Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(32)

She had Beneath magic worked up in her until she glowed with it. Gabrielle’s feet were a few inches off the ground, rage and magic propelling her at the source of her fury.

I felt Emmett bring up defenses at the same time he laughed. Behind me, down the slope, the debris-choked wash began to rumble.

“No!” I sprang to my feet, my jeans and shirt plastered with powdery dirt and dried grass. I latched my arms around Gabrielle’s waist and hung on. “Gabrielle, don’t!”

Her Beneath magic smacked me, stirring my own to life. I saw in that split second that if she and I ever combined our powers, we could unmake the earth.

Gabrielle kicked, but I hung on. “Stop,” I said sharply. “Beneath magic will open the vortex. Tamp it down.”

Gabrielle twisted. “I don’t care. I want to kill him. He hurt me, and you, and he’s fucking evil. You know I can kill him.”

“Yes, but not here. You want our mom coming out to play?”

At the mention of our mutual mother, Gabrielle’s fury wound up even more.

The goddess had made the two of us, hoping one of us would be her conduit to spread hell on earth. When the time had come to bring her plans to fruition, she’d spurned Gabrielle and chosen me. Gabrielle, even our mother had realized, had been too unstable. Plus, Gabrielle possessed no earthbound magic, while my father’s family came from a long line of powerful earth-magic shamans.

The sting of that rejection had made Gabrielle even more unstable. Grandmother and I had been spending time teaching her that not everyone in the world would reject her, but I knew we had a long way to go.

“Yes!” Gabrielle shouted with glee. “Bring her out. I’ll kill her too.”

Tears of rage ran down her cheeks, and I squeezed her tighter. “No. Think about it. If she gets out, she’ll try to wipe out not only Emmett, me, and you, but Mick, Colby, my dad, Gina …”

I felt Gabrielle start, as though she hadn’t considered this. It spoke to how much Gabrielle had grown in the last year that she paused a beat to realize that people she’d come to care about could be hurt by her need for revenge.

She gave a scream of frustration, but the Beneath magic in her faded. I set her on her feet, loosening my hold, but I remained right behind her, in case Gabrielle changed her mind.

Emmett was watching our drama with enjoyment. “You two are so very fascinating. Like two sides of the same coin, but not quite.” He lifted a finger and ran it down the air, as though dividing something in half.

I braced for a spell, but nothing came at us. I did feel a ripple of breeze but a natural one, no taint of magic on it.

Emmett smiled, and then let rip another spell.

A black net arched at me and Gabrielle so rapidly we could only look up and watch it come. The two of us slammed into a crouch, my arms around Gabrielle, as the net fell over us. Burning magic seared my skin, and Gabrielle screamed.

Her Beneath magic wound up again, but I yelled, “No! Wait!”

I stuffed my hand into my pocket, every part of me feeling fire, and jerked out my shard of mirror. My vision had blurred, sounds dimming, and my fingers fumbled as I pulled away the chamois bag.

I had no idea how to use the mirror for anything but reflecting. I’d asked it to enhance my magic before, but I hadn’t really told it what to do. It had simply known.

I raised the shard to my eyes, though I could see little in it—everything was fuzzy, dark colors on a gray backdrop. “Help us!” I cried.

Oh, sugar, it wailed. I’m scared!

“Suck it up,” I yelled back. “Do something.”

The mirror sounded as though it inhaled a deep breath. Then a high-pitched shriek came out of it, the pitch rising, rising, past glass-breaking, eardrum-shattering decibels, and on up into sounds only animals could hear.

The net spell around us cracked and broke, shards falling away like splinters of glass. A few of the shards fell on the mirror—the reflected bits of spell gathered themselves, coalesced into another fibrous net, and launched itself at Emmett.

My vision cleared as the spell dove for Emmett. He watched it come in astonishment, then at the last minute, put up his hand. The spell halted in midair, writhed around itself, then vanished with a popping sound.

“Well,” Emmett said. “That was educational.”

He removed his glasses to dab a bit of perspiration from his brow. In the next instant, another shriek split the night, this one from a dragon.

One moment, Emmett was standing, delicately rubbing his forehead, the next, he was jerked from the ground by a dragon talon and carried far, far up into the air. Warm wind swamped us as Mick’s black dragon wings came down with a whump, lifting himself and Emmett high into the sky.