Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) (38 page)

She hadn’t noticed until then how widely he’d opened himself—she could feel, when she slowed her breathing enough to separate her senses from theirs, so much more from him than she ever had. It really was beautiful, being able to connect to someone this way even for a moment. The courage it had taken to trust her so completely…

Their eyes met briefly. His were a dark violet, almost black, flecked with stars that might have been reflections from the fireplace…she decided not to think about it just then, and closed her own eyes tight.

So much love…and pain, yes, sorrow so deep she couldn’t see its end…but so much love. At this exact moment, Deven felt safe, loved. She hated to destroy that, but it was unlikely that bliss bubble was going to last once they got to work.

Miranda closed her eyes and pulled up the Web. She could see the reservoir clearly, a white sun burning in her mind.

She had next to no experience with Weaving, and not much technical knowledge, but her instincts, she knew, were good; she’d known where to put her hands last time, known how the threads would behave. It was all very logical—there were ebbs and flows, balances to maintain, threads branching and supporting other threads like cables holding up a bridge. It was difficult as hell to do, but not that hard to understand. As vast and complex as the universe was it operated by fairly simple rules.

David extended his energetic “hand” toward her, and she took it; seconds later the power they had raised began to flow into her along their Signet bond.

After a minute or two the power was singing through them both, flowing in a circuit from one to the other and back. Just like they were situated in the real world, she took up position on one side of Deven with David on the other, the energy stretching between them and forming a sort of net that would catch, but not block, whatever wave crashed through the barrier. The energy would still move through them, but the net would slow it down, gentle it—as long as they held fast.

“Okay,” she said. “I think that’s it. I hope that a simple solution is a good one in this case. Dev, when you’re ready, if you can…”

Even with the openness and calm that they’d created in the last hour, he was still nervous as he went inward to pry open the barrier. She could See him looking for the right place to hit it—somewhere that would cause a break but not topple the whole thing at once. The more they could slow the wave down, the better.

“Got it,” he said softly. She could feel his fingers squeezing hers almost painfully, and squeezed back, trying to reassure him. “Brace yourselves.”

Miranda and David grasped each other’s “hands” as strongly as they could, taking a breath—

—Deven hit the barrier with the strength of his will, like a sledgehammer hitting a stone wall, and she could hear the stones breaking, crumbling. She watched his part of the Web with her heart pounding. A pinpoint of light appeared, spreading out radially from the point of impact, the gaps in the “stone” growing brighter and brighter—

She knew there wasn’t a sound in the actual room, but something like a sound erupted through the Web, one she knew too well from the night the Haven in California had exploded. Stone cracking loose and tumbling, a rain of jagged pebbles flying outward, dust choking the air. Everything around her shook.

It was like being hit by the entire ocean, yet not like water at all; it was like being swallowed by a wall of fire, but didn’t burn. She’d never seen, Seen, or felt anything like it, but there was no room for fear under its onslaught.

The wave hit the net so hard it nearly swept her away with it, but she grounded harder than she ever had, wrapping her own energy around the surrounding threads of the Web to shore up her own strength. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak—all she could do was hold on, to the Web and to David and to herself.

It was working…or it did at first. The wave acted just like she’d thought it would and got momentarily caught up in the net of energy. The flow was squeezed from a flood into a river, and she watched it move through and past them, down the Signet bond on its way to Nico’s inert form.

There had been no useful way to test her plan—she had assumed that any barriers Nico had put up would be easily broken by the wave on its way into him. As strongly as Deven had blocked him out, there was barely even a trickle of energy reaching him, enough to sustain their lives but only just. How much of a wall could he create with that?

What she hadn’t taken into account was the force of his rage. Whenever he had put up his shield, he’d done so with magic made of steel. She couldn’t have seen it from outside; from where they stood it just looked like the same kind of construction Deven had used. But inside, it was reinforced and impenetrable.

The power hit the barrier and bounced off.

But it did more than bounce; Nico had built some kind of counterattack into it, so that whatever impacted with its surface was thrown back toward its origin with twice as much force.

“Oh God,” she gasped, “Hang onto something! It’s coming back!”

She felt their fear just a heartbeat before the returning wave struck.

Now, it did burn.

She could hear herself screaming. It felt like she was being torn apart, every cell in her body breaking away from the others. Her grip on the surrounding Web was ripped away, leaving her only David to cling to, and he to her; and while their bond was one of the strongest of its kind ever to exist, even it couldn’t stand up to the wave.

Miranda felt Deven grab hold of them both, and they all rooted themselves in each other as deeply as they could. If they could connect all three as deeply as a Signet bond, they might have a chance, but—

As she struggled to maintain any sense of herself, even just her own heartbeat, Miranda saw something she could scarcely believe. It was as if someone had struck a match and lit their part of the Web on fire, specifically those threads that connected all three of them as part of the Circle. Miranda flung herself at the light, seizing the threads and wrapping them around each other, reaching beyond them and to the entire Circle for help.

She felt a response almost immediately, without hesitation. One by one, the other four Signets extended a hand, providing a rock solid foundation to stand on.

Miranda was trying to redirect the wave, or at least divert it somehow, but there was too much, too fast—she wasn’t a Weaver, not the kind they needed.

We’re all going to die. I can’t hold on any longer—

Far away, so faintly she could barely feel it, something flickered.

Something was struggling, fighting its way toward them, clawing through paradoxical distances and its own fear.

She had nothing left. She reached out with her heart to the others, saying she was sorry to have failed them, that she hoped they—

Hands seized the power from her. She didn’t have time to ask questions or even hope for a miracle, but then, she didn’t need to.

