“Someone do something!” Bis exclaimed, wings opening in alarm.
“Rhombus!” Al exclaimed, using my word to make a circle, and the world went dark. Panicked, I wiggled. “Al!”
“Don’t move, or you’re going to break it!” Bis shrilled, and I froze.
I took a breath, then another. We were in a circle. I saw it now. I hadn’t gone blind. It was Al’s smut, coating the molecule-thin barrier. “Trent . . .” Oh God, Al had thrown him at her.
“He’s fine,” Al said, and all three of us jumped as the Goddess hammered atop the bubble. I could see her now, looking wraithlike as she burned the body she was in, holding it together by sheer willpower. Al’s smut acted like sunglasses, and I spotted Nina huddled under Ivy’s baby grand, protecting Ivy with her body. Trent didn’t look much better, dazed as he sat against one of the piano’s legs with Jenks on his shoulder. They were all forgotten as the Goddess focused on me. I prayed that Trent would stay where he was. He looked okay.
My mystics were gathering inside the bubble. I could feel them freely passing in and out, making Al wiggle and squirm even as Bis basked in their warmth. “Al,” I whispered, feeling a possible hope. I probably wasn’t going to make it out of this circle alive—not with the Goddess standing and waiting to pummel me—but if she was here, and the mystics were here . . . I might as well try. “Al, we can reopen the lines.”
“Are you moonstruck!” he bellowed, then winced as the Goddess blew a hole in the ceiling in frustration. Thick beams bounced and rolled, and Nina pulled Ivy deeper under the piano as Trent and Jenks danced back out of the way. “Rachel, we’re going to be lucky to get out of this with our lives! The Goddess knows my aura signature now, too.”
“Like you really think we’re going to make it out of here alive?” I protested.
“And whose fault is that!”
“Help me up,” I said, wiggling to get out of his arms. “I want to see if we can give as well as take.”
“Rachel, we’re trapped!” Al exclaimed. And then someone’s foot hit the edge of the bubble, and it fell.
Light burst over us. I gasped as the Goddess howled in victory, then cowered as a blast of white-hot intent washed over us . . . and fell away. Al grunted in surprise, and I looked up.
Astonishment wreathed the Goddess, looking wrong on her glowing face as shock evolved into understanding. “You cloak yourself in your disharmony,” she whispered, the body she was in staggering back a step.
“Disharmony?” I echoed, looking at Bis, his feet clamped onto Al’s shoulder. There could be no disharmony without lines.
“You’re coated in the cost of perverting my will!” the Goddess said, her expression shifting to a hot anger, and Al began to chuckle. “It will not save you. I will burn it away, and you both will die!”
“Yeah? How much you got, bitch?” Al said boldly, standing up and dragging me with him. “I have a lot of smut.”
“It’s the smut!” Bis said, red eyes wide. “Rachel, it’s smut. She can’t get through it.”
Grimacing, the Goddess cried out, her wails becoming fierce as her fire raced over me and died. Al and I shared an aura—his smut insulated me. His smut?
“Get the rest,” I demanded, hope a bright goad. “Bis, go get the rest. We can do this!”
“Got it,” Bis said, launching himself out the hole the Goddess had made, pinwheeling to avoid her haphazard strikes.
“Al, don’t let her burn me,” I said, going still at a memory. Peter had once asked me to not let him burn. But I wasn’t committing suicide. There was a chance here. Wasn’t there?
“What?” Al said, looking from the Goddess for a brief second before throwing out a hand and blocking her desperate attack. “Rachel?”
“I’m going to need all the mystics she has,” I said, pulse quickening. “I’m going to let her in. See how many I can convert.”
Yes . . . the mystics in me hummed, eager to make a becoming.
“No!” Al shouted, horrified as he understood. “Rachel, it will kill you!”
But there was no other way, and with a deep breath, I dropped the gates to my mind.
She wasn’t expecting it, and I felt the Goddess stumble as I flooded her with myself, setting seeds of my thoughts within her even as I swung out again.
You will be ended! I will not become! echoed in me, and I sent more mystics, knowing they’d be crushed but needing to distract her from the growing cancer I’d set festering within.
I will not become. I will not! she screamed, and I turned my thoughts to where the lines used to hum in my mind like great gates. If I could flood them with energy, just one, the way would be open and I could pull on the flow of energy to open the rest.
Bis, I called, finding his presence riding the chaos, his mind dipping and swooping freely in mine. Where are they?
They won’t come! he thought, his mood chancy as he rose up on the sudden swipe of emotion from the Goddess.
And in my doubt, the Goddess found a small hole in my defenses. I will not become, I will not! the Goddess thought. The other could not make me become, and I will see you gone!
She attacked with savagery, and I writhed in soundless pain as great chunks of myself were dissolved, taken in and swamped by the Goddess. She was eating me alive and I groaned, grasping at anything as memories slipped away, diminishing me.
You will be nothing! she howled, the sound of wings beating at me as she rolled me into nothing. I will remain! I am all. They are mine. All of them!
Fire licked my soul where she tore great chunks of me away. Ice dove deep to fracture what was left and let more fire in. I panicked, feeling myself eaten away, smaller and smaller as I cowered, trying to protect what was left. There was no attack. She had everything. She had it all. I was a fool’s thought, a failure, and she coated me in acid, eating me alive.
“Get off her, you self-absorbed bitch!”
I screamed, the sound real as it echoed in my church. The clean breath of nothing cascaded over me, astringent and biting. I was stripped bare, and I huddled in Al’s arms as the Goddess shouted and fumbled. Her mind had been ripped from mine and was now fighting great swaths of organized thought that had been strengthened beyond reason by insanity.
I blinked, realizing I was actually seeing two figures in my church, swaying back and forth, locked in a glittering sheath of white that rose through the broken roof to the stars.