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She closes her eyes and for a full five minutes, no one moves or says a word. It’s like she’s attempting to commune with a god or will the universe to show her what to do.
“Give me your hand,” she says eventually. “I’ll take the cuffs off. At the slightest hint you’re about to do anything to hurt him, to hell with his orders and with the fact you’re stronger than me; I’ll blow you apart.”
I nod and hold out my arms. It seems unlikely she could do anything magical to hurt me, but while I’m vulnerable, there’s a chance she could stab me or put her impressive boxing skills to lethal use.
As she opens the cuffs, everyone else keeps their arms raised. It’s difficult to believe they think I’d actually hurt Gabriel again, while he’s already laying scarred and unconscious at my hands.
After ten seconds have passed, and I’ve not obviously attempted to obliterate Gabriel, the mood in the room relaxes, infinitesimally. No one drops their defences, but they look less likely to attack me.
“Form a circle around the bed,” I order. “I’ll stand in the centre, one hand on him. Two of you will put a hand on each of my shoulders, then everyone else needs to take the arm of the person in front of them.”
Everyone does my bidding, though their movements are slow and hesitant. Take a step. Glance at me to check I’m not attempting anything deadly. Take another step.
Nikki attempts to take hold of my left shoulder. I grab her hand, give it a little squeeze of appreciation, then pull away. “You’ll need to step outside the circle,” I whisper. “This sort of practical, applied magic will tear apart someone who’s got the learning but not the blood.”
“Screw you. I’m joining the circle. I’m holding on to you. If I burn, I burn.”
I sigh. She really cares about him. Who am I to deny her? “Fine. On your head be it.”
When I step forward towards the bed, the entire room tenses again, but everyone forms themselves into a circle, and, in the case of Nikki and a man I’ve never met, put their free hand on my shoulder.
I focus all my attention on the broken figure of Gabriel. I take a deep breath, cross my hands, and place them on his chest.
It would be the work of seconds to exert my will on his unconscious form and finish him off. Protect myself. Protect my family. The Thornbers think they have me surrounded, but if there’s one thing the last few weeks have taught me, it’s that I’m more powerful than I or anyone else has ever realised. I’d have a fighting chance of getting out.
I have to run it through my mind. It would be odd not even to consider it. But already, the idea seems laughable. God help me, I want to save him.
“Those of you who are able to reliably do core meditation should do so now,” I say. “It’ll help you with the pain and help me to find a way in.”
Before I attempt anything more complex, I throw a light spell around us all to prevent anyone from dropping their hands and breaking the circle. Then I forget about everyone else in the room.
I think about the moment I’d unleashed the spell in the first place. The entire span from Gabriel’s bullets hitting Connor to my fire striking Gabriel had only lasted a few seconds in total, and I’d been barely conscious of what I was doing. But now, in my memories, I break each of those seconds down to their constituent parts.
I’d connected with some part of the earth hundreds of miles down, where everything is just heat and pressure. I’d let those qualities flow through me. I’d clenched my fists together and curled into myself as I built the forces up to breaking point, then thrown my arms out, palms up, and forced them out of me in a concentrated blast. Or something like that, anyway.
Now, I have to do all of that in reverse. I lift up my top hand and move it over Gabriel’s prone body. There are remnants of my magical force spiralling around him. Most of it would have exploded outwards as the blaze took hold, but what’s left is enough. A spell reversal is a strange mixture of the literal and the symbolic.
I draw the free-floating traces of the earth’s heat together, letting them build and become more tangible. This bit is ultra-sensitive. Too little pressure and focus and I won’t achieve a thing. Too much, and I’ll burn him alive from the inside out. I’m paying no attention to the rest of the room but they’re no doubt terrified I’ll do precisely that, whether deliberately or through a lack of control.
The memory of the spell rebuilds until Gabriel’s glowing all over with a ghostly fire. It covers the hand I’ve placed on him, too. For now, it doesn’t burn, just feels like something’s lightly touching me. But that won’t last.
I sweep my hand all over his body, trying not to be distracted by thoughts of the last time I’d done that, back in the hotel room. I gather the fire together until instead of an amorphous mass encircling him, it’s a fiercely concentrated ball at his chest. It burns like holding your palm above a candle. Not particularly painful if just for a few seconds, but the intensity quickly grows.
This is it.
I lean over and touch my forehead to his. Then I tighten my mental and physical grip on the phantom fireball, wrench it away from Gabriel’s chest, and clasp it into mine. The fireball enters me, dragging all its effects—the pain, the damage—with it.
I scream like a woman possessed. I’d known it was going to hurt—in what possible world would being burnt alivenothurt? But I’d not anticipated quite this level of agony, quite the extent to which my entire world narrows to that feeling of heat and destruction, breaking down any capacity for rational thought into a primordial urge to survive, to make the pain go away.
The key now is to get the magic out of me and dispensed amongst the others. But that takes focus and control, and right now, they are in short supply. All I have is screaming.
At least I’ve worked the circle-binding spell. Without the magic keeping us all locked in place, the Thornber acolytes may well just have chosen to drop their hands and let me burn. And failing that, I’d probably pull away in shock.
Nikki’s hands at my shoulder tighten. “Breathe. You’ve got this. And we’ve got you.”
I know it’s him that she and the others care about, not me, but it’s still enough to make me rally. I force oxygen in through my burning lips and send a few gentle blasts of the fire magic out in both directions around the circle.
I long to throw it all out of me in a frenzy, but that’d just kill the two people next to me and probably other parts of the circle. I have to let it out slowly, bit by bit, and let them spread it between themselves, watering it down with each person. But that means keeping most of it inside me, torturing me, for several more seconds, which might as well be years.
