A Matter of Forever (24 page)

Jonah’s there to catch me, though, before I hit the floor chin first.

There’s no time to ask if I’m okay, because hideous screaming fills Karnach. Enlilkian and his kind know what I’ve just done. Mac barks, “We need to move
now
.”

The sharp slivers of pain in my arm fade as Jonah takes my hand, and then we’re sprinting off toward the Great Hall. The Elemental with us, Ling, who has got to be nearly a hundred years old, is wearing one of the monitors around her neck. She yells, “Seven on their way from all around Karnach, all incorporeal!”

Seven.

Holy effing hell.
Seven
.

I’ve never faced so many at once with so little people here to back me up, and I won’t lie, I’m more than terrified.

“Piece of cake,” Mac says again.

“Oh yes,” Kofi, the Cyclone with us, mutters. He isn’t exactly the epitome of a spring chicken himself, although he’s still quite active on assignments. “Especially since we are at equal numbers. Oh, my mistake, there are five of us and seven of them. That is not even including the two who are not on their way yet, you know.”

“Ah, but those are my favorite kinds of odds.” Mac’s breath comes out in hard bursts. “See, nobody goes out swinging as hard as the outnumbered.”

Three hit the Great Hall before we even know what’s happening. Ling is a blur as she’s sent flying across the room; Kofi fares no better as he’s sent sprawling in the opposite direction. But Mac’s got blue fire spitting from the walls, and Jonah’s forcing them to bow before us in howling misery. Unfortunately for me, though, they’re refusing to go further than two feet from one another, meaning there’s a giant ball of angry Elder I’ve got to work with.

“Anytime, Chloe!” Mac yells.

I’m already charging them, throwing everything I can at their smoky, shape shifting bodies.

Ling adds, her voice weak as she struggles to get to her feet, “Get ready!” Blood splatters the wall she crashed against. I want to go help her, but it’s too late. Another pair of Elders shoots into the Hall.

That makes five.

Winds whip around us as I scramble toward the downed Elders; Kofi is desperately trying to form a shield for me. I don’t know if Jonah is able to tear his focus away from the ones he has subdued long enough to work on the newest additions to the party. But maybe that’s Enlilkian’s plan, maybe he knows that I’ve only got one Emotional with me, and even though he’s the strongest one we’ve got, even he has his limitations.

I grab onto two Elders and force them into oblivion; the third drives a spiked limb into my thigh. I squeal in agony at the same time it shrieks in pure anguish; Jonah’s bought me another second, even as he sprints toward me. I’m able to take it out, but I’m bleeding pretty heavily now.

“Two more, just seconds away!” Ling cries out. Her winds are weak compared to the Cyclone’s, but she sends them out toward the newest party crashers anyway. Is she hurt worse than I thought? This woman used to be one of the strongest of all the Elementals. Now, she’s an active member of the Council, more content to dictate policy than go on missions. Please, oh please to all that is good in the worlds, do not let her bravery and willingness to stand with us be the death of her.

But damn if she isn’t here, fighting with everything in her.

Jonah helps me up, concern in his eyes, but I wave him off. He’s got to get the two Mac and Kofi are trying to keep off us down for me; we can worry about my pain and leg later.

These two don’t make it easy for him, though. They immediately break away from the another, so one can charge Mac with curved saber-like hands, the other swinging for the Ling with clubbed arms. She tries to fight back, the winds rallying around her sending her long silver hair flying around her head like some kind of kickass superhero, but she doesn’t count on the Elder playing dirty. One of its arms elongates and knocks her clean off her feet; within a split second, it flips her body up and sends it flying through the air.

This time, when she hits the wall, she doesn’t get up.

Fury shakes me so fiercely it’s a miracle Karnach doesn’t detonate around us.

Jonah’s good, because he manages to get them both writhing on the ground within five seconds—which is just enough time for the last incorporeal Elder to make its grand entrance. It angles itself toward Kofi and his winds just as I make contact with the saber-handed Elder.

