“You brought them to destroy me!” the Goddess wailed, and then her anger crested to a savage ruthlessness. “There is one Goddess!” she howled, a burst of energy spilling from her with the sound of wings in the wind. “Your thoughts will be forgotten. I will make them forget. They will be forgotten and you will die!”
Shit, this was not what I wanted to happen. “I was trying to help!” I shouted, then froze when her Ayer doll suddenly collapsed.
For a heartbeat, there was silence. The haze of her power flickered, falling in on itself with a little pop. My mystics milled in confusion in the moonlit grove stinking of ozone and crushed grass. The cement block remained, but she was . . . gone?
“Jenks?” I called hesitantly, and then screamed, stiffening when the Goddess dove into my mind, ripping through me as if to tear me to shreds.
“No!” I howled, feeling my mystics hum through the spaces in me, driving her off as she dug, burrowed, and tried to swamp me. If she succeeded, I’d be hers utterly, becoming her forever.
“Stop!” I demanded again, wrestling for control, and with a realization come too late, the Goddess recoiled in sudden terror. She’d attacked me, but wherever her thoughts touched to destroy and rend, my memories sparked, growing like an infection among her own thoughts. Just as before when she tried to break the hold the Free Vampires had on her, the more she fought, the more she lost.
And the Goddess wept as she felt herself change, become something else.
Please, stop! I cried in panic, and the mystics carried her deeper, forcing the change. Go back! I don’t want you!
But the mystics weren’t listening. They’d seen, and they couldn’t go back. They liked the world of mass. Who could have guessed the limitations of three dimensions made a world richer than four?
Feathers beat on me as she tried to escape. The Goddess’s terror rose thick, twining about me even as I felt her change. I will end you! she vowed, the smell of burning feathers choking as she was suddenly fighting for her own existence. I will end your thoughts! I will not become again! A great wailing rose up, pushing through my own horror. You promised it would never happen again! she cried like a lost child.
I was killing her.
I fled. With a singular desire, I willed myself into the line, and then I set my mind to another far away. It was a safe place, one where I went to find solace, a place where she wouldn’t find me until I could figure out what to do.
Eden Park.
Twenty-Seven
Stay here, I thought, drawing the bored mystics back to me as I huddled on the bench tucked under one of the overhanging trees at the edge of the drop-off to the river. It was the best bench on the walkway in my opinion, being in the shade in the day and in the deep shadows at night, out of sight of most of the parking and all the open grass area. From here I could see a good slice of the Hollows, lit from the full moon and street fires as people gathered to defend what was dear to them. There was no power, and small but steady lights in the Hollows gave evidence of magic. Behind me, Cincinnati imploded in on itself, mostly ignored.
The tremendous wave of captured mystics flowing back to the line had missed most of the more populated areas, but even so it was only because people were glued to their TVs that the city would get through the night somewhat intact. Images of the stopped train and promises that the I.S. and FIB had caught the people responsible were a pressure bandage that would break when the Goddess finished repairing the damage I’d done and came hunting for me.
I could feel her even now, licking her wounds and forcing the mystics I’d left behind back to her way of thinking. Just as I had survived the splintered mystics by fleeing to return stronger, so would she, leaving a wave of destruction in her wake that would rival the Turn when she came to find me.
This was so not what I had wanted to happen.
The sound of a car coming up the winding drive became obvious over the background bangs and sirens. Tired, I pulled my feet up onto the bench and put my head on my knees as Trent’s heavy, bullet-resistant SUV rolled up and stopped with the sound of popping gravel. A quiver went through me, and I yanked back a wave of curious mystics.
His door thumping shut shocked through me, and a few slipped my leash, returning almost immediately with an image. His head was down, and his hand was bandaged. He had all five fingers, though, and he’d found a clean set of clothes somewhere.
“Don’t touch me,” I said softly as a cloud of mystics ushered him forward, feeding off a faded emotion, intensifying it.
Shoes scuffing on the sidewalk, he halted five feet back. There were no lights, and he was a dark shadow under the trees. “It’s just me,” he said, and his voice rose and fell, making my heart ache more.
Setting my feet down, I turned to look at him with my own eyes instead of the mystics’. “You’re full of wild magic. If I touch you, she might find me.” Anguish rose up, biting and thick. “I tried!” I wailed suddenly, and his head dropped in understanding. “They won’t go back. They adapted to me and refused to meld with her. Now she’s out to kill me, and if she doesn’t manage it, then she’s dead herself, changed into something new, something I made.”
Trent came closer, and I stiffened until he sat at the far end of the bench. The distance made me feel better, and together we looked out over the Hollows. “How did you find me?” I said, almost whispering it.
He leaned back against the bench and sighed. “Like I always do; I know where you go when you’re in trouble. Bis is worried sick. Your aura has shifted again and he can’t find you.”
I looked at my hand as if I could see it. “I really screwed this up.”
“No, not really.” The hint of his usual confidence didn’t make me feel any better. “Landon has been stopped and the dewar and enclave are both denying any knowledge of what he was doing—though I doubt that is true. No one on the train died, not even the conductor who was shot. Nina didn’t crash the van into the train. The Weres in Cincinnati have found an unexpected, uneasy truce in their unification. Unfortunately it’s against elves. On the good side, the undead are beginning to wake up. You made the news, but the headlines are positive.”
Swallowing hard, I came out with what really bothered me. “I’m sorry I left you like that.” Maybe if I hadn’t, things would have been different.
Trent’s head shifted back and forth in denial, a dark shadow under the trees. “No. Etude can only carry one, and staying wasn’t an option. You did the right thing.” He hesitated. “Even if it was the hardest thing I’ve had to endure to date.”