Worldwielder, page 29
She retreated as fast as her anemic state would let her, but she was desperately short on coordination, and tripped again. This time it was over the body of a fallen G. With a gun.
She ripped the weapon from the corpse's hand and swung it towards Luud, crushing down on the trigger without hesitation. The gun jerked in her grip. But not from firing. From Luud's knife landing in its side. Only sparks left its barrel. The bald man wrenched it from her. Tossed it aside. Tossed Fink aside. Howled and charged. But in his fervor, he tripped over the same corpse she had, landing flat on his face.
By some catastrophe, he failed to impale himself on the knife. Still, he was dazed a moment, affording Melissa an opportunity.
She brought her foot down upon his knife hand with all her strength, resulting in a few loud snaps. She stomped again. Jagged bone pincers broke his flesh, but he didn't let go.
With his other hand, he snatched her ankle as it came down for a third stomp. He pulled. She was flipped flat on her back, gasping. And in another moment, Luud was straddling her, shattered hand and all. His smell overpowered her, making her gag as she attempted to breathe. With his legs he encased her sides. With his free hand, he grasped both of hers, squashing them to the floor above her head. With his face, he fashioned a mask of demonic satisfaction. Knocking aside Fink's latest assault, he raised the knife.
This would be the final strike, she knew. But she hadn't given up yet.
“Luud, wait!” she cried as the knife was about to descend. “Vili—your brother! He wanted me to tell you… he loves you.”
The knife faltered.
Pressing her advantage, Melissa went on, her words falling out in a rush. “That's right, he loves you. And he wants you to repent of your sins. He says the Lutris will still forgive you! But you have to return to Crumholtz, to the Bone Crusher! It'll be good for you, I think. Or something.”
She stopped, for Luud had begun to tremble in rage. Her outburst, it seemed, had pulled him from the meditative state he occupied when engaged in debauchery. And he was none too pleased about this.
He'd regained his violent appetite in another second, the knife falling. But a second was all the opening Fink needed.
The second-to-last aegis flew from the bald man's neck, a volley of blood accompanying it. Before he could even scream, Melissa was in his mind and tugging at it with Xech. This time, it worked. His face blanked, the knife tumbling harmlessly to the ground. His limp body, carried by its momentum, fell against hers. She rolled it aside with some difficulty, her wounded arm screaming in pain, then gathered the fallen weapon and stood over him. She could already feel his mind slipping from her weak mental grip.
So she did what she had to.
She drove the knife through his heart, then released the pull of Xech so he could experience the end in his right mind. It now turned not red in pain or rage, and not green in fear, but blue in confusion as he gazed upon his killer. A girl, half his size, a tenth his strength, wounded and weary, by all rights no manner of challenge at all. In the moment before the last embers of life died out and his body slumped to the floor, his mind turned yellow… in respect. He gave Melissa a fractional nod, and he was gone.
She didn't stay to watch his mind shatter. Instead, she snatched up the nearest locutor and spun to find Kyle. His red mind still called to her, but in the midst of the battling hordes, she had trouble pinpointing it. To her eyes, little progress had been made in the conflict, though at least the Gs weren't losing. Most curious a sight were the board members, who cowered in clumps throughout the room, shrinking from the fighting. For all their earlier glee at the prospect of Gallery-wide genocide, they looked rather put-off by violence at present.
Just when Melissa was sure she'd never find Kyle, there he was, recognizable only by the blood covering his entire body. His arm was slung over the shoulder of Mrs. Lamb, who had moments ago thrown open a hidden door in the floor and was now descending.
Melissa raced after them. Or tried to race. It was more of an out-of-control stagger. She arrived just in time to thrust her fingers beneath the edge of the hidden door as it slammed shut. The pain left her gasping. Her fingers hadn't been severed, but it felt like it. Joined by Fink, she managed to pry the door open just far enough to duck inside. It shut behind her, all sound exchanged for silence, all light exchanged for darkness.
She staggered to her feet. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the gloom, revealing a staircase before her. At its base was a room, empty except for the Mizoart and the pair of figures shuffling towards it.
“Hey!” she cried.
