.

Harper shifted, her human legs barely working better than her fox ones had. The smell of old blood and death washed over her as she dragged herself backward, waiting for the white bear to end her suffering.

The bear had backed away. Instead, a tall man with dark hair and a grey wool coat walked toward her, a smile on his face that froze her blood.

“Samir,” she said.

He lashed out with his hand and magic pounded into her breastbone. Her heart stuttered as renewed agony smashed through her. Harper grabbed for him, struggling to get up, throwing a wild punch and snapping with her inadequate human teeth.

He rained down blow after blow until her ribs gave out and she couldn’t breathe, much less rise. Adrenaline and desperation were a strong antidote to the crushing pain, but her body was numb and refused to obey. Refused to fight.

Et tu
,
Brute
? she thought.

Why had Jade run without fighting? It didn’t make sense. Harper’s mind played the scene over and over. Junebug tumbling from the sky. Jade, kneeling on the ground, yelling at the druid to get them out of there.

Why had she been kneeling? Harper’s mind fixated on that moment. Jade had been standing, radiating magic strongly enough that Harper could taste it, like ozone in the air before a storm.