Page 109 of Dead Wrong

We were moving then, Azrael carrying me across the room where Cirian waited, shaking out his limbs as he regained control of them. Others stirred as well, a handful of the Council members lifting their heads from their stupor. The Cardinal raced from her seat, hurrying over to her Acolyte in a swirl of billowing fabric.

“Get close to me,” she ordered. “I will shield you from her magic as best I can.”

“What did she do to him?” Cirian questioned at Azrael’s side. He pressed a hand to my chest, and the swelling pain flared, causing me to cry out.

“I don’t know,” Azrael said, the rest of his words getting swallowed by the pounding of my pulse in my ears. Whatever Lynette had put inside of me, it wasn’t happy being contained. It expanded like it was breathing, squeezing the air from my lungs and pushing on my ribs till they cracked.

“Bastien! Over here, quick!”

My eyes fluttered open, searching for his face amongst the scrambling crowd around me. A man with greying temples, a patchy beard, and familiar honey-colored eyes broke from the crowd, kneeling next to me. The Veil peeled away from Bastien as he leaned closer, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

“Bring me Tobias!”

“Shit, they’re coming for him!” shouts Irwin.

Azrael set me gently on the ground, then handed something over to Bastien from his pocket. “In case you need it,” he said, then bolted, snarling.

Bastien lifted my hand, touching the green stone, then recoiled as if it burned him. “That can’t be good.”

“What’s happening?” I asked, the words coming out like a croak.

“I think Lynette’s overloaded your system with magic,” Bastien said, checking my other hand with the same results. “Now it’s trying to come out all at once.”

“I can’t focus it,” I told him. “Can’t force it out.”

“Look out!” Cirian shouted, and I raised my gaze quickly enough to see him release a bolt of blue lightning into the crowd, bearing down on the group. Three council members fell in a heap, but more waited behind them.

Another swell in my chest and my limbs shook violently, my body seizing as the burning magic expanded, crushing me from the inside.

“Gods, it hurts!” I gritted through my teeth.

“Hold on,” Bastien said, pulling at the buttons of my shirt. He pressed something sharp to my chest, muttering a string of words under his breath.

It took nearly all of my strength to lift my head enough to catch a glimpse of the violet-colored stone in my chest as his hand pulled away.

“He’s mine. And I am his. He chose me. I choose him.”

“Azrael?” I choked out.

“He came and asked me to help him make it,” Bastien explained, wiping the blood from his hands. “Said that he wanted to make sure you’d make it back for your resurrection. He also told me that I was a fool for not coming with you, and I agreed.”

The pressure in my chest lessened some, allowing me to draw in a full breath.

“I think it’s helping,” I said, unclenching my jaw.

“Try and spread the magic out evenly,” Bastien instructed me. “It’s all focused in one place right now.”

Reaching into that bursting reserve of magic, I pulled it forward, spreading the energy between my hands and chest. Immediately, the relief was enough that tears rolled down my face. My ribs ached, my head pounded, but I was whole. Lynette’s magic hadn’t broken me.

“That’s it, Tobias,” Bastien coaxed me, his hand on my cheek. “Keep at it. You’re almost through.”

And here he was, this beautiful man, bringing me back from the brink of oblivion for a second time, his gentle voice guiding me through the haze. The pressure continued to abate, that horrid magic moving from the place deep in my chest. As it carved its way through my body, I could feel it change, adapting to the energies of each of the stones as they absorbed the excess.

My senses came back to me, the noise of the conflict raging around us sinking in as they did. Lifting my head, I watched Azrael tear into a councilwoman’s arm as she dove towards me, rending a layer of flesh before tossing her back into the crowd of bodies that clambered toward me.

“Down!” Cirian cried from the other side of the front, a streak of blue lightning crackling to life from his hand, immobilizing the next wave of puppeted bodies.

Sancha stood in the center of the group, her deep umber skin glowing with a halo of cerulean light as she chanted under her breath. She must be keeping Lynette’s magic at bay. I wondered how long she’d be able to hold out.

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