Michael Sturges.
Lightning crackled around her, dancing over her fingertips. The hunger to release it was undeniable. She could destroy him with a thought and end all of this.
No, she thought, wrestling with that dark, mindless part of her as she pushed forward.
She found Michael Sturges on a flat expanse of mud, his blue suit soaked and heavy, his hair plastered to his skull.
Glenn touched down a few steps away from him.
“Glenn,” he said with a smile. “I honestly didn’t think you had it in you. I — ”
With a sweep of her hand, Glenn lifted Sturges into the air by his throat, squeezing hard enough to shut him up. She let him dangle there before her, his eyes wide. His face was creased with old burns.
“Tell your people to go,” she said.
“Wait,” he rasped, clawing at his throat. “Glenn. Listen to me. I want what you want. To have things back the way they were. We can work together. Put me down and we’ll talk. I know you don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
Glenn clenched her fist tighter and his words cut out in an instant.
She could end this now. Twist one way or another and his neck would snap like a twig. Sturges hung in the air, his face red and bloated, panic coming off him in steely waves.
“There are things you can never take back….”
The strength rushed out of Glenn. She slackened her grip on Michael’s throat and he gasped and tumbled to the ground.
“Just go,” Glenn stuttered, feeling as if she were speaking from the bottom of a dark hole. “Leave and don’t come back.”
“If I do, they’ll send another just like me,” Sturges said. “This won’t end until they have what they want, Glenn.”
“I can stop them.”
“And live like your mother did?” he said. “Alone. Spending
every thought on us. Eaten up by power. It’s happening already, isn’t it, Glenn? You can feel it happening. You’re slipping away.”
Sturges drew himself up and crossed the muddy ground toward her. Glenn tried to push him away and stop him from talking, but it was getting harder. Affinity was pounding at her from every direction. It wanted to devour her. The effort to control it brought Glenn to her knees.
“I think you just want to go home.”
The next thing she knew, Michael was standing in front of her, his hand resting on her shoulder with a kindly weight.
“Isn’t that right?”
Glenn nodded. She was so tired. Michael smiled, then nodded to someone behind her and walked away. Glenn turned and there, standing at the edge of a muddy crater, was the black-draped figure of Abbe Daniel.
“Hello, Glennora.”
A column of fire materialized at the end of Abbe’s fingertips.
Glenn grasped a reserve of strength and leapt up into the sky to avoid it.
She didn’t make it three feet before something grabbed her ankle and yanked her back down again. Glenn crashed through the mud and hit solid earth beneath it. The air shot out of Glenn’s lungs and she rolled over, coughing. She tried to get her hands under her chest, tried to get up, but before she could, what felt like an immense hand pushed her down farther, filling her mouth with muck.
In the next instant, she was in the air again. Abbe flipped her upside down and let her hang there, admiring her as if she was a prize catch.
“What are you doing?” Glenn asked, gasping for air. “The
Magisterium is your home.”
Abbe laughed. “I think you need a better sense of which way the tide is turning, Glenn.”
The blood was rushing to Glenn’s head. She tried to strike back, but Abbe laughed again and spun her around in the air so fast that Glenn couldn’t concentrate. She went limp. The earth turned faster below her, a brown and black swirl. Glenn reached down into it.
The ground beneath Glenn was vast and hard, miles of rock
stretching into darkness. Glenn prayed — Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka -
and let the earth flow up into her, stiffening her joints and weighing her down. She became more and more dense until her spinning slowly stopped and she felt herself lowering to the ground. Abbe strained against her, only now she was losing. Glenn touched down, iron, rock, and the molten heart of the earth coursing through her. The earth trembled as she moved toward Abbe. The girl in black called down a flash of lightning, but Glenn shrugged it off and kept coming.
Abbe tried to fly but it was nothing for Glenn to thicken the air and pull the witch back down. Abbe plummeted face-first into the mud.
Her hands were splayed out on the ground beside her.
“We don’t have to do this,” Glenn said as she approached the girl.
“We should be working together.”
Abbe squeezed the earth in her fist, and there was a deep rumble.
A rip in the ground appeared at Abbe’s fingertips, widening as it shot out across the space between them. Glenn went to escape it, but she was too heavy, too slow. By the time the tear in the ground reached her, it was a chasm several feet across. Glenn tried to dodge away, too late.
The ground disappeared beneath her and she tumbled helplessly into the dark.
Glenn tried to grab on to something, or pull in a gust of wind to lift her up, but she was moving too fast and was too depleted. It was deadly quiet as she fell, careening through the dark, and then it all came to an end in one body-shaking crash. Glenn slammed into an
outcropping of rock, her right side first, ribs taking the impact. There was a snap and a firecracker burst of pain in her midsection.
When Glenn tried to sit up the pain exploded again and she fell back, her body buzzing with shock. Glenn moved her hands along her side, looking for wounds. There was a deep gash in her arm that was slick with blood, and what felt like a snapped rib. She nearly screamed when her fingers found it.
She must have fallen a hundred feet. To her left was the edge of the gorge, falling hundreds of feet into the darkness. To her right was an opening in the rock wall, the mouth of a cave.
Above her the darkness she had fallen through began to lighten.
Had morning come already? No. It wasn’t the sun. It was a single light, hazy at first, illuminating the lip of the gorge. Glenn stared up at it, transfixed, as it moved along the edge. She thought she heard a voice calling down to her. She wanted to cry out, “I’m here!” and even managed to open her mouth, but no sound came out, just a strained whisper.
The light left the edge of the gap, floated there for a moment, and then began to fall toward her, slow at first, and then with increasing speed.
“We’re not finished, Glennora!”
Abbe Daniel was coming for her, her way illuminated by a yellow orb of light centered around her right hand. At the rate Abbe was falling, Glenn didn’t have much time. She nearly screamed with pain as she forced herself up and stumbled into the dark cave beside her.
She took a couple steps then crashed into rock.
Glenn took a deep breath and concentrated, imagining the earth’s fiery core flowing to one spot in the center of her hand. The air above her palm wavered and a single small flame appeared, illuminating the walls of the cave. Glenn ran, hunched over and wincing in pain, down a narrow stone corridor.
“Glennora!”
Abbe had made it to the ledge and was following close behind.
The path wound through the rock until finally Glenn ran straight into a large cavern. In front of her was a pond and columns of rock that rose nearly a hundred feet above her head. The air was cooler here and felt fresh for the first time. Glenn raised her hand and urged the flame higher. There! At the top of the far wall was a hole in the rock. Glenn could feel fresh air pouring down into the cavern from its mouth. It was easily big enough for her to squeeze through and escape. All she had to do was get to it.
Glenn ran into the water and then jumped up toward the hole, summoning every scrap of will she had in her and hoping it was enough to lift her to freedom. Glenn’s fingers brushed the wet stone and she scrambled upward. There was a splash behind her.