I escape with a messy pair of slashes to my right arm.

The world around me spins, the pain is so acute. My right hand has trouble working—which makes sense. I have a hole in my shoulder and some new cuts down to my bone on the arm. Did it ... did it cut my tendons?

“Chloe!” Jonah yells at me, just in time for one of the Elders to nearly strike him.

My heart nearly stops. I blink and force myself up and toward him, but he shouts at me to go get the other downed Elder on the other side of the room. No cuts this time before it winks out of existence, just a pair of harsh strikes: one to the head, one to an already bleeding thigh.

I’m on the ground before I know it. It’s—I can’t—

“Jonah, I’ve got her!” Mac yells. Or, I think he’s yelling. There’s a weird ringing, all loud and sharp and stinging filling up my ears. “Get that bastard down!”

My math is fuzzy. Three plus two plus ... wait. Seven. How many make seven?

Everything’s blurry when Mac yanks me up by my good arm.

Oh gods—

“Over here,” I think Mac is saying. “Jonah’s got it ready for you.”

But then Mac isn’t here anymore, and I’m on the ground and oh, sweet gods up above us, something shoves itself right into my hand.

I think I’m crying.

My name my name my name is all around me. I find something soft and unnatural and try to piece together the words I’ve been saying today, the ones that are our salvation. No more, I think (I think?)—
no more
.

I’m so ... I just want ... to sleeeeeeep.

And then I’m not. I’m in Jonah’s arms, and he’s saying, as the whole room turns crisp and clear, “I’ve got you, love. Just hold on.”

Wait. Jonah’s bleeding, too—there’s blood matting the hair around his forehead and crisscrossing wounds up and down his arms. Rage and fear nearly constrict the air out of my lungs.

He’s hurt because he’s helping me. I’ve put him in harm’s way.

“I’m fine,” he assures me, helping me up. “Don’t even worry about me.”

Before I can answer, to let him know a single scratch is not okay, Kofi yells out my husband’s name. He’s limping, and one of his arms hangs off of him at a funny angle, clutching the freshly cracked monitor Ling had been holding. “We’ve got to get moving before anymore come downstairs!”

I desperately glance around for Ling. Where is she? Why does Kofi—

“Ling didn’t make it.” There is so much sadness and frustration in Jonah as he tells me this.

I’m going to kill every last one of these sick assholes I can get my hands on.

Mac cracks his neck; he’s limping, too. “They’re still clustered on the eighth floor?”

Kofi glances down at the screen; I’ve split it so there are six areas viewable at once. “Not so much clustered anymore, but yes.”

“Where is the fucking Guard?” Mac asks Jonah. “Why are they not in here with us?”

As the Great Hall is now mostly silent, explosions outside provide our answer. Distant shrieking is quickly masked by thunder.

Mac punches the wall. “How many of these things are there, anyway?”

My husband takes a deep breath before he looks up from the monitor in Kofi’s hands. “Kofi’s right. We better get moving before we lose any of the foothold we just gained.”

I wonder for a tiny moment if Mac and Kofi have had enough—if they’re ready to find a rabbit hole out. But these men simply nod their heads as we piggyback into another spoke of a hallway off the Great Hall.

It’s there I get to work making another series of staircases that worm their way up through Karnach’s floors. I think back to the first staircase I had to make this year, the one Will suggested when I combined Kellan’s apartment with ours, and I send out a silent thank-you to my brother for preparing me for this moment.

Enlilkian knows I’m coming. He just doesn’t know which direction now.

Because then we cut a path through one of the offices off the latest hallway to another one. From there, I build us an open elevator that will push us through the first three floors. Then we track another hallway to build another elevator up two more flights. I keep up our game of cat and mouse—Enlilkian must be so proud of me, despite his roars of anger shaking the building, because haven’t I proved to him I’ve learned his lesson well now?

On the last floor, though, we come in from the main staircase, a direction Enlilkian surely must not expect us from by this point.

