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A droplet of sweat rolled down the side of his face. “I can’t,” he said, voice strained. He squeezed my shoulder again, plunged me deeper. A strangled cry escaped me as another vicious breaker scoured me, pulverized an essential aspect of my self to sand and washed it away. I scrabbled for it only to have it slip through my grasp.
“It’s all I could do.” McDunn’s low, rough words cut through the surreal fog. He released my shoulder, stood and backed away several steps, then flinched at an abrupt flurry of gunshots. Pellini had given up on shooting directly at Katashi and company and instead emptied his mag into the branches high above them.
One large branch made an ominous crack as debris rained down, which was all the distraction Pellini needed. While the bad guys dodged pinecones and the falling branch, Pellini started toward me in an impressive low crawl that I’d have been hard pressed to match even at my best. McDunn reached for the gun at his hip, and for an instant my heart stopped, certain Pellini was going to get a bullet in his head. Yet instead McDunn inexplicably dropped his hand and jogged back to the others. Maybe because Pellini was his son’s partner? More likely he didn’t want the hassle of cleaning up after a murder.
Jaw set, Pellini waved his hands as he approached as if shoving trash out of his way. The crushing weight began to lift. Pushing potency away and dispelling the shit affecting me, I realized. I couldn’t see the flows, but that had to be because the ritual had temporarily pulled the arcane away.
Katashi let out a harsh curse in Japanese and made a sharp gesture toward the woods. Carter, Tsuneo, and McDunn followed him to beat a hasty retreat into the trees. Pellini shifted up to his knees and continued the pushing motions. I drew a gasping breath as the vicious pressure eased more, then groaned as nausea rose in its place.
Idris let out a cry of rage and scrambled into view on hands and knees. He staggered up and toward where the men had disappeared into the brush only to collapse halfway there and heave his guts out. I held back my own puke, aware that Pellini’s efforts had probably saved Idris from being taken prisoner again—a very real threat considering how gifted he was. Katashi and the Mraztur would pee themselves in excitement to have Idris working on the valves for them again.
Eilahn pressed up to sit. Face pale and eyes closed, she remained quiescent as Pellini stood and moved around us, continuing to wave his hands as if dispersing smoke. Most of the oppressive ritual weight faded within half a minute, but everything still felt wrong, and I couldn’t stop shivering. I managed to push up to kneel then retched into the pine needles and dirt.
“Ah, shit.” Pellini grimaced and made more pushing motions around me. The dizziness receded, but confusion replaced it. The ritual had been dispelled, so why couldn’t I see the potency flows yet? I’d recovered immediately from Idris’s arcane draining ritual at the barbecue.
I spat into the dirt to try and clear my mouth, wiped my face with a trembling hand. “S-something’s wrong.”
Pellini stepped around my puke splatter then pulled me to my feet. My legs refused to hold my weight, but Pellini slung me over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and hauled me the hell away from the ritual residuals. As soon as he reached the woods he lowered me to sit on the ground then peered down the trail to check on the others.
I did my best to remain upright as shivers wracked my body. Nausea lurked at the back of my throat, and the wrongness took on a defined shape. “The . . . valve. I can’t . . . I can’t feel the valve.”
Pellini frowned. “It’s there. Steady and blue.”
I closed and opened my hands in a useless attempt to get them to stop shaking. “C-can’t feel it. Can’t see it.” I heard the distress in my voice. “I don’t feel right.”
His eyebrows drew together. “You don’t look right.”
Heart pounding, I struggled to my feet. “You . . . you don’t either.” I swayed.
Pellini wrapped an arm around my waist to steady me. I swung my gaze around in mounting desperation. “Everything’s wrong,” I told him, voice quavering. The trail and surrounding forest remained the picture of serenity, birds twittering as though nothing was amiss.
But it was like looking at a picture with one color missing.
True fear filled my gut. “Pellini, make a sigil.”
“A what? Oh, one of those drifty things?” He carefully lowered me back down to sit then frowned in concentration, lifted his hands and moved them around. “How’s that?”
The empty air between his hands mocked me.
“I can’t see it.” I hugged my arms around myself. “Do another. Please.”
Frown deepening, he flicked his fingers then held his hands a foot apart and waggled them again.
I knew better than to ask if he was screwing with me. Out of habit I tried to pygah. The loops of the calming sigil were so familiar as to be second nature, yet though I remembered what it looked like, I didn’t know how to trace the pattern. It was like forgetting how to hold a pencil.
No, it was like forgetting what to use to draw a picture.
An eerie and fragile calm settled over me. I didn’t want to speak or move because then it would shatter and the bad thing would be real. But the bad thing was real, and refusing to face it wouldn’t change a thing.
“He took it,” I said. The calm fractured into a billion pieces.
“Huh?”
“McDunn.” I swallowed, concentrated on the mechanics of my simplest bodily functions. “He took the arcane from me. I can’t sense it anymore. Nothing.”
“Shit,” Pellini murmured then shook his head. “It’ll come back. That ritual thing you were in pulled all the arcane away, that’s all.”
“No!” Deep in my gut I knew he was wrong. “The effect of the ritual was temporary, like at the barbeque when Idris did it to you. Katashi isolated me from the arcane so McDunn could fuck me up.” Crippling me was the intent from the start. In one well-planned stroke, Katashi had removed me from the game board.
