Emerald Blaze

“You’ll shoot him, idiot,” Alessandro said.

The water churned. I reached out with my magic. There it was again, an echo of distant malevolent intelligence, too diffuse to target.

Marat surfaced for half a second before a tentacle yanked him under again.

Crap. I climbed onto the railing.

Alessandro grabbed me and pulled me back. “What are you doing?”

“He’s drowning! I’m going to save him.”

Alessandro swore. “Stay here!”

He thrust the shotgun into my hands. Magic surged around him before a chain flashed into existence in his hands. Alessandro leaped over the rail and dived into the water, dragging the chain with him.

“Holy shit!” The guard leaned on the rail on my right.

The chain slid into the water, uncoiling from somewhere above and snapped taut. The water boiled, whipped into froth.

A shiny spark shot out of the greenery at the shore and streaked through the air toward us.

I jumped out of the way on pure instinct.

A two-foot-long metal spike thudded into the wall to the right of the guard. He gaped at it for half a second, and the next spike took him in the throat, pinning him to the wall.

A shotgun would do nothing at that range. I dropped it to free my hands, spun left, and ran.

Behind me, thumps announced more spikes slicing into the wall.

I sprinted to the corner, caught the rail, and threw my body into the turn. A spike whistled past my right shoulder. I pounded down the stairs and dived behind the building, flattening myself against the wall.

A metal spike cleared the building on my right, turned, and streaked to the wall at a sharp angle, missing me by ten feet.

A telekinetic, positioned on the shore. The spike had sunk almost halfway into the wall. Considering the range and the power of the throw, it had to be a Prime. Lucky for me, I had a paranoid brother-in-law. Connor insisted on drills, and I knew as much about fighting a telekinetic as was humanly possible without being one. Prime or no Prime, the attacker still needed line of sight. That, and a loss of concentration was their Achilles’ heel.

A dozen spikes whistled through the air over the building, curving to strike.

I hauled myself over the rail and dived into the water. It swallowed me, tepid, dark, and smelling faintly of fish and algae. I kicked my feet and surfaced. Above me, the spikes hammered home, sinking into the walls.

I barely had any magic left, but I had recovered some, and I reached out with it. A concentrating telekinetic was like a beacon, massive power focused into a laser beam. Two seconds, and I had him, a sharp, painfully bright pinprick of white about thirty-five yards away on the shore.

A second volley of spikes curved around the building.

I opened my wings and reached for him. He couldn’t see me, but he could hear me, and I sent the sound of my voice, augmented with my power, at his mind.

“Come to me.”

My magic locked on to him, gripping his mind in a mental fist. The spikes lost their direction and rained down on the water. I dived, holding on to his mind. He flailed, caught by my will like a fish on a line. I surfaced and sang one more time.

“Come to me!”

He convulsed, fighting to get free. His will was strong, almost as strong as Connor’s, but Mad Rogan’s mind was an immovable fortress. This mind sputtered, rock steady one instant, careening the next. I needed more magic, but I had none left.

His magic buckled. My grasp slipped. He broke free and I went back under.

Shit. My magic was gone, and Alessandro couldn’t teleport. Even if he realized the telekinetic was there, he would have to swim across to get to him. He would be a sitting duck in the water.

I surfaced.

The sharp glow of the telekinetic’s will receded.

Ha! He was running away. He’d panicked.

Something brushed against my thigh. I kicked on pure instinct, frantically trying to get away. Straight ahead, barely ten feet away, a ramp hung from the walkway.

Something grabbed my legs, spun me around, and let go. I floated, keeping as still as I could.

A faint glow slid under the water toward me. I breathed in, deep and slow. Don’t panic. Just don’t panic . . .

The glow surfaced. A flexible metal tentacle rose out of the depths and hovered a foot away, level with my face. A pale bud glowed on its end, growing out of the metal against all the laws of nature.

The bud opened. A beautiful flower bloomed, unfolding three rows of pristine white petals with sharp tips. A spicy honeyed aroma washed over me.

A round eye stared at me from the inside of the flower, glowing with brilliant emerald fire.

Holy crap.

A presence brushed against my mind, alien, strange, but sentient. Panic crested inside me and I stomped on it, keeping myself still.

