One perfectly tuned to get to us. Manipulating connections even as they work to erode us through them.
“Distraction from what?” Alister asked.
“Good question,” she said.
Except for the feral imp, who was now at the Ms. Lewis’ side, the lesser demons were still out there. Lurking in the shadows. No longer visible, they were lumpy silhouettes on trees, or a winged shape flying in a tight circle, a dark background with a darker shape moving across it.
The lawyers themselves… were apparently content to stand back. They were talking.
Blake had refreshed her memories of the lawyers.
She was equipped to analyze them. To figure out how they worked.
Her eye fell on Laird, and she couldn’t help but think of his metaphor, way back at the beginning.
Nuclear weapons. The lawyers made for a powerful group with weapons so terrible that they, corrupt as they were, were reluctant to use them.
How far did things have to go before they lost that reluctance?
Blake shifted within her, and Rose winced, both at the pain of Blake being there, ill-fitting, breaking things just a little with every action he took, and out of fear that he’d hit her with yet another painfully jarring set of memories.
But he didn’t.
He was only reminding her that she was there?
Trying to draw her attention to something?
Yes.
She was thinking too far ahead, again.
All well and good when she was in her library…
“Diana,” the mentor said.
Diana stared at him. Rose could see the connections that stretched between the two. The demonic taint was creeping along, reaching, making progress with every second.
“What if-” the Astrologer asked, “What if having only that much, what if that’s enough?”
The taint reached further, closing the distance, a metaphysical handspan from Diana’s heart, her throat, her mind.
“It can’t be,” Rose said. “Take it from me. I know vestiges, I know demons, and I know what it’s like to live with half of a person. To be half of a person.”
She spoke the words, but she didn’t see the change she wanted to see. The Astrologer wasn’t refusing the connection. She wasn’t fighting.
Have to act in the now.
Evan… she looked for Evan, and she had trouble finding him. So different from Blake, who always seemed to intuitively know where the bird was.
She found Evan with Ty, which made a degree of sense. Letting go of Alister’s arm, she reached forward.
Evan hopped into her hand.
“Rose,” Alister whispered.
“Be ready,” Rose hissed the words. They reached her entire group, huddled inside the diagram.
Rose broke away, stepping over the lines of Alister’s already broken diagram, more toward the others.
If the Astrologer lost this, well, she couldn’t be certain what would happen.
Please, she thought. Don’t follow your heart.
The Astrologer bowed her head.
The taint continued creeping her way, taking advantage of welling emotion, of some vulnerability.
“I just finished saying goodbye,” she said. “And you have to go and pull this.”
“My timing was always bad,” he said. “Remember? I’m a dork like that.”
She twisted her head to one side, eyes closed, a pained expression on her face.
The taint flared, spreading, encapsulating her.
Reaching into her pocket, she touched something. A remote, or a crudely hacked-together-phone.
Light flared from beneath her clothes, worn LEDs. One below her right shoulder blade, two on the left arm, three on the right.
Wings spread, and for a moment, she was an angel.
With the action, the connection frayed and broke. The demonic taint fell away.
A long-necked bird, quite possibly a crane, rose up and away from the Astrologer. It flowed forward and struck the Astrologer’s mentor.
As blows went, it was minor, but it opened the fight.
On the opposite end of the battlefield, three children rushed for the Shepherd, who hadn’t spoken a word, nor reacted.
He didn’t resist, didn’t react.
They made physical contact.
Rose turned her head away, as every connection that made up the Shepherd abruptly unraveled. The Shepherd screamed.
In a heartbeat, he was a wet patch in the snow, though his scream continued well past that point. Ghosts streamed from the location, one after another, and the associated emotions and effects were too intense to take in. Rose twisted her head away.
Don’t fight me, Blake, she thought.
She drew more on Conquest, pushing Blake down and away.
Recognizing that she was, being so rough, doing the same damage to him that he’d been doing to her.
Then, as best as she was able, she reached out to him.
Never an easy thing to do, but it had paid off before.
He met her halfway, and she took hold of a part of his diminished, pressured being, and she drew on it for a little bit more power.
“Attack!” she gave the order. “If you can’t attack yours, attack someone else’s!”
She hadn’t finished speaking when Fell wheeled on her. Gun drawn, pointing.
“Go!” Evan shouted.
She threw herself to one side. It wasn’t clever, or quick, or particularly graceful.
Fell, practiced, waited for her to stumble, then corrected his aim, lowering the gun as she bent low.
Evan leaped from her hand. He went up, and he managed to push her down as he launched.
Rose landed on her stomach in snow, and the bullet fired, going over her head.
When she’d managed to catch her breath, she saw eyes in the darkness.
Her first thought was Green Eyes, and that was bad unto itself.
But Green Eyes, to the best of her knowledge, still had only the one eye. Healing, but still. One eye.
What emerged from the shadow was Surbas. The fanged, feral imp. The big one.
Surbas chuckled to itself.
“I ord-” she started.
Surbas howled at her, sudden, loud and forceful enough to take the words from her mouth.
“No,” it said.
“Rose!” Alister shouted, from too far away.
Surbas leaped.
Something flew up, a mess of connections. The telltale ticking of Chronomancy.
The imp collided with a barrier, and it shed its skin.
A smaller imp continued forward, while its skin remained; a torn, stretched, furry hide drifted in a soup of slowed time.
The imp landed right in front of Rose, only a fraction smaller than before.
Immune to the practice?
Evan flew past, and the imp’s first snapping bite missed.
I’m not a fighter.
Blake was, but she didn’t know how to tap into that. Not in a matter of one or two seconds.
The imp lunged, and Rose’s world became noise and pain and brightness. Her ear set to ringing.
Dark shadows danced across her eyes in the aftermath of something impossibly loud.
A bolt of lightning had struck the imp.
She looked over her shoulder, and she saw the Elder Sister, standing by the Eye of the Storm. The woman pointed, and the Eye moved.
Rose scrambled to her feet. Evan tried to help, and she fell, overcompensating. She found her feet again, backing away.
The imp, struck, was crawling from its mouth. Shedding another body.
Even proper death didn’t stop it.
Between her backing away and Alister’s approach, she reunited with him.
All around them, there was disaster, chaos.
Some of the lawyers, a distance away, were holding items, but they weren’t acting, weren’t summoning.
“Faysal!” she roared the words, and she gave them power. “Damn you! Help! It doesn’t get messier than this!”