"Where did you learn... that?" he gasped, as more lightning sizzled, leaving smoking welts on the scarred timber benches. Most battle globes were simply balls of energy to be flung at one's opponent. Her grasp of telekinesis was impressive.
"Drake." Her eyes gleamed with power. "My affinity is with telekinesis, as opposed to telepathy."
Where his own strengths lay. He had learned how to manipulate telekinesis, but telepathy was his first natural calling and his strength.
The imp cast cunning eyes their way, then grabbed an enormous cast-iron pan. Instead of throwing it at them, it launched the pan like a discus toward the mage globe. Electricity sparked and crackled, staggering them both backward, as the mage globe collapsed in upon itself at the touch of metal.
"Miss Martin!"
"I'm fine." She blinked at the magical backlash, then shoved him out of the way, "Watch out!"
Claws thunked on the wheeled kitchen trolley and it hurtled toward them from the force of the creature's momentum. The imp launched itself into the air, leaping over Miss Martin as the trolley took her legs out from under her.
"Ianthe—"
Miss Martin went down. The imp sprang off the wall, aiming for her back.
Lucien didn't think. Just reacted. An enormous battle globe of flickering red flung toward the creature from his hand. The plaster cracked as the imp exploded into nothingness, and Lucien staggered as power leeched out of him and he realized what he'd done. Every piece of glass blew out of the windows, and pots and pans and knives thunked into the wall or onto the floor. Coppery ectoplasm was smeared across the plaster.
The world swayed, and he was leaning heavily against the bench. Lucien blinked. His entire head felt stuffed full of molten lava, and his nose was numb. Ears ringing. The world... too bright. Too loud. Miss Martin's gloved ward that had blocked out his sensitivities seemed to have faded.
"Get down! There's another one!" Skirts fluttered, and then a warm body collided hard with his. He went down in a spill of violet silk, just as an imp sailed past where he'd been. It skittered on the tiles, its claws slicing into the floor and peeling up curls of terracotta tile as it slid to a halt.
It launched itself at them. Lucien tried to roll Miss Martin out of the way, and—
An enormous stone lion leapt out of nowhere, its teeth crunching over the imp's head and shattering it. Shaking its head, the lion sprayed droplets of molten, coppery liquid up the walls and on the roof. Ectoplasm sizzled against Miss Martin's flickering wards, sliding down the transparent dome that protected them and forming small puddles on the floor.
"That was close," she gasped beneath him.
Lucien looked down. There was a blind spot in the vision of his right eye and a sharp aching numbness behind it. He wiped at his nose, and his hand came away bloody.
"Are you all right?" Miss Martin asked, reaching up to touch his cheek. Fingertips grazed the stubble there. Her ward slid over his skin again, blocking out the worst of the pain.
"I'm fine," he replied crisply, levering himself up onto his knees as the world stopped spinning. He could see again too, no more double impressions of everything. Christ.
"Rathbourne... You used Expression."
It had been a desperate surge of power he'd flung at the imp, rather than the carefully formed ritualistic sorcery they were taught to practice. Expression was tied to emotion, and hence, dangerous. But which emotion had overwhelmed him, stripping away all of his years of study and ritual?
He saw it again. Miss Martin knocked off her feet, the imp bouncing off the walls toward her, its claws extended, his heart in his throat—
Lucien shook his head, forcing it to subside. He'd sworn to protect her. That was all, but the very violence of his thoughts at the time shook him a little. He didn't like the idea of her under attack, but that was something to digest later.
"It won't happen again," he told her. "I need time to recuperate my strength, and meditate."
"Do you think—?"
"Are we done in here?" Lady Eberhardt flung the door open and peered inside, viewing the carnage, and saving him from Miss Martin's questions, thank goodness. "Look at this muck. Poor Maxwell and the maids shall have quite the day of it."
The lion butted its head against her thigh, nearly knocking her over.
"We're done," Lucien replied, offering a hand to Miss Martin to help her up. The look she returned him said she hadn't quite finished with what she was saying and that they'd revisit the conversation later.
Over his dead body, perhaps. The last thing he wanted to confess to her was his fear that he'd never wield sorcery properly again. Or perhaps explain that something about that image, about her under attack, had driven him to regress back to his youth, when Expression was all he knew.
Reaching out, Lady Eberhardt grasped the hilt of a knife and tugged it from the wall. "Good. Perhaps we ought to convene in my library again? Now that the immediate threat is out of the way, I think we all need a spot of tea and some cake and biscuits. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm famished. Nothing like battling beasties from the Shadow Dimensions to give one a good, hearty appetite, no?"
"If you give us a moment to clean up, we'll meet you there," Miss Martin replied.
