The back passenger door of the SUV slams open behind me. A hushed but intense argument between DeVille and Presh filters through the thick layer of disconnection I’m apparently encased within while fully wielding my power.
Reck’s focus snaps to the teens. He hesitates only steps away from the second berserker, who’s still fighting my hold. “Get back in the fucking vehicle!”
The teens, still arguing, ignore him. DeVille jumps out — or is possibly pushed by Presh — and scrambles over to Bellamy, grabbing her by the shoulders. He pauses, crouched beside me.
Without thinking, and not taking my full attention off the untethered Cataclysm or the lassoed berserkers, I brush my fingers through DeVille’s hair, smoothing it away from his eyes.
“Keep Presh close,” I murmur, power threading through each word. “Safe passage, Andy DeVille, and all the luck I can bestow.”
The young shifter shivers under the touch of my essence. It’s possible I’m wielding way too much power to be so casually twisting his fate, his luck. Not responsibly, at least.
“Go to Presh,” I say, trying to not make it a command that he can’t ignore. “She’ll be okay with you at her side.”
“Andy!” Presh snaps, half hanging out of the SUV by the proximity of her voice. “Zaya is too busy to baby you!”
DeVille grumbles under his breath, then visibly shakes himself as if settling his energy, or perhaps resetting his senses. Keeping low, he drags Bellamy back toward the SUV.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Reck snarls, torn between dispatching a second berserker and intervening with the teens rescuing Bellamy.
The Cataclysm laughs, darkly amused. Then he starts walking toward me, footfalls weighted but steady.
There is something about the way the Cataclysm walks, the way he moves. As if he’s disconnected from the essence that fuels the —
“Zaya …” Reck says, suddenly wary.
I step away from the SUV as DeVille gets the unconscious Bellamy loaded into the back seat with Presh, then climbs in himself.
Even if I’m not yet certain how to hold him at bay, I close the space between me and the Guerra progenitor to keep him farther away from the teens — and the only readily available means of escape from this fight. The portal cuts us off from the Authority agents’ SUV, and Bellamy’s sedan is crushed beyond use.
Still holding the three berserkers at bay with their own threads of fate, I reach for the energy that should surround the Cataclysm. I reach for his life force, his destiny.
My reach stretches out and around, latching onto nothing.
I blink, trying to refocus my sight, trying to see the grid that I called forth before.
The Cataclysm continues walking toward me, slowly but deliberately. He crosses right through that grid. Not a single thread of all that energy, of all that essence-fueled life force twined around us, touches him.
He’s not woven into the fabric of the universe.
I falter, stumbling over my own feet. That shouldn’t be possible. “You … you’re not …”
“Zaya?” Reck asks, closer now. Maybe back at the SUV, standing guard over the kids.
The Cataclysm has no threads.
The Cataclysm has no life force.
The Cataclysm has no fate.
Then he’s towering over me. Almost close enough to touch. “Stop playing with my minions, little Conduit. Be done with it.”
I should find his use of the word ‘minion’ laughable.
But I don’t.
I don’t because he’s an impossibility.
I don’t because I’m … powerless against him. If I can’t touch his essence, his life force —
