Knowing I’d survive, I ran for the edge, diving off into the blackness, an infinity of mystics within me, a larger infinity trailing behind like living pixy dust. I felt them peel from me, the agony in my head abating.
“Got you!” Etude cried, and I all but sobbed in relief as his grip encircled my waist again and the force of the wind shifted.
Jenks and Bis, I thought, feeling them close. Behind and below, the train raced on, mystics emptying from it in an angry wave that I could see as a silver shimmer in the dark.
“Should I jump her?” Bis said, and I jerked my head up, numb as if from an aura burn.
“Slow,” I said, my words a bare whisper, and his ears swiveled to catch them. “If we go too fast, they can’t keep up.” I had to take them all back to her. They were hers, not mine, and if I held them too long, the sheer power of them would drive me mad. To have let them become had been a mistake.
Etude nodded, and as Jenks buried himself in my hair, I closed my eyes to block out the dizzy sensation. Behind me, I felt the train race on without the mystics. The splinter was following me, harrowing, nipping, stabbing at my heels. Ill and nauseated, I hung in Etude’s grip, thinking that I should have just called the damn eagles from the beginning and done this alone.
Twenty-Six
Damp air with streamers of fog pressed me as Etude circled the gray slump of rock that was Loveland Castle. I could feel the splintered mystics trailing us in a threatening haze almost as bright as the full moon cresting over the surrounding hills, their confusion and hatred sparking like the neurons firing in my mind. The mystics who’d become were frightened, and I tried to soothe the hurt of their expected glorious reunion gone so wrong as we descended.
My eyes opened at a sudden drop, and I let go of Etude to push my hair back. The night fog puddled in the low spaces and trees poked above like islands. I could feel the earth moving—the unseen sun seeming to grow distinct as we neared sunrise. My ley line was glowing, shining with a haze I could see even without my second sight. That wasn’t right. I was afraid to open my second sight to see, but a handful of mystics brought me an image, distorted from multiple viewpoints, but clear in substance. The line was ablaze with a harsh, painful glare. It was the Goddess. She was looking for her missing thoughts, and she wasn’t happy.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Jenks said, still hiding in my hair. We’d taken a moment after fleeing the train to get me on Etude’s back instead of in his grip, but Jenks had opted to stay where he was, tangled and close.
“Like the fires of hell leaking out?” I said, and he snickered. “Yep.” Oh, she was pissed.
Etude shifted his balance as the earth seemed to rise up, and with his wings making one last pulse of motion, we were down.
The silence was deafening. Not even a cricket or frog from the nearby stream. It was as if the humming force from the line was pressing all other sounds out of existence. My mystics swarmed at my apprehension as I swung my leg over and slid to the ground. The shock reverberated up to my knees and jolted the numbness from me. Faint in the distance was Loveland’s siren. The splintered mystics were coming.
“Thank you, Etude.”
He was a lumpy shadow in the moonlight, the gargoyle flicking an ear to acknowledge me. “It’s a small thing. I’ll wait over there if you need a ride home.”
Home? The memory of my front stoop with the sign over the door shadowy in the dim light rose up, and the mystics in me pooled their excitement. None of them left to go into the line, worrying me as I pulled my fog-damp hair from my shoulder so Bis could land on it. His presence joined mine with a soft thump, and turning to the glowing line, I sighed. I’d left Ivy and Trent. If I had stayed, I would’ve gone insane as Bancroft had.
“They’ll get over it,” Jenks said, seeming to know where my thoughts were as he clambered his way out of my hair and onto Bis’s head, where he stood between his ears, hands on his hips and feet spread wide.
Where my thoughts were was actually a pretty good analogy, because as soon as I turned my mind to Ivy and Trent, an image surfaced. It had been there for a while, ignored as I flew to the Loveland ley line. It was of Ivy, leaning against a FIB car, arms over her chest and her lips pressed tight. Nearby, Trent was talking persuasively to another officer, the news crews waiting by the grounded copter. Landon’s men were being led away, most of them limping. We’d got them, but the victory seemed hollow.
Are you sure you want to lose this? I thought, then quashed it. Sure, it was great seeing the world through a thousand eyes, but it had hurt. No wonder Bancroft had committed suicide. The Goddess could have them—have them all. It was like being connected to a line all the time. They were never quiet, and I just wanted to sleep.
“Oh, for Tink’s ever-loving humping,” Jenks whispered, a dull red dust seeping from him. “I think that’s them. Rachel, can you see?”
I nodded, feet shifting in the knee-high grass as I tried to dampen my aura. I didn’t know what I was going to do if they ignored the line glowing like a miniature sun between us and fell into me again. If the sirens rising up in our wake hadn’t been enough, I would’ve known it was them by little pings of energy they gave off like heat lightning. Thirty seconds. I guessed thirty seconds, and we’d know if everything was for naught or not.
Bis’s tail circling around my back and armpit tightened. “You want me to do anything?”
I shook my head, heart pounding as a cloud of mystics boiled over the tree line in a glow rivaling the moonlight. You go first, I thought at the mystics in me, and in a reluctant, swirling wave, they lifted from my soul. All of you, I reiterated, and disjointed images of the last few days sparked through my mind as they left.
My thoughts were finally empty, and I took a slow breath, relishing the silence. An adrenaline-based shiver shook me when the glow from the line jumped as my mystics entered it.
“Go, go, go . . .” Jenks whispered, and I found myself backing away from the line as a cloud of splintered mystics eddied to it and balked.
“Take them!” I shouted. “Damn it all to hell! Take them!”
“Rache!” Jenks shrilled. “Get down!”
I dropped, instinctively tapping the line and making a circle. Fear rolled up as the wet earth hit me and the long grass scraped my face. Every time I touched a line, mystics overwhelmed me. But this time there was nothing but the pure clean force of the line. She had them. She had them and they were no longer mine!