Linda tried to remember what Fonsi had told her about the dorlis as the tendril tightened its grip around her, as the sky turned darker. It was coming closer, she was sure. The creature, though made of shadow, was able to manifest itself as something both solid and intangible. Bullets wouldn’t do any good.
She had to use her mind.
Fonsi ran over to her, his head and body covered in leaves and thorns and petals. He dug his fingers into the inky tendril that had encircled her torso and chest and pulled.
He groaned from exertion. “I can’t—”
Another tendril appeared and wrapped itself around Fonsi’s face and shoulders. He let go of Linda and clawed at the tendril that had him. The thing constricted tight around his neck and began to thrash him about, hard.
Shit.Linda tried to focus, to remain calm. She concentrated on the tendrils in front of her face, wrapped her empathy around the substance of the thing. Her mind touching the dorlis, a bloodcurdling repugnance that made her want to retreat, go within.
She had to keep going. Linda gripped the tendrils tightly with her mind and removed them from around her body, doing the same for Fonsi. He slumped to the ground. She hoped he was just unconscious, and not…
Linda heard more shrieking. She had to focus, wouldn’t stop. She imagined the shadow becoming a ball that she could hold for as long as possible. She would make the creature her prisoner. Her mistake before, trying to blow the dorlis apart, which made it easy for the thing to flee and return when it pleased.
She continued to concentrate hard on its murky substance and texture, gathering the tendrils as best she could. Linda reached out to the big cloud in the sky and wrapped her empathy around it as well. She’d neverenclosed her power around something so large, something that reeked of despair. Her head began to pound. Blood poured from her nose and down her lips.
She felt the thing pushing against her empathy as it struggled to move, to free itself. She gestured upward to focus her power, and then realized she could only lift her left arm. Her right wrist throbbed when she attempted to move her right arm from her side. The feeling of nausea, overwhelming in a way she didn’t think possible. She had spent the past few years touching the minds of many who had been in despair, who’d been plagued by the heaviest of emotions. Had allowed herself to know their pain in the most intimate way. But this was a whole other level. Despair that was grotesque, maddening, that felt like it had millions of sharp teeth tearing into her flesh.
She concentrated even more. She had to hold the thing… and do what? Where would she move the dorlis? Dispersing it once again wouldn’t work.
Linda finally registered what was happening around her. She hadn’t even noticed, her gaze so fixed upon the heavens, that squads of police had arrived, even as scores of people were standing around. Transfixed? In shock?They need to get the hell out of here.
Several officers had their guns trained on the shadow cloud. None of the officers seemed to notice her, how one of her arms was raised toward the thing. How she was straining.
An avalanche of boulders cascaded down Linda’s skull. She saw stars, thought she might black out. She stumbled and fell to the ground. She nudged herself backward and rested against the first step of her town house.
The dorlis writhed in her mental prison. Its cries pierced the sky and the trees and the street. It pushed against her confines with all its might, lashed out with all its might.
The entity was growing in power, was increasing its size. Its shadow cast an even deeper pall over the neighborhood. She could feel the creature becoming stronger. How? Was Rayo somewhere helping the damned thing? And she remembered Fonsi’s words. The dorlis was permanently connected to its victims. Could siphon whatever energy it needed. How many people had it drained at this point? How many people were dying right at this moment because of this thing?
The dorlis surged in size, pressed hard against her mental constraints. It was too strong. She couldn’t…
“Everyone run!!!” Linda yelled. “RUN!!! I can’t…”
The dorlis exploded. Tendrils lurched out as they transformed from wispy phantoms to sharp objects of destruction. People who were standing still in awe or terror began to run away from the creature, its tentacles swiveling everywhere. Its rage a terrible nova that Linda could feel even without her empathy. That everyone could feel.
Shadow arms weaved through the air. Sliced through tree branches. Crashed through the windows of cars. Smacked people into the sides of buildings or onto the sidewalk. A solid, sharp tentacle sliced through a women’s legs as she tried to flee in tight skirt and pumps. A trio of cops fired at another swirling tendril just a few feet ahead that turned immaterial. The bullets whizzed through its substance, a weightless soup, and struck a fleeing man in the back. The tendril that had been shot at solidified and lunged toward the officers. It split itself and became razor-sharp, slicing two of the cops in the chest and lopping the head off the other.
“Oh my fucking God!” another cop yelled as she fired and ducked behind the open door of her cruiser only to have a shadowy arm grab her by the head and smash it down into concrete. Her partner dropped his gun, his hands trembling, before a shadow arm yanked him by his wrist.
Linda howled, felt tears streaming down her face. She tried to push herself up from the steps, to get up and stand. She was too winded, tootired from her injuries. She reached out to the dorlis once again with her empathy, though she knew she was too weak to make much of a difference, considering its surge in power. The thing seemed to have forgotten all about her in its rage. Instinctual, reactive… how Fonsi had described it. Acting on emotion.
She didn’t care how weak she was. She wouldn’t lie there and let people be slaughtered. Her neighbors. She gathered up her empathy and poked at the dark mass in the sky. Tried once again to gather up the tendrils and enclose them in an imaginary prison.
The dorlis noticed her, viewed her puny attack as a nuisance. It sent out a flurry of shadow arms sharp as a knife that Linda managed to dodge, except for the tendril that sheared through her right arm.
She didn’t scream. Didn’t laugh or become a bumbling fool. She just took in the scene, saw her arm lying several feet away surrounded by a river of crimson. Something wet coated her side. Right… right. There was a strange ringing, and a numbness, followed by the greatest surge of pain Linda had ever experienced. A pain that left her voiceless, unable to speak, that flooded her eyes with more tears. She recalled… She remembered that she might be going into shock. That her body would protect her from fully experiencing the torment of what had happened. She might bleed to death before enduring such awful hell.
A cop saw the attack and started to run over to her, presumably to give aid. A tendril pierced him through the stomach.
More obsidian arms crashed overhead through the windows of her agency. More glass rained down. Linda was shocked that the dorlis hadn’t swooped down to finish the job and cut her into a million pieces. A mindless thing indeed. She lamented that she had trained so hard to make her body strong, durable, the physique of a warrior. And there she lay, useless, broken. The irony of it all, if she had accepted her status as a Guardián, she might have been more useful with her empathy. Might have figuredout how to defeat shadow by being in community with others. Fonsi’s words—how often had they played in her head over the past few days?
The dorlis still raged, though she thought it might be shrinking, growing calmer, with fewer tendrils flashing everywhere. Whispers from her Broken Hearts floated in Linda’s brain. It would be fine to let them ferry her away while she bled to death. Imani’s voice would be a balm. Would be wonderful to hear Maxine’s voice, too. God, she hoped Maxine had gotten far away from here…
Fonsi’s words returned…
Everyone who Linda has been in ritual with… you’re permanently linked.
