The Kingmakers(147)

Mamoru slapped Gareth's weak hand away. “You thought you had beaten me, hadn't you? You were so proud of how you twisted her against me. Where's your pride now? You're nothing but a filthy animal rolling in the dirt. And soon you'll be nothing but a pile of ashes. All your kind will be gone. Forever.”

“Adele,” Gareth gasped.

“You can stop pretending you care for her.” Mamoru stomped down onto the vampire's chest, nearly crushing his rib cage with the pressure. “You've won one small victory, if that satisfies you. You've killed her. Did you want to force me to do it? Is that why you didn't just murder her when you first saw her? You thought I wouldn't do it. You were wrong. There is no sacrifice I wouldn't make to destroy you. Even Adele.”

The sight of Gareth's agonized face tore at Adele as she staggered in reach of Mamoru. She grabbed for the khukri in his belt. As she pulled the dagger free, the samurai looked down and then back at her. Shock filled his eyes as if he was seeing the person he had least expected in the world.

“Adele?” Mamoru reacted in strange academic curiosity. “How—?”

She struck out with the blade and stabbed Mamoru deep into his heart. The knife went in easily and her mentor shouted, arching back. He merely continued to stare at her with a look of wonder, even admiration. The samurai staggered past Adele and dropped heavily onto the slab, his arms scattering the crystals.

Then he rolled over and smiled. He mouthed the word, “Tomiko.”

Mamoru slumped dead.

Even with the ritual shattered, the flow of the energy didn't stop roaring around Adele. It was free now, and she had no idea how to stop it.

Gareth fell against her and she held him. He was a terrible sight. His hair aflame and his skin burning and blistering, but his eyes were open and fixed on her, at peace, ready to die.

“No!” Adele screamed.

She looked back into the cold glare of the rift. Adele refused to be just some mote in God's eye. She would do anything to save Gareth, to protect him from herself.

Silver smoke covered her, boiling forth from every pore, touching her, pulling her, forceful and vulgar in its demands. It was consuming her from the inside out as if someone had opened a valve to the molten core of the Earth and all the energies were gushing through one tiny funnel—her. The power was too great, stretching her to the point of agony. The glow of the bubbling energies blinded her.

When at last Adele's vision cleared, the world looked suddenly different. The earth was no longer green. It was immersed in a furnace of white, and she stood alone upon a pillar of rock set in a silvery, molten sea. The wisps of flame danced all around her. She bit back a shriek of terror.

Adele's hands reached out tentatively and shoved against the shimmering heat. It undulated and darted from her will, celebrating its freedom. She let out a wail of frustration and then remembered what she had been taught. She concentrated, and went back to her first lesson. She came en garde in five.

If the Earth consumed her, so be it, but it would not consume Gareth.

She knelt before the rampaging Earth and flung her hands into the white lava at her feet, ignorant of any harm to herself. Every nerve within her came alive. She saw the entire world. The infinitely complex web of lines spread through every rock, every tree to form shapes and structures. Her body sang with its power. She tasted the sand in Alexandria, hundreds of miles to the south. She smelled the ice of the Arctic. She languished in the molten core at the world's center. The maelstrom had joined with her, and she reveled in it.

Her arms tingled and she looked down. The liquid coating her hands was turning to what seemed to be crystal at first, but she perceived it on a deeper level. She saw millions of threads of life. The effect cascaded to the far horizon and slowly began to crawl up her arms. With a panicked shout, she struggled to pull her arms out, but they were held fast. She grew frantic.

Then Adele remembered how easily she had shaped the facets inside her mother's crystal. Perhaps this was no different, just on a more massive scale. Swallowing her fear, she stopped fighting and embraced it, staring into the grasping, thriving fibers. She could feel them, touching and pushing.

The lines were fraying with excess energy, like something far too large was thrashing in the delicate strands of a web. Soon it would fly apart, completely unrestrained and unguided. This, she realized, is what her mother had dreamed about in her journal. Adele needed to be the spider weaving new silk lines into a web. Healing. Strengthening. Changing. The revelation that her mother's faith was with her, even now, brought new power. Her determination swelled.

Adele seized one strand that was heaving this way and that in a chaotic motion. It shivered violently, but then subsided at her touch. With a gasp of effort, she blended it together with a more stable line. The manipulation produced a new pleasing pitch.