The figures stopped, then spun. Mrs. Lamb gasped. Kyle, of course, did nothing, though Melissa noted his eyes remained open a fraction, and his breathing could have been more ragged. Maybe.
“Kyle, stop her,” the woman said.
Melissa could feel him try, but his attack was no more than a pebble thrown against a stone wall, and soon subsided. He was too weak. It was a wonder he hadn't yet slipped into delirium.
At the failure of this measure, Mrs. Lamb took a long, thin breath and retreated a half step. She stilled, watching Melissa with narrowed eyes.
Melissa knew she wasn't a very intimidating sight, what with her mangled hand shielded beneath the crook of her mangled arm, which hung limply from her hunched form. But here was an arena in which the currency of strength wasn't physical might. She descended the stairs, training a steely-eyed glare on her enemy. Every second was a battle to stay conscious, but she couldn't show it.
“Put Kyle down,” she said, her foot leaving the last of the steps.
Mrs. Lamb's head moved back and forth so slightly it might have been a twitch. “If you want him, you'll have to take him,” she said. Something about her tone unnerved Melissa, but when she glanced to the woman's neck, she saw only a single aegis. Even in her weakened state, she knew she could overcome that for the few moments it would take. So she took a deep breath, gathered her strength, and pulled.
The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back against the stairs, her entire body screaming in pain. She choked and coughed and wheezed, trying to regain the ability to breathe. Something wasn't right. She'd been thrown back by a brick wall as she had when first attempting an attack on Kyle's mind. One aegis couldn't do this. Not even five. Only a wielder could, but Mrs. Lamb was no wielder.
The woman hadn't moved, but her mouth now split into a sly smile. “Trying to pull on my mind, silly girl?”
With a laugh, she reached up and grasped a fat wad of her hair. Then she yanked on it. The entire long, shiny mop of the stuff detached from her head. A wig. But that wasn't the worst part.
Her bald scalp was crisscrossed with a hundred or more aegises, the skin beneath them bulging with a network of purple veins, the aegises themselves bulging like hideous spider carapaces. It was a sick sight made sicker by the beautified appearance of everything else about her.
Melissa froze midway through propping herself up, one shock exchanged for another. She took a shaky breath. Gulped. Realized following the woman in here had been a horrible idea. So injured, she couldn't even defend herself in a physical confrontation, let alone hope to get Kyle to help. Yet again, she'd given herself to her enemy.
Then a flash of white behind Mrs. Lamb caught her eye, and she came dangerously close to smiling. “I could,” she said. “But that wouldn't be very fun. So we're going to do this the old-fashioned way.”
The woman burst into peals of laughter, clapping a hand against her thigh.
Melissa ignored her. “Fink.”
The stoat, who'd been crawling unseen along a pipe in the ceiling, sprang into action. Mrs. Lamb just had time to cease her laughter and cry out in terror before he was on her scalp, his bionic jaws wresting forth an aegis. She fell to the ground in a tempest of cries, mind beet-red.
Kyle, released from her grip, collapsed on his back beside her.
Melissa pushed herself off the floor and glowered down at the woman. Their eyes met for a split-second, and the pain-stained hue of the woman's mind was momentarily replaced by dragon vomit green. She writhed and shrieked, sweat pouring from her pale skin. Smeared makeup ran down her cheeks. All her weaponry—her charisma, her magnetism, her beauty—were gone now. She was nothing more than a cornered animal.
“I'm only going to ask this once,” Melissa said. “How are you controlling Kyle?”
Between the notes of a sick ballad of pain unfit for human ears, words came. “Would you separate… a boy… from his mother? You… you don't even know him anymore. Whoever you think you came for… he's gone… Just let us… go.”
Melissa almost laughed, so twisted was the woman's reasoning. “You're despicable. Do you feel bad about it? Even a little?”
“I… don't expect you to understand… Melissa… but everything… I've done… has been for the good of the Gallery.”
“You're right.” She paused. “I don't understand. Fink.”
He did as he was bid, leaving the woman with one less aegis in her skull and a fresh well of agony from which to draw her howls. “I… would never have hurt him… never. I just… wanted to—”
“Fink.”
