Page 72 of Transfiguration
It shouldn’t be slowing. Even as he swallowed down more blood than he knew he needed; he rolled in a tide of broken puzzle pieces. His grip around something tight enough to hurt while daggers of pain dug into him in a thousand places.
“Sam, stop! Let him go!”
The words spun for a few seconds, a whirling tide of scattered emotion and meaning. Stop what? Let who go? But he knew this flavor, the punch of it a thousand times more intense than he’d ever experienced, yet familiar. His ability to absorb the power drinking it down as if he had endless wells to fill, but he faltered to contain it all.
He stopped swallowing, the blood filling his mouth slowing, and earth magic crawled over him, healing even as it held him like a vice. He couldn’t see. Were his eyes even open? He blinked, opening his eyes over and over, finally blinking back tears at the brightness. Everything glowed with fire and was, in fact, burning.
Sam sucked in a breath, fearing he was back in the loft with Luca’s burned body again, but a soothing tide of water washed over them, drenching them in power, and slinking away with the heat, even as Sam trembled with the weight of the need to unleash the fire. He had never struggled to hold back his element like this, a delicate wind offering a treadle of power to fan the flames, but he didn’t reach for it. He teetered on the edge of certain destruction.
It was the first time he could see the way he borrowed power from others. Normally, it just happened. He’d have some crazy ability that would pop up and either stay or fade. No one knew which power he could use, if it would dissipate, or how much punch he had with the ability. Only now he could see a dozen ribbons of colored magic, looking like little more than dust on the wind, coalescing around him, some spanning to those he recognized in all the bright energy, like Seiran and Kelly.
There were other pops of rainbow brightness that didn’t touch him at all. Fae, he thought vaguely. Their magic didn’t transfer like witch magic did. But the strongest ribbon was a teal curled rope that wrapped around him like a vice. Making it hard to breathe the second he noticed it. It was so strong, and he reached for it, but his hands were bound. Why? He blinked, the brightness burning into his vision.
The other ribbons drew tighter, getting closer, a wave of healing power around Sam, but not touching him. Was he injured?
“Sam!”
“What the fuck,” he cursed, but the words came out slurred.
“His stupid runes are preventing us from healing him. Sam, Con should be your Focus now. Can you override the runes?”
Focus? Runes? Con? Sam sucked in a hard breath. That was the teal rope, wasn’t it? He focused on the ribbon, tracing the pattern with a half-lidded gaze, trying to clarify reality through the bright overwhelming lights around him. His eyes were always oversensitive when he first rose from the ground. But he longed to see Con’s face and chase away the nightmare of Luca’s murder. Was Luca back too?
He could feel a vague wrapping of energy that felt like they snuggled Luca up against them, but there was no weight to it. More a ghost of a memory? Sam sucked in a deep breath and tried not to let the grief overwhelm him. Con needed him to fix this and fixing things was what Sam did best.
The wind bound them together, a ribbon of Sam’s orange/red fire twirling with the teal rope of Con’s power. Sam didn’t know enough about runes to know which ones prevented spells or not, but he could see the glowing edge of their power, bright against the whitewashed obscurity that he knew had to be Con’s skin. The man lay prone over him, clothes torn, bruises mottling his skin, not moving. Was Con really badly hurt?
Then Sam remembered the blood, the flavor familiar as he’d gulped it down. The scent of the blood was strong, as if he still bled. Had Sam hurt Con? Had Con let Sam feed only for Sam to fuck it up? He gasped.
“Sam! The runes. Can you turn them off?” Seiran. Sam recognized the voice now and the thick green tie that wrapped around him, keeping him down physically and magically.
Sam let his gaze trail over the many runes, a lot more than he knew Con had, and wondered if there was a way to turn them off. The ones he was focused on blinked out, the glow vanishing. Sam gasped and let his mind’s eye follow the trail of glowing marks, thinkingofffor all of them, as he didn’t know which ones were the problem. His vision returned to him slowly, making it hard to see the runes, and it was a game of Wack-a-Mole, some runes turning back on if he waited too long.
“That works,” Seiran said, and healing waves slammed into them like a mallet.
Sam gasped, the power pouring through Con and into him, cycling back and forth like the tide of an ocean or a strong autumn breeze, healing, receding, and back again, layering them even as Con’s runes glowed again. Sam felt Con’s body store the energy, the runes that filled him with power, becoming clear even when Sam closed his eyes.
Damn, his witch was powerful, Sam thought. The world clarified, the brightness easing, though his eyes still watered from the sting. They had him pinned to the ground with a dozen vines as thick as tree roots, Con sprawled over him, blood painting them both. But Sam could feel Con’s heartbeat even out against his own, and the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.
If he focused, he could even feel a chaotic swirl of broken dreams. Con dreaming? Had Con become his Focus? The heat was finally easing, cooled by Con’s strong wind strength and some sense of ease that shoved down Sam’s anxiety.
“I’m not sure I can hold the barrier much longer,” Seiran said, his voice strained. “Con’s wind barrier is down, and he’s tearing me up.”
“What the fuck, Ronnie?” Sam muttered. “Let me go.”
“Can you wake Con?” Seiran asked.
“Um…” Sam prodded Con with his thoughts, touching a faded sense of dreams, but Con was out. If Sam hadn’t been able to feel the steady beat of his heart, he’d have panicked. “No go, Ronnie.”
Something reverberated through the ground. A ripple of power that felt like an earthquake for a few seconds. Sam gasped at the power of it. Like a punch to a ley line, exploding power around them, and crashing a massive backlash down on them that made his teeth hurt. The surrounding vines crept away, leaving a thousand tiny cuts from thorns. It was rare for Seiran to use thorns. Blood magic feeding into the earth always added a bit of darkness.
Sam wrapped his arms around Con, blinking a dozen more times to make out that they were in the arboretum and everything had gone insane? There was a wall of trees, thorns as big as swords, wrapped in a circle, swirling with water power, and oozing dark smoke like some sort of nasty fire out of control.
And of course, everything was on fire. Sam smashed his power into the fire and doused it, leaving smoke to billow and choke them, giving him only a moment of reprieve before the hit came again. A rumble of power that smashed into the barrier as if all that darkness were trying to break free.
Seiran gasped. He was on his knees nearby, in his Father Earth form, but his nose was bleeding and he struggled to hold the power of the barrier. Had Gabe gone nuts again?
But Gabe lay several yards away, closer to the open area of dirt where Sam sometimes went to ground. Bits of writhing darkness coated him, and he barely breathed as they expanded like some sort of fast-growing fungus of the grossest kind