Jonah ensures the entire time that exhaustion or our injuries do not impede us. We’ve wrapped each other up the best we can, but blood soaks through each bandage. There is not a single one of us who isn’t in desperate need of a Shaman.

And we still have eight more Elders to go.

Ask and ye shall receive, I suppose, because Bios is waiting for us in the office just off the staircase, clapping.

“Oh, fuck me,” Mac whispers.

“Bravo.” Amusement flashes in the first Shaman’s kaleidoscope eyes. “You had my kin on a merry chase, didn’t you? I’m proud of you, little Creator. You too, Empath. You’re doing quite well today, aren’t you?”

Jonah moves in front of me, one hand on my arm.

Bios merely smiles. “My father constantly underestimates you,” he tells Jonah. “Don’t lose sight of that.”

My husband doesn’t say a single thing. It’s funny, this moment—it took weeks for Bios to open up first to me and then to Jonah, to the point where we were the only two Magicals he willingly conversed with. And now here he is, his words coming so freely, and Jonah’s not at all.

But there is no need for his words, not when a sharp squeeze to my arm tells me everything I need to know.

My hand whips out from behind Jonah and takes hold of Bios’ sleeve. My voice is firm; I do not hesitate. There is no place in this moment for sadness or confusion, not when so many people have died or are hurt. “You no longer exist, Bios. You are nothing.”

And then, he is gone. It reminds me of that poem that said the world will end with a whimper, not a bang. Because Bios, the father of all Shamans, the innovator of disease, pestilence, and health—the one Elder who showed me the world wasn’t as black and white as I’d previously thought—no longer exists.

He is simply gone.

It seems wrong, somehow, that someone so critical to the development of the worlds has simply ceased to be. That the death of this being—less of a monster and more like a man than I could ever imagine—should’ve been more, meant more, shown more. Later on, when we’re not under siege, I’ll find time to mourn him in some way, even though this was exactly what he asked of me.

Somewhere on the same floor we’re on, Enlilkian’s anger turns volcanic. All of the remaining beautiful stained glass windows around us fragment in a rain of sharp, dangerous rainbows, but before they can tear us up, Kofi’s winds send them flying in all directions.

This does not make Enlilkian happy, either, because the ground rattles violently beneath us. It’s strong enough that chunks of walls I thought impenetrable an hour before find their way down to us. Has he undone what I put into place? Jonah forces me away from the doorway, toward a wall before he shields my body with his.

My palms flatten against the plaster. This time, when I bend the building to my will, I am assured that nothing further will break without my explicit permission.

When the building settles, a soft sob sounds nearby. “Somebody help me!”

Somebody’s in the room with us. And it’s not just somebody it’s—

“Sophie?” Mac sprints toward a closet on the other side of the room. “Sophie, where are you?”

YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. No, seriously. Of all the people we could find, we come across Sophie Greenfield? AGAIN?

Gods, that’s so uncharitable of me. I’m instantly contrite as she stumbles out of the small closet, her knees bloody, her shirt torn, and her face bruised but still looking like some kind of ethereal angel gracing the earth. Mac grabs hold of her; she bursts into tears right there in his arms. “It’s okay,” he tells her, one hand coming up to bunch the hair on the back of her head. “You’re safe now.”

Jonah’s hand around mine tightens significantly, his head cocked to the side as he studies them. Lines furrow his forehead, ones I haven’t seen yet during this entire ordeal.

“Is everything okay?” I whisper.

Before he can answer, Kofi sweeps past Mac and Sophie to peer into the closet. “No other survivors,” he reports.

It seems like Jonah has to physically tear his eyes away from Sophie and Mac, and for a small, inappropriate moment, her ugly words from months ago come back to haunt me.
“Did Jonah man up and tell you about what happened between us while you were gone?”

Focus, Chloe, I tell myself as my husband lets go of my hand and moves away. Time and place.

“They’ve moved,” Kofi is telling Jonah as they peer down onto the monitor. “None of them are visible any longer.”