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“Kara! Kara!” Paul’s voice yanked me back to myself.
Breathing raggedly, I ceased my struggles. The sigils still throbbed, but I knew who I was. I tried to touch Mzatal through our connection, but his focus was fully on the storm as he called it
closer, pulled the lightning and power to him.
Amkir snarled and tightened his hand. Idris screamed again as though being ripped apart, even as thunder pounded across the lawn. Jesral exuded cold, calm focus, a vulpine smile curving his mouth as he twisted his hand again. I jerked in Mzatal’s hold, screamed, “KARA,” through a closing veil of rakkuhr red. Mzatal raised his arm, and I felt him bring the lightning through Khatur. The strike came to the blade in a blinding flash that drove all hint of the red haze from me, and in the next instant the lightning split to slam into the two enemy lords. Jesral flew back nearly a dozen feet and landed in a crumpled, smoking heap not far from Rhyzkahl. But Amkir took the strike solidly, pinned down as he was, and barely had time to utter a choked scream as it seared over and through him.
The pain in the sigils stopped as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown. I dragged in a breath and leaned heavily on Mzatal as I fought to get my equilibrium back. Instead of the exhilaration of the lightning I’d experienced on the mini-nexus, this ripped through me with near-sentient wrath, disturbing and familiar. The essence blade.
I heard Paul give an unsteady laugh, and when I looked over I saw him curled on the ground a few feet away with one arm over his head and the other holding his tablet tightly to his chest. He lifted his head, gave me a wavering grin. “That was so cool,” he breathed.
I gave him a weak smile in response. Easy to enjoy the light show when one was in a Mzatal-made protective cocoon. A dozen or so feet beyond him, Bryce knelt with a hand on Idris’s shoulder, expression tight as Idris’s body twitched.
I looked back at the lords who’d started this bullshit. Both Jesral and Amkir lay moaning, heavily burned, and clearly not an immediate threat, though Jesral struggled to get up. Mzatal’s arm remained an iron band around my middle, and I felt his rage couple with the sentience of the blade and go even darker.
“Boss. It’s done.” I pulled vainly at his arm. “It’s cool now,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I twisted to see his face, deep dread rising at the wrath that contorted his features. “Mzatal?” I sought to touch him, but a wall of anger blocked all else.
Once again he called the lightning to him. I bit back a shriek, covered my head with my arms as thunder slammed into us, and Mzatal danced the searing power over Jesral and Amkir. The two jerked and writhed beneath the assault for at least a dozen heartbeats, then Mzatal pulled it all into himself, restoring exhausted resources and supercharging.
“Stop!” I yelled at him as soon as he released the strike, but before I could take a breath to say anything more he called it again, this time enhancing it with potency and feeding it through Khatur. Blue-tinged blasts smashed into Farouche’s mansion and the Ops building, fully orchestrated by Mzatal. His breath hissed between his teeth as he raked the potency-fueled lightning over the house. Screams and shouts sounded from within as flames leapt in the lightning’s wake, and in seconds people began to boil out, fleeing like rats from a sinking ship.
I screamed at him to stop, pummeled him with my fists, but he remained utterly distant, lost in his fury and vengeance. His lips pulled back from his teeth, and I felt the power within him build like a charging capacitor. “No, Boss. Mzatal! No!”
I squeezed my eyes shut in pure protective instinct, and in the next instant a flash of potency burst from him. Heat seared over me, though dampened by Mzatal’s own aura and shields, but I heard a scream of agony, quickly cut off. Paul. That was Paul!
Heart pounding, I lifted my head. Everything within a ten foot radius was incinerated to powdered ash—all save the crumpled heap that was Paul. Most of his clothing was gone or seared and stuck to the raw and smoking burns covering his body. His hair had burned away, and one ear was missing. He lay curled on his side, arms crossed over his chest to protect the melted slag that was all that remained of his tablet.
