It was the same pool of power that should let me shift out of here, if the null net had stopped working. I tried to access it again but went nowhere. Yet the ward burned brighter than I'd ever seen it, with an almost blinding golden light. I decided I didn't much care about the reason right now—I was just grateful for it.
Especially considering what the fissure was doing to Richardson's shields.
The column of pure energy tore through his remaining protection like it wasn't even there. For an instant the light haloed him, with every eyelash, every seam on the tailored suit, every ghostly freckle on the bridge of his nose clearly visible. He screamed, eyes opened blind and dilated, mouth wide and soundless, as light spilled through him, bright enough to give me a glimpse of dark bone inside incandescent flesh.
Then he was gone, with nothing to show that he'd been there but a few ashes that the current snatched away.
Even when I squeezed my eyes shut, the image was there, burnt in white-hot light behind my eyelids. My stomach rebelled and bile burned my throat. I pressed my arms over my stomach and waited for the same thing to happen to me, for my ward to fail, for the end. Then something hit me, sending me spinning off into the main current of the stream, jolting me back into myself, to the reality of get out, get out now!
Only I wasn't sure how.
I had a little experience with ley lines, but this no longer looked much like one. The thick bands of power that usually stayed along the outer edges were fraying, shooting electric tendrils from one side of the line to the other. Twisting surges of deadly blue fire—some as thick as a large tree trunk, others no wider than my finger—crisscrossed the corridor, forcing me to throw myself first to one side and then the other in a deadly game of dodgeball that I was sure to lose.
It was the smaller surges that were the most deadly, jittering here and there so quickly that they were almost impossible to avoid. They turned the previously stable corridor into a leaping, burning mass of flame, spotted by dark specks where the war mages' bodies blocked out the light. One shimmering band hit a mage who had almost caught up with me, exploding his protective shell and sending the blazing body straight at me.
He struck my ward like a bird hitting the windshield of a speeding car and exploded—there was no other word for it. The smell of burnt meat reached me, drowning out the harsh tang of the ley line's air as flaming pieces of his body tumbled past. I screamed as the force of the movement pushed me once more toward the edge of the line. But unlike before, I didn't bounce back. The outer bands of power had unraveled too much, and this time nothing caught me.
Electric blue dissolved into darkness as my body was thrown clear. I had a brief glimpse of a sky like a bruise: blue/black, septic yellow and festering, angry green. And then I was falling toward the ground hundreds of feet below.
I dropped like a stone and landed with a jolt. Despite the ward, my head hit brutally hard, thumping against dirt as rigid as concrete, causing my ribs to howl in protest. For a second, everything went white and ringing. I lay there, gasping, trying to get air back in my lungs but they didn't seem in the mood to cooperate. I finally managed to suck in some oxygen and used it to groan.
Shudders ran through me at odd intervals, mimicking the electric pulses of the line, while my stomach informed me that, yes, it was possible to be motion sick even while lying totally still on the ground. Opening my eyes sounded like a bad idea, as I wasn't particularly interested in seeing what the mages had planned for an encore. But not seeing was even worse.
I looked up and lay there transfixed, unable to do anything but stare at the sight of a blue gash spanning half the length of the sky. It spewed bursts of power like sun flares in every direction, shedding embers like transient stars. Some hit the ground, scorching the sand and setting the nearby scrub brush on fire.
It looked like we'd left Vegas behind and were somewhere in the desert. But that was the only good thing. You weren't supposed to be able to see ley lines—they didn't exist in our world, or any other. They were the metaphysical borderlines, the buffer zones between realms. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder what would happen if one of them ruptured and two worlds came into direct contact.
Why didn't I think it would be good?
A raw wind pushed at me, tossing my hair around, while my stomach kept doing slow rolls. I got to my knees, gagging on the electric air, trying to scan the area for any sign that Pritkin had made it out. But my vision kept blurring. Or maybe that was the ripples, like waves, that were flowing over the sand, flooding the desert like underwater light. Everything seemed to move, but nothing was him.
"Pritkin!"
I didn't need to yell—the communication spell could pick up even a whisper—but I did it anyway. It was hard to hear anything with the wind screaming around me as the sky writhed and shredded. I stared upward until my eyes watered from the strain, and I yelled again at intervals, but there was no response.
Maybe the spell had failed, I thought desperately. Maybe that's all it was, some minor glitch. Or possibly whatever was happening to the line was throwing up interference that he couldn't break through. That had to be it, because Pritkin was virtually indestructible. And because I didn't think I could take it if it was something worse.
My tried-and-true philosophy of keeping people at a distance was taking a beating lately. It wasn't working so well with Mircea, and Pritkin had somehow bulldozed past every defense I had before I'd even noticed. I still wasn't sure how he'd done it.
He wasn't that good-looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird. In between crazy stunts and, okay, saving my life, he was just really annoying. When we'd started working together, I'd assumed it would be a question of putting up with Pritkin; then suddenly the stupid hair was making me smile, and the sporadic heroics were making my heart jump and the constant bitching had me wanting to kiss him quiet. And now I cared more than was good for me.
So, of course, he was gone.
"Pritkin!" I screamed it again, my eyes searching the widening gap above me, but there were no little dark specks that might be my partner bailing out. Had he seen me leave? Or was he still searching? No, that couldn't be it. That would be crazy and reckless and stupid.
And very Pritkin.
"— is ruptur. . now!" The garbled phrase was loud enough to make me jump and to practically crack my eardrum—and I'd never been so happy to hear anything in my life.
"I'm already out! Stop looking for me!" I yelled, but the wind blew half my words away.
"Are you. . right? Can you. . before—"
"Stop talking! Why are you still talking? Bail out, damn it!" " — the ground. Stay—"
"Shut up! Stop giving me orders and get the hell out of there!"
I didn't hear his answer, if he gave one, because the sky exploded. Blue lightning had been threading through the seething clouds, and now a huge branch arced downward, hitting a nearby hill with enough force to blow sand half a mile high. I hunched down with my arms over my head, trying to protect myself from the resulting hail of rocks and debris. And a hand descended on my shoulder.
I turned, grateful and furious, a few appropriate comments trembling on my lips—and looked into the face of a stranger. He was tall with spiky black hair and startled hazel eyes. It looked like someone bailed out early, I thought. And then my ward flared, throwing him back a dozen yards.