Bec smirked. “And I could burn your life's work. We’re in a standoff, asshole. You even twitch, and I drop this thing.”
“You’ll kill us all,” Lomis said, pulling back his anger and trying to sound reasonable. “Only I can control the void-tie.”
He shifted as he spoke and for the first time I noticed the dark slice floating about a foot above the air off to Lomis’s right.
I was staring at pure void!
What kind of madman created a path to the void and left it open like that? For the few moments I watched it, the void pulsed and opened a little wider. No one in their right mind messed with pure void magic, not unless you were a hobgoblin or demigod.
“Did you hear me?” Lomis said. “If you burn that, we all die. Is that what you want?”
“All I care about is that you don’t get what you want,” Bec said. “For that, I’m willing to die.”
She couldn’t mean that, but she sounded so confident it was frightening.
“I think you’re—no!” Lomis’s words cut off when Bec stuck the edge of the void-tie in the fire, then pulled it back up. Wisps of smoke curled up from a singed edge.
The druid screamed as if in pain and held both hands up, palms out as if in surrender.
“What do you want?” he cried out. When he tried to walk to her, I was quick to put myself between him and Bec.
“It’s okay, Marduk. I've got this,” she said.
She didn’t have this. She was leaning heavily on Beatrix and looked like she was close to collapsing.
“Woman, answer me,” Lomis said, hands still up. “What do you want?”
“A trade,” she said. “I’ll give you the void-tie for all the other ties you have on you.”
He hesitated, and she lowered her hand again.
“Fine!” he screamed, and she lifted her hand up. “How do you want to do this?”
“Come a little closer,” she said.
Both of us hissed in protest, but she sent us a comforting smile. “I know what I’m doing.”
Something about the way she said that told me she had a plan. Next to her, Beatrix flared out her wings and shifted her position a little to better hold Bec up.
“You’re hurt,” Lomis said as he walked slowly to the fire. “I can heal you.”
“As if I want any of your magic touching me,” Bec sneered. “I feel dirty simply talking to you.”
“Stupid human. You don’t know what kind of power you’re dealing with," he said. The tear in the void he’d made floated behind him as he walked to Bec and Beatrix. I wished I could tell Lomis to close it, but I was sure he’d ignore me.
“That’s close enough,” Bec said when he was a few yards away and still on the other side of the fire from her. The three of us moved in to form a half circle behind Lomis.
“I have six ties left,” Lomis said. “I’m going to move my hands and pull them out.”
“Do it,” Bec ordered.
Lomis lowered his hands to chest level and put his right hand up his left sleeve. He pulled six ties off his left wrist and held them up in his right hand.
Danzig pressed his tail against my side.As soon as he drops the ties, we move. You protect Beatrix and Bec, I’ll go after Lomis.
No, brother,I said.I have more aura left than you. You protect Bec and Beatrix. Pick them up and run. I’m going to go big.
I felt Danzig’s humor press against me.Let's go kraken big.
