Stone and a Hard Place (31 page)

Something flashed in the corner of his vision. He braced himself for another creature, forcing his eyes back open. But it wasn’t another creature. It was Ethan. The boy lunged forward with an inarticulate war cry. Stone tried to yell a warning, but his body wasn’t responding properly to commands anymore.

The creatures tore Ethan to pieces in seconds.

Stone screamed again, trying to gather energy, to move forward, to do anything, but he could only watch in horror as the claws and tentacles snatched at the boy’s shirt, his pants, his hair—and then slashed and pulled at his limbs until they tore free, spraying Stone with hot showers of blood and worse. The last expression he saw on Ethan’s face was one of accusation.
Why don’t you help me?

“
Ethan!
” he shrieked. “
No! I can’t—”
He watched helplessly as the boy’s dismembered body crashed to the floor, his shredded white shirt drenched red on his torso, on his severed arms as they, too, moved of their own accord, and began crawling toward him. Stone felt his mind beginning to let go of the last of his sanity.

He couldn’t do this.

The creature was right: he was too weak. This thing was eternal, ageless, immensely powerful—even at his best, there was no way he could fight it. How did he ever think he could—

Wait.

Something was wrong.

Something he desperately needed to notice.

His fogged brain struggled to latch on to it as the creatures continued to assault the circle. Not all of them were getting in, but he knew it was only a matter of seconds, as his will failed—

Think!
Something—something about Ethan—

His blood-soaked shirt—his severed limbs—

And then he had it.

His mind flitted back to when he and Tommy had entered the room, when they’d found The Three’s gruesome ritual laid out before them.

Ethan hadn’t been
wearing
a shirt.

Ethan had been chained to the table, chest bared for Trin’s knife to slash him, to spill his blood for the ritual. How could he be—

NO!

Stone spun, nearly upsetting his precarious balance again. The room shifted crazily, its angles somehow going
wrong
. Everything about this was wrong. Ethan, the room’s strange geometry, his hand—

He looked down at the ruin of his hand, pulling it free from where he’d shoved it, bleeding, under his arm. For a moment he flinched, expecting to see severed, bloody stumps again.

His hand was there, whole and undamaged, still clutching Selena Darklight’s diary as if letting it go would bring about the end of the world.

Because it might.

This was all wrong. His mind was playing tricks on him. This whole thing was like some kind of mad vision.

It was like some kind of—

—dream.

And then it was clear. All of it.

In a bolt of searing lucidity, he understood.

If anyone had been looking at Stone at that moment, they would have seen his expression change. Where before he had been beaten, demoralized, racked with pain, his face now took on a kind of fierce resolve. There was still pain there—he was dead pale, blood-soaked, grievously injured.

But now he
knew.

All of this took place in the space of a few seconds. The knowledge, the rock-hard certainty slammed into him with the force of one of his own concussion blasts.

None of this was real.

This was simply a battle of wills, with the creature using everything at its disposal to try to divert his mind, to make him falter, to destroy his resolve because it could not yet destroy his body.

Not until it was through.

It was not going to
get
through.

He would see to that. Because what the creature didn’t realize—couldn’t realize, because all of the mages it had dealt with since it had touched this plane of existence had been black mages—was that when it came to willpower, white mages had it all over their darker counterparts. They had to—how else would they continually force themselves to take the more difficult path, to resist the temptation to seek the easy road to power?

Stone gritted his teeth, breathing hard, and forced himself upright. “I’ve got you, you bastard!” he cried. “Nice try, but you can stuff your illusions. They won’t work on me anymore!”

A surge of energy ran through him. A glow suffused his body: he could see it radiating out from him as if he were some sort of beacon. But even as it did, he felt himself fading, his legs turning to jelly beneath him. For all his confidence, he still didn’t know if he’d be able to do it—if his body would fail him before he could finish the job. He began the incantation again, pulling in all the power from all his remaining items, weaving it into his words, yelling them in defiance.

The claws and tentacles continued reaching for him, but he no longer noticed them. They were nothing more than smoke and mist, and no more dangerous. The only danger now was that he would be too weak to do what he had to do. He spat out the words of the incantation in a strong but shaking tone, speaking as fast as he dared.

And then, at last, it was time. This was it—either it would work, or it wouldn’t. He wouldn’t get another chance. As the thing screamed in his mind, thrashed at his body, tried with increasing desperation to breach his will, he threw back his head and barked out the last words into the mist: “Begone, foul thing!” And he followed it with the name from the book, praying that he was pronouncing it correctly.

He knew instantly that he had succeeded. The tentacles and creatures and apparitions drew back as if they’d contacted the burning sun, withdrawing into the armoire. A last scream rose, so loud and terrible and soul-searing that it could be heard throughout the entire area.

And then the armoire exploded. The weird, sickening light expanded and then contracted, and everything in it was sucked back into itself until it reached the size of a pinpoint and disappeared.

The room was silent except for Stone’s labored breathing and the crackling of the rising flames.

And then there wasn’t even that as he finally allowed himself to fall.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Ethan awoke. He didn’t know how long he’d been out this time, but his body seared with pain and everything was even hotter than before. He could barely see anything through the thick, acrid smoke filling the room.

What was happening?

Where was Stone?

Where was the thing in the armoire?

