"Aileen, move," Nathan roared.
"Don’t you think I would if I could?" I shouted back.
Last thing I wanted was to be standing next to that door when it finished forming.
Liam raced for me, his face determined and desperate. A spear made of shadow punched through his chest. The room shook with a scream. It took a minute to realize I was making that sound.
My breath sobbed in my throat as his pain-filled eyes met mine. I struggled harder, my entire world feeling like it was ending.
Nathan roared, charging forward.
The spear lifted Liam into the air and then hurled him across the room. Liam hit the wall on the far side, his blood smearing a streak as he slid boneless to the floor.
The others found themselves occupied with simply surviving as the puddles of shadows rippled, spilling toward them.
I didn't have time to watch, my body jerking forward a step as the shadow tattoos holding me moved my limbs.
I strained, fear and desperation making it difficult to think.
The thing controlling me forced me to face the shimmering line where a tear was forming in the world. The portal coalesced to the sounds of rage as Liam's enforcers fought their way toward me.
They weren't going to make it, I realized.
At least not in time to save me.
Muscle and bone popped as I resisted the tattoo's urging. Pain leaped in me as tendons snapped from the strain. In the end, it did nothing but delay the inevitable.
Step by jerky step I approached the rift until I hovered on the cusp.
The world shook as a great and terrible sound rumbled from where Liam had been thrown. If I hadn't been completely focused on holding myself still, I likely would have wet myself in fear.
The sound reached the primitive hind brain and the primal terror that lived there. The unreasonable madness and chaos we all held the capacity for. We liked to chain them with the rules of civilization and bind them with our belief that if we did everything right then the bad things couldn't happen to us, but it was still there in the end. Crouching beneath the surface and waiting for our inattention.
I didn't have time to dwell or agonize over the creature who'd made that sound.
I was losing the battle. Something waited on the other side. Big and monstrous. Its desire reached out to me even through the thin chasm.
I shut my eyes, exhaling and blocking out my surroundings as I threw myself into the center of my being, reaching for the same thing that had helped me stop Liam's throw.
This time it was easier. The power at my center unfurled as it sensed my desperation, answering my call.
Calm settled over me. With it came the knowledge of what I needed to do.
The shadow tightened, starting to draw me forward.
I pulled as hard as I could, stealing the magic from it. Everywhere it touched my skin was a conduit. I sucked it down the same way I would have gulped down Liam's blood. Greedily. Reaching for more even as the ball of power at my center started to feel full.
The shadow's grip weakened. Threads of the very magic at its essence unspooled, disappearing into the well at the heart of me. In my mind's eyes, the firefly lights winked out one by one, only for their life to be added to my own.
My skin tingled with power.
The muscles and tendons I'd damaged healed, only to be damaged again as the shadow, sensing its demise, clenched around me trying to force me forward.
I resisted, throwing everything I was into not moving.
The shadow's essence wasn't coming fast enough.
Unmaking this construct was possible, but probably not before it dragged me to the other side. It wouldn't matter then if I'd learned a nifty new trick. Whatever waited me there was likely to be three times bigger and stronger. More powerful too.
