In her mechanised wheelchair – that space that was simultaneously her salvation and prison – she sat paralysed, with her withered arms cocked at unnatural angles, and her hands curled into claws. Her eyeballs could move, but not the muscles around them, so no matter what she was feeling the same empty stare was projected from those two dark orbs. She could speak in strained whispers, but it took an extreme effort to part her lips even a crack. Even the power of her beastwalker blood had not been able to repair the immense damage done to her; indeed, it took almost all the magic infused into that blood to simply keep her heart pumping.
As for walking, her legs simply weren’t there. A beastwalker who had been able to transform into an Asian elephant, and a former senior member of the Eastern Council, she had almost succumbed to the same fate as that of the rest of her peers of that esteemed group. It had only been through the greatest of miracles that she had survived the immensity of the violence wrought upon her by the Huntsmen and their beastwalker allies, who together had obliterated the Eastern Council. While Parvati had survived the purge, the damage done to her body and mind had been extensive, far beyond what her powers could repair. Indeed, it had been so severe she seemed to have lost the ability to shift forms at all.
She had once possessed vast knowledge and considerable abilities, as had most of her senior brothers and sisters of the Eastern Council, but most of those powers had lain dormant since the attack; they had been compartmentalised into parts of her mind to which she no longer had access – or, at least, that she was no longer able to access at will, as she once had. It was not all lost forever, though; sometimes her powers would sputter back to life at random, unexpected moments – as had just occurred in this instance, in which she had been able to project both her own consciousness and Lightning Bird’s across New York State to the place from which they had escaped a few hours earlier, in order to stall their relentless pursuer. And she had, briefly, managed to harness the power of lightning, although it had only been a mild strike compared to what she had once been capable of.
Her eyeballs roved across the room, settling briefly on Jun, and then moving over to Lightning Bird, who was vomiting. Rancorous, bitter bile was rising quickly up the back of her own throat too, and it soon filled her mouth, an alarming volume of it, which she could do nothing about, being unable to open her lips.
However, after he had finished retching, her friend turned around and noticed her discomfort immediately – he was able to read subtle cues in a way that most could not – and despite being in agony himself, he heaved his body up off of the chair and lurched over to her on swaying, pain-poisoned limbs.
‘Can I help?’ Jun asked. ‘What can I do?’
‘Help me … steady myself,’ Lightning Bird gasped.
Jun jumped up and did as he said, gripping the shaman’s belt with both hands and digging his heels into the carpet. He was not strong, not by a long shot, but he was able, at least, to prevent the tall beastwalker from toppling over.
With his trembling right hand Lightning Bird gripped the armrest of Parvati’s heavy wheelchair, and with his left he grabbed an old newspaper from the floor, placed it on her lap, and then gently opened her lips with his fingers, allowing the warm vomit to drip out in thick chunks and viscous, goopy strands. When he felt that he could stand stably enough on his own, Lightning Bird let go of the chair and gripped her shoulders, nudging her forward so that she could expel the last of the vomit that remained in her system.
‘You can … let go now,’ he said to Jun, who quietly complied.
Lightning Bird then shifted Parvati back in the chair and staggered back to his own seat, into which he collapsed.
Parvati’s roving eyeballs fixed on him, and he knew she wanted to speak, so he pricked his ears and listened. Like many of the older members of their kind, she had once been able to speak without words, to communicate her thoughts and intentions directly into the mind of another. This ability, like so many of her powers, had also been lost in the Huntsmen’s attack. Now she could only whisper barely audible phrases from her paralysed mouth, the garbled words indecipherable to most. Lightning Bird, however, had spent enough time with her that he could understand most of her hoarse ramblings. Jun too was beginning to develop a knack for interpreting her rattling rasps.
‘My powers,’ she croaked, the strained syllables almost unintelligible, ‘they returned, just for an instant.’ Her words were like the scraping of dry leaves across a patch of rough concrete, drawn by a reluctant zephyr.
‘They did, Parvati, they did,’ he rumbled in response. ‘It is a good sign. A very good sign.’
‘Maybe it is a bad sign.’
Lightning Bird frowned, as did Jun.
‘How so?’
‘The world is entering a new phase, a phase of darkness hitherto unknown. A phase in which the Light is so desperately needed that the universe has deemed it necessary to return my powers to me.’
Lightning Bird leaned back and clasped his hands on his lap, while the expression of worry on Jun’s face simply intensified.
‘I understand, my wise old friend,’ Lightning Bird said. ‘I did not think to look at it this way.’
‘We must analyse such things from all angles, most especially unconventional ones,’ she wheezed. ‘Often the most unexpected approach provides the clearest answers, and—’ Abruptly her eyeballs froze in their