The presence touched me. We connected.

A human mind was a localized, concentrated presence, sometimes a mere smudge of light, sometimes a brilliant star. This was a cloud, a storm with pinpoints of light caught in the glowing ether of consciousness. It was everywhere, dispersed through the Pit, stretching out in wispy strands, a cluster of stars there, a barely perceptible veil here, flowing, shifting . . . Not a hive mind, but a single enormous consciousness extending a narrow tendril of itself to me.

Ice slid down my spine. I was looking into the proverbial Abyss and it stared back at me.

I slammed my mental defenses shut.

The mind shifted, fluid, reaching for me, trying to reforge the connection.

An explosion punched the air behind the building. The flower snapped closed, and the tentacle vanished under the water.

I spun around and swam to the ramp, faster than I ever swam in my life. My hand closed on the metal rail. I pulled myself up onto the ramp and ran, dripping, up the walkway and around the building.

Alessandro was on the walkway, pulling the chain up with both hands. Under him, the water boiled. A neon green stain spread over the swamp.

Alessandro yanked the chain, the muscles on his arms bunching. The chain gave and Marat popped out of the water, caught under his arms by the chain’s loop.

A tentacle of plants and metal burst from the water, slithering after Marat. Alessandro lunged forward, a flamethrower materializing in his hands. A jet of fire licked the tentacle, scorching it.

Marat drew a long, shuddering breath. Magic boomed from him, like the toll of a giant invisible bell. A swirl of darkness unfurled ten feet above us and spiraled out, blue lightning flashing at its center.

A summoner portal.

The darkness exploded into brilliant white. Fishes rained out of the portal into the water, five feet long, silver blue, with blunt heads armored with bone plates. Their huge mouths gaped, flashing jagged bone teeth long enough to bite through my leg.

They fell into the water, and the swamp erupted. Dayglow green blood fountained to the surface. Chunks of plant matter and strange white flesh floated up and vanished as the fish snapped them up in a frenzy.

Alessandro tossed the flamethrower aside, straightened, and saw me. Surprise slapped his face. He turned, saw the guard impaled on the spike, and bared his teeth. “What happened?”

Marat climbed onto the walkway. “That’s it. That’s fucking it!”

All around us things moved. At the shore something slid into the water. On the left, far in the swamp, a sinuous thing stirred. I reached out with my magic and saw the Abyss moving, flowing toward us, like a glowing amoeba sensing its prey.

“Catalina?” Alessandro spun me around.

“There is a creature in this swamp,” I whispered, trying to track the enormous consciousness floating around us. “It’s everywhere. It’s coming. We have to go.”

“Get it!” Marat yelled at the fish creatures, banging his fist on the railing. “Get that fucker! Rip it all up, whatever it is!”

Alessandro grabbed my hand and sprinted down the metal walkway.

“Hey!” Marat roared.

We kept running. A moment later Marat’s heavy footsteps followed.

Chapter 10

As soon as the three of us made it to the main bridge leading to the PRP island, the security force sprang into action. We were surrounded and marched to safety by guards bristling with flamethrowers and giving the swamp ugly looks. The echoes of the mind in the mire had receded, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

Security deposited us at the main building, where a paramedic wrapped us in foil blankets despite the hundred-degree weather, ushered us into Marat’s office on the first floor, and promptly cut up Marat’s jeans. Small silver drops studded the summoner’s legs, embedded in his flesh.

Alessandro leaned over me, his hand on my shoulder, his face close to mine. To an outside observer, it would look like he was comforting me.

“What’s going on?” he murmured.

“There is an alien intelligence in the swamp. It’s telepathic.”

He took a second to come to terms with it. “Tell me about the spike.”

“Telekinetic, long-range, probably a Prime. He launched at least a dozen spikes, so he came prepared to kill us. I grabbed his mind, and he took off.”

Alessandro nodded and straightened, his eyes calculating.

If Marat had wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have used a telekinetic. First, if something happened to us, he would be the obvious suspect. Second, if he was dumb enough to try to murder us, he could have just shot us and had his guards dump our corpses into the water, where the nightmare that lived in the Pit would finish us off. Third, the telekinetic made no move to save him. No, the telekinetic had to belong to Arkan.