Nausea rose in my throat. Paul’s shielding had saved him from being cremated alive, but hadn’t been enough to fully protect him. It had been meant for bullets and arcane strikes, not a mini-armageddon.
I looked past him to see Bryce and Idris several feet outside the circle of destruction. Bryce had thrown himself over Idris to shield him, but he looked up now. Naked horror filled his eyes. “Paul! Oh god, no . . . Paul!” He lurched to his feet, then dropped to cover Idris again as Mzatal called the lightning and connected upward. The clouds took on a blue glow as multiple thin lightning streaks hissed and crackled incessantly over the entire area like electrified serpents. Rain whipped down, sizzling through the power to land with stinging force.
Bryce found an opening, stumbled up and managed to run-stagger to Paul. “No. NO!” he cried out in wrenching anguish as he dropped to his knees by the crumpled form, desperately searching for any sign of life. “Paul!” He dragged the molten remains of the tablet from Paul’s chest, then recoiled as a layer of ruined flesh came with it, leaving a gruesome wound of exposed ribs and sternum.
Seizing Mzatal’s head, I fought to touch him, to reach him, only to find a maelstrom of rage and grief. Desperate, I struck him hard with closed fists. “No!” I screamed over the unending thunder. “Stop! You’re hurting people!” I pried my hand beneath his fingers, twisted with moves learned from Gestamar. Mzatal’s grip loosened, and I stumbled free of his grasp, yet I didn’t think he was even aware I’d done so.
Singed hair lay wet and slick against Kadir’s skull as he limped toward me, and a vicious and twisted burn marked a forked path from face to thigh down his left side. He staggered as a random strike hit a few feet from him, but continued inexorably forward, teeth bared as he looked beyond me. I yanked my gaze around to see Ryan standing several feet behind Mzatal, a few inches within the blasted circle.
Light and sound and heat and rain pummeled me from all directions, but I ruthlessly shut it out, stood before Mzatal and focused solely on him. Glowing with raging power, he planted his feet and raised Khatur high. The bizarre lightning stopped and the thunder ceased, but I knew Mzatal wasn’t finished. Deep terror filled me as I sensed him draw power. The burst that so grievously injured Paul would be a mere spark compared to what he sought to do now.
“Ryan!” I shouted, desperate. “I can’t reach him. Help me reach him!” I swiveled to Kadir. “Both of you! Do something to help me!” Lord Creepshow wasn’t an ally by any stretch of the imagination, but right now we were all at risk of obliteration.
In answer, Kadir lowered his head and began to trace. Ryan gave a guttural cry, his features shifting weirdly as he called potency between his hands into a crude ball. I returned my full focus to Mzatal and called to him with everything I had. Zharkat. Zharkat. You will slay me. Cease, my love. I beg you. You will slay me.
A flicker, a whisper of response, the barest brush of awareness of me. He still drew power, still raged, yet it was a needed chink in the otherwise impenetrable wall.
Rain lashed down, plastering the dress against my body and blinding me. I reached again, called to him, shut out all but Mzatal. Distantly, I felt Kadir and Szerain prepare, then bit back my scream as they struck—Szerain with a crude hammer blow of potency in Mzatal’s back, and Kadir with a superbly elegant burst that covered Mzatal’s skin in a network of azure neon like freakish varicose veins.
Please. You must stop. You will kill us all.
The potency burned over Mzatal. It got his attention, but it was my presence and touch that riveted him. He breathed heavily through bared and clenched teeth, held the strike.
“Zharkat,” I said, weeping. “Boss. Please stop.”
His eyes found mine. He was lost—in the grief and anger and power, and in the need to vent all of it. His body trembled with the effort of keeping it in check.
I threw my arms around him as if I could help him hold the strike back. My focus widened, and now I took in everything happening around us.
Bryce knelt by Paul, performing CPR with desperate efficiency, exposed bone beneath his hands. “C’mon, kid, God damn it, come on!” Ryan had collapsed to