And so went another aegis.
By now, the woman was reduced to gasping, scarcely able to produce noise. She twitched in a heap on the floor, limbs contorted at odd angles. Her face was the worst sight of all, none of its former beauty evident in the grimace seizing its features. But she still managed to speak. “You can't… take him… from me. He's my… son. My son.”
Melissa bent down and grasped the collar of the woman's robe with her good hand, lifting the woman's face off the floor until it was inches from her own. She stared into her enemy's eyes, channeling the full measure of her fury into stillness. Then she spoke, her voice scarcely above a whisper. “Do you know how long I've been searching for Kyle? What I've been through to get here? What I've sacrificed? Do you know what I wouldn't do to save him from you? Nothing.”
She let the words hang in the air, each a dagger driving itself into Mrs. Lamb's chest. The woman's face quivered.
“I can take him from you, and I will. So think again, bitch.”
She watched as the last embers of resistance died in Mrs. Lamb, as the woman's whole body went slack, as she curled into herself, a broken creature forced to give up the last and only thing that mattered to it. In that moment, every layer of the woman’s mask was stripped away, her blackened soul laid bare for all to see. Whimpering, she turned to the dying boy on the floor nearby. Her eyes became two infinite pools. Her mind swirled blue. The deepest, darkest blue Melissa had ever seen.
Watching it, she realized something she'd been loath to consider before—in her own twisted way, Mrs. Lamb did love her son. She had done all this for a cause she saw as good. She really believed herself right. And for that, Melissa could let herself feel a shred of the woman's pain as, staring at her son, she let him go.
Choked through tears, the woman murmured a single word, “Skavitu.” Then she rolled over onto her face, muffled sobs and the occasional twitch her only signs of life.
Melissa frowned, trying to make sense of what she'd heard. Then Fink, hopping onto her shoulder, said, “Melissa, it's a world.”
She gasped, turning to stare at Kyle—at his mind. It throbbed red, sounding forth his pain, but there was something else about it Melissa noticed now. Something so blindingly obvious she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it earlier.
It was in the pull of an unfamiliar world.
That was it. That was the answer. Mrs. Lamb had tricked him into pulling on his own mind with Skavitu, a world that made him obey any command given him, then she'd commanded him to only listen to her. And just as easily as he'd been chained, he could be loosed.
Melissa felt a wave of relief as potent as the summer sun wash over her. But she lingered in this state only a moment. She knew now how to save his mind, but not his body. He was still dying. He needed drastic medical intervention, and soon.
“Fink,” she said. “I need you to stay here and make sure the Gs find Mrs. Lamb.”
He nodded, and then a smile appeared on his mustelid features. Melissa smiled back. She didn't know if she ought to smile, not yet, not when Kyle was still far from okay, but if she hadn't earned the right for one measly carefree grin after coming this far, then she never would.
She pulled Kyle's arm over her shoulder, attempting to stand with him before falling back to her knees, breathless. Then a sudden inspiration came to her. She entered her vim and pulled on her own mind, nudging it from Prota to Cynn. Since she was already resisting the pull of Arbul unconsciously, this took no additional mental effort.
The effect was immediate, not unlike a shot of morphine to the heart. Worry melted away. Pain dulled. Fatigue dwindled. New life flowed into her limbs. She thought no more about what might happen, only what could happen.
This time, when she stood with Kyle, she managed the task with little difficulty. She reached for her locutor.
Her hand had only made it an inch when the chamber was flooded with light. She looked up to see the door to the room above open, two Gs standing in the opening. By the shade of their minds, she knew at once why they'd come.
“There it is!” one of them shouted, and they both raised their guns.
THIRTY-FOUR
Melissa knew she was too weak to pull on their minds. She also knew that if they'd realized she was a wielder, the rest of the Gs would know as well, and Arbul's painting would be guarded to prevent her escape. She was trapped here.
She should have been devastated at this turn of events, but not while under the influence of Cynn. Now she could only laugh inwardly at the ingenuity of the universe in thwarting her plans yet again.
