They were no ordinary whips. Every time they flew through the air, they appeared to actually cut through it somehow. These gaping holes of blue crackling force slit right through the air as if it were nothing more than flesh that had been riven from bone.
Though it was an incredible image, I couldn’t concentrate on it. The only thing I could comprehend right now was the pain. I had never felt anything like it. It felt as if a volcano had opened up in my arm, lava spilling out from the gash in my flesh.
And the pain? It was doing something to me. Pulling me backward. It felt like it was tugging me down to the grave. And hey, maybe that was Dimitri’s plan. Why bother taking me all the way back to that plastic-covered floor, why bother transporting me to that factory?
Why not just kill me now, chop my heart out later, and send it off to Fagan with sweet regards?
I could feel my eyes start to droop, feel my cheeks turn so cold, if I’d touched them, my fingers would have frozen off.
“Stay with me, block out the pain,” Max screamed in my ear. Though his voice was loud, though it rattled through his chest as it was pressed up against my back, I felt my lips droop, felt my eyes half close.
He shook me powerfully like I was little more than a flag he was waving in the wind. “No, Chi, stay with me,” he bellowed.
The Dimitri the cloud was doing untold damage. Though he was focusing on me, he was also darting through the witches, slashing through them with every chance he got.
Bridgette was screaming at the top of her lungs, trying to corral the witches, trying to get them to fight as one. They were shrieking, people were falling, there was blood everywhere.
Blood and magic.
Everything began to become hazy in my mind, began to fog, began to feel as if my thoughts had been shattered like the image of Dimitri.
… I was still connected to him. Still connected sufficiently that I could feel his anger, his rage, and more than anything, his total loss of control.
Oh, and his sense of triumph. For, in Dimitri’s mind, he had already won.
I had been stupid. I had come to him. I had sealed my own fate.
Once more the cloud rushed towards Max, and this time, it did so head-on. Though Max was quick, there was nowhere he could go.
Nowhere except backward.
We were standing on the very edge of the grave – 6 feet below sat the dirt-covered coffin, half open, the glimpse of clothes and hair visible beneath.
Max had nowhere to go.
So he took a step back.
Just before the cloud could slam into his chest and do untold damage to his very body, he pulled me backward with him, one arm still pinned around my stomach.
A second later, his back slammed into the coffin lid and broke it.
Fear and revulsion powered through my mind, snapped through my body, felt like they would crush my heart.
I could feel the broken shards of wood around Max, and beneath him, the form of a body.
But my fear couldn’t last. For the cloud? I watched it appear over the top of the grave.
I screamed – that echoing, pitching shriek bellowing through my throat, louder than a strike of lightning.
The cloud swept towards me.
But it did not reach me.
For suddenly, Max let go.
He pulled his arms from around my middle, releasing me. As he did, he turned to his magic in full. Blue flame leaped across his body, blazing around him like a halo.
Before I could scream at the top of my lungs, he shifted forward, somehow moving around me and throwing himself at Dimitri.
The thrill of magic passed through me, shuddering through my body with such speed, it could send me into outer space.
Before the cloud-Dimitri could rush down and kill me, Max reached out with his own power.
I’d never seen anything like it, I’d never felt anything like it, and as the two fairies met, the ground shook with incredible force.
It was the kind of force that could distract me momentarily from where I was lying – from the shards of wood sticking into my back, from the feel of the cold, dead body beneath me.
But I couldn’t be distracted for long. For even though the sight of those two clouds battling was incredible – those split-up, splintered images taking on one another like photos jammed into a blender – suddenly I heard something.
Another creak. This time, it was right behind me, right by my ear. My terrified mind told me it was coming from the corpse. Told me its jaw had just unhinged, told me it was getting ready to jolt forward and swallow me.
But it wasn’t.
I felt something open up behind me, almost as if I were lying not on top of a broken coffin, but on top of a door.
I felt a rush of wind. Then, unbidden from the darkness, something wrapped around my stomach. An arm.
I shrieked. I shrieked with everything I had, as the most violent fear you could ever imagine slammed into my mind.
The corpse, however, did not reach forward, wrap its unhinged jaw around my head, and kill me.
I smelt a familiar whiff of cologne, saw a familiar silver-grey suit.
I heard his voice, right by my ear. “Only five minutes now.”
With that, Fagan pulled me backward through the base of the coffin.
I did not end up transporting through the ground. In a rush of magical sparks, I arrived face-first on a plastic-covered floor.
I was in the factory.
The factory.
And I had five minutes.
Everything started to slow down as true fear crawled over me.