Power, absolute and unending, slammed into the center of the deluge. The wave broke around it into a dozen tributaries, its overall strength split and twisted so that it flowed back into the presence that had appeared among them. That presence drew the entire wave into itself, then with a single push, sent it into the four of them equally, as she had planned to do in the beginning. In a matter of moments, the tide ebbed, and with another push, it was sent into motion, flowing among them as if it always had.

Miranda’s waning strength returned, redoubled. She felt stronger than she ever had, and she knew the others did too. She sensed the four far-flung Signets withdrawing, and soon the endless night of the Web grew quiet except for the sound of three vampires trying desperately to catch their breath.

They were all falling back out of the vision, into the real world again, but just before she let go, Miranda looked up at their savior.

Deep violet eyes full of power and pain met and held hers.

“Nico,” she whispered, and woke.

Chapter Sixteen

The first thing he was aware of was being paralyzed…and trapped.

He struggled for several minutes, panic seizing him, but he could barely move; some parts of his body obeyed, but others he could not even feel. The metallic cold of chains rubbed his skin raw as he tried in vain to break free.

He heard himself cry out in fear. A moment later a door opened, and he heard boots approaching, driving that fear to a fever pitch—

“Stop!”

The footsteps halted. “Sire, you said that if—”

The voice was calmly authoritative even though it sounded like it was coming from far away.
“I’m aware that he’s awake, Elite—stand down. In fact, stand back.”

“As you will it, Sire.”

The room faded away, both sound and light, and he fell back into the darkness willingly.

The next thing he felt was softness. The unyielding steel and bright light had given way to a quiet, gentle dark, illuminated by a fireplace nearby. All around him were warm and comforting scents and sounds: the even breathing of slumber, the scents of laundry soap and not a small amount of sweat and sex, and the sound of rain hitting the metal shutters outside.

He tentatively tried to wiggle his fingers. It worked, with some delay between thought and action, but additional experiments made it clear that he was still at least partially paralyzed.

What happened to me? Where am I? Why can’t I move?

It felt as though a huge chunk of information had been torn from his mind. When he tried to remember how he had ended up chained, he couldn’t. Everything in his head was jumbled around itself and fragmented in places.

What he did know: at some point an incredible amount of power had rushed through his body. He could feel its traces even now, a faint vibration under his skin even in the parts he couldn’t otherwise feel. And there was something new pulling lightly at his mind, similar to the link he’d had with…

…had.

Panic gripped him again.

The energetic link to David was gone. That must be why he was so weak. And without it he would weaken further still, losing his magic again, losing the Web, and eventually his will to live. Who had broken it? And why?

“Easy,
en’tela,”
came a soft voice near his ear. “Look deeper. Don’t be afraid.”

The Elvish term of endearment was strangely calming. It meant “half of me,” and had the connotation of a beloved as cherished as one’s own soul. He had never been called that before, but just hearing his own language helped ease the anxiety trying to claw its way free.

He did as he was told and groped around inside his own mind to try and touch the strangeness. He might not be able to move his arms, but this he could do, and to his surprise, it was easy; from a magical standpoint he was at full strength…or more.

What in the…

When he found it, he jerked his mental hands back in shock. He’d come round to where the Signet bond joined to his being, but at first he didn’t recognize it at all. He had grown used to the strangled energy that barely filtered through, that tiny trickle all he had to live on. That whole part of him had felt shriveled and grey, as much of a wraith inside as he was outside.

This…this was not that.

He had to be dreaming, or hallucinating—perhaps even dead and waiting for whatever came next. But if so, the powers that be had given him the kindness of a lie, and were showing him what could have been, if only…

Not only was the bond still where it belonged, it was no longer choking. Energy flowed in and out of the connection as naturally as breathing, steady and even, a moonlit violet shaded with silver-black. That darkness should have been frightening, but its strength was reassuring. When he touched it, it seemed to recognize him and grin puckishly, then wash over him with a light kiss as if nothing had ever been wrong.

That would have been comfort enough in his dying moments, he supposed, but they’d done him one better. If he reached out along the bond, he found that it didn’t just flow in one direction, but two—clockwise and counterclockwise along a circuit that held them within it…

…all four of them.

When he realized what he was looking at he would have gasped, but he physically couldn’t. Instead he just marveled at it. Such elegant, beautiful magic had been worked here—first with clumsy yet powerful hands, and then with those hands as well as a greater power’s guiding them. Whoever it was had taken down the barrier and set up a flow, but that wasn’t enough; the second presence had taken hold of them all and…

It wasn’t possible. Theoretically it could work, but in reality the amount of power required simply did not exist. Such things simply did not happen, not without direct—and therefore nearly unheard-of—Divine intervention.

Still, this product of his dreaming mind had been crafted with a master’s touch; it was a circle in perfect balance, seamless, whole. He’d never seen its equal.

If only it could be real…such a thing would be achingly beautiful.

He could hear low voices around him now.

“How is he?”

“Working things out…I think he thinks he’s dreaming.”

“How long until he can move, do you think?”

“A few more hours. Full recovery could take days. It’s best not to rush a spinal injury—and he hurt himself worse trying to fight before you got him out of there. He definitely needs the rest.”

“It doesn’t feel like he remembers much.”

“Not yet, thank God. Hopefully not ever.” A pause. “She’s still out, too.”

“Yes. We all should be—lie back down and rest, Dev. He’s safe now—we all are. I know you’re tired.”

“You do…I know you do. I…”

“Shh…don’t think about it too much yet. Just rest. We’ll figure all of this out tomorrow.”

Good advice. He decided to follow it.

He didn’t think again for quite a while.

*****

The Queen’s dreams were often made of memories not her own; it was a hazard of having a Signet bond. She dreamed scattered moments of a dour little village long since fallen into dust; she dreamed college campuses, beds, and battlefields she’d never set foot on.