Before she'd had time to move, she saw Fink charging for the Gs. She raised her free hand and was about to shout out no! when he sailed into the face of the one on the left. The man flailed and shrieked, his gun discharging into the ceiling. The other G was too startled to do anything but gape and pause with his weapon at the ready.
“Melissa, get out of here!” Fink cried from his perch on the G's face, just before the man pried him off and threw him to the ground. Then the G trained his gun on the stoat. Fink scrambled for cover.
He didn't make it. The blast struck him in the back, gushing sparks and dark smoke. Fink went still. Melissa's eyes went wide. The Gs turned back to her.
He can be fixed, she thought. He's not dead. He's just broken. I'll get him fixed. I'll—
Realizing she wouldn't be doing anything if she didn't get out of here in the next two seconds, she thrust her hand into the locutor. In the next instant, a blast from the Gs' guns struck it, tearing it from her hand. She stumbled back.
They took fresh aim. Before they'd loosed another shot, the blue swirl of a person alighting materialized in front of her. The Gs paused. And the pause cost them their shot.
Two blasts flew from the still-resolving form, striking the Gs in the legs. They fell to the floor, crying out and dropping their guns, which clattered down the stairs out of their reach. Then the last traces of blue vanished from the air, and the newcomer—another G—spun to face Melissa.
A wide grin appeared on her face. “Brock!”
And so it was. His face was dirtied and blood mottled his borrowed Gs uniform, but he appeared uninjured. He put a hand on her arm, looking graver than she'd ever seen him.
“There's no time, Melissa. Just listen. The G dudes are looking everywhere for you. They know you're a wielder. You gotta split, feel me? I just took out the dudes at the painting. Now's your only chance!”
She registered the urgency in his voice, but Cynn wouldn't let her feel it herself. Nor would it let her be furious at him for breaking his promise not to come back for her.
“Uh… what… about you? Aren't you coming?” she asked.
He gave her a bewildered stare. “Don’t worry about me. I'll stay and distract them, tell them you went through the Mizo thing here! Now go!” He shoved his locutor into her hands.
Just outside the chamber door, Melissa could sense a pack of Gs, no doubt moments from entering. With the battle upstairs almost over, they'd be turning their full attention to finding the monsters in their midst—her and Kyle. Brock was right. She needed to leave. But there remained one thing she had to do, and that was the one thing she'd avoided earlier.
Sentimental awkwardness.
Still holding Kyle, she threw herself against Brock in what may have been the clumsiest attempt at a hug ever made. “Thank you, Brock.” For all that Cynn stopped her from feeling, it couldn't dampen her gratitude.
Brock pushed her away at the soonest opportunity, nudging her hand towards the locutor. She turned and gestured to Fink. “Look after Fink, Brock. Get him fixed.”
He nodded. “For sure, Melissa. Good luck.”
Then the chamber was swept away in a storm of smoke and sparks, and before she knew it, she was stumbling forward in the Gallery, Kyle's still form by her side. Brock had indeed dealt with the guards at the painting, all four of them tied back-to-back in a circle, their mouths gagged. How he'd managed this feat, Melissa couldn't fathom, but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
The Gs struggled and made muffled sounds upon seeing her, but their bonds held. She shuffled past them, moving away from the Gallery wall.
She hadn't made it far into the fog before her mental sense detected a mind up ahead. Soon, she could see it with her eyes. A figure sat on the Gallery floor, head in its hands. Melissa staggered to a halt. Then the figure looked up, saw her, and sprang to its feet. In the swirling darkness, Melissa caught a glimpse of its face.
Dez. But a different Dez than Melissa had ever seen.
Missing was the disdain, the confidence. Woe took their place. With a sniff, the woman wiped snot trailing from her running nose and stepped closer. Red-rimmed eyes shot Melissa a darkening look. The snout of a gun, held at the end of a wavering arm, rose to face Melissa.
She held Kyle's arm against her shoulders and stared at Dez, who stared at her. She attempted, without success, to determine the source of the woman's out-of-character emotional hue. If Dez had been with the other Gs recently, she'd know she was now looking at a pair of wielders. But her mind, clouded only by grief, dissuaded this conclusion.