He rose up a little and looked around. The armoire was gone. Stone lay in the middle of the circle, his limbs haphazardly splayed out, a puddle of blood spreading beneath him. Around them, the flames licked at the walls. It was getting hard to breathe.

He crawled over to Stone, checked him. Against all odds he was alive, but not by much. His chest barely moved, and under the streaks of blood on his face he wore a gray pallor.

Ethan took a deep breath.
He did it. He got rid of it.
He didn’t know how, but he didn’t care. He just knew they had to get out of here, and he had to be the one to get them out. If Stone could rouse himself sufficiently to do what he’d done then he, Ethan, could do no less.

He struggled up, grabbed Stone under his arms, and dragged him toward the door. He was barely able to get him through it, holding it open and pulling him through without allowing it to close again. When they were out, he sat down again next to the mage’s body, puffing with exertion. He didn’t know what to do. The smoke wasn’t as bad out here, but he knew how far it was back to the door—and once he got there, he’d have to deal with dragging Stone up a flight of treacherous stairs. Even if he could somehow manage it, Stone would never survive the trip.

I can’t do this...

Wait.

He was a mage. Mages could lift things with their minds!

But I can’t. I get tired lifting a book! How am I gonna lift him? He’s bigger than I am!

He said he could lift a car if he had to. Maybe you can, too. You have to try, at least.

So he did. Focusing the last scraps of his willpower, he fixed his gaze on Stone and attempted to levitate him off the ground.

The mage’s arm and part of his shoulder rose, then fell back again. Ethan’s head lit up with pain.

I can’t do this! I can’t!

Nearby, a moan.

Ethan stiffened. “Dr. Stone?” But Stone was still unconscious. Besides, the mage was behind him, and the sound had come from in front of him.

He crawled forward. “Is—someone there?” he croaked.

“Help me...” came a weak voice.

Ethan crawled closer. Miguel lay there, buried under debris, pale and sweating. His legs had been crushed by a falling piece of furniture. “Ethan...” he begged. “Help me, man. Get me out of here.”

Ethan looked at Miguel. He looked back at Stone.

He made his decision.

Reaching out, he leaned toward Miguel. “Give me your hand,” he rasped.

Miguel reached out, wincing, and grasped Ethan’s hand.

Ethan concentrated like he never had before, remembering the other night, remembering what Trin had told him.

Don’t take too much, or you’ll kill him.

By the time Miguel realized what was happening, he was too far gone to do anything about it. His weak scream as his body was consumed barely reached beyond the pile of furniture that had crushed him.

More fire trucks were arriving now, and they’d taken over the evacuation as they set about fighting the fire. The flames still weren’t visible on the ground floor, but the smoke rose everywhere now. It was getting harder to see and harder to breathe.

Megan grabbed one of the firefighters as he was going in. “My friends are still in there,” she said. “Please look for them. There are three of them. Two men around my age and a boy about eighteen. I can’t find them anywhere.”

He assured her that he would look, but then he was gone, into the swirling smoke.

Megan stood there, out of the doorway, and tried to decide what to do.
Think,
she ordered herself.
Where would they be?

And then she knew. Of course. If the fire was in the basement, then that was where they had to be.

Would the firefighters even look for anyone down there?

She hurried back inside, hoping she wasn’t making the biggest—and last—mistake of her life.

Ethan
brimmed
with power.

It wasn’t that he didn’t still feel the pain and the fear and the exhaustion. They were all still there, but they just didn’t
matter
right now.

He felt like he could do
anything.

He turned back toward Stone, who hadn’t moved from where he’d left him. Focusing his mind again, he carefully formed the pattern and then fed it power from the vast reservoir he had at his command. Was this how Stone felt when he really got going? He decided that Stone couldn’t possibly have ever felt this kind of power surging through him. It felt
wonderful.

He sent the command. Stone’s body rose and hovered there, about a foot off the ground.

Ethan began to move.

Megan blundered, coughing, through the antechamber, back toward the kitchen. She had a vague idea where she was going, but the smoke was getting thicker. She grabbed a decorative runner from one of the tables and put it up to her face to breathe through, kicking off her heels and crouching to stay low. Her eyes streamed. Around her, she could hear the voices of the firefighters as they called to each other, but she ignored them.

Down the hall, through the dining room, and then she reached the kitchen. She looked wildly around: the place looked eerie, deserted in the act of preparing more hors-d’oeuvres and plates of cookies as the chefs and caterers had evacuated.

Now that she was in the kitchen, she had no idea where to go next.

“Alastair!” she yelled in frustration, then a coughing fit seized her. “Ethan! Tommy! Where are you?”

A door on the far side of the room opened. She spun to face it, in time to see two bloody scarecrow figures shove themselves through. One collapsed on top of the other, and neither moved.

She raced over and dropped to her knees next to them. She could barely identify them through all the blood, but she realized in horror that Stone was on the bottom, and Ethan was lying across him.

“Oh my God...” she whispered. And then she screamed: “
Help! Please! Someone help me!
”

Ethan raised his head just a little and moaned.

“Don’t talk,” she urged. “Help’s coming.” She wondered if Stone was even alive, or if Ethan would be for long.

“Tell him...” Ethan whispered.

She leaned in close. “What? Tell him what, honey?” She brushed his bloody hair off his forehead.

“Tell him—I’m sorry I let him down,” he whispered, and then his head fell on top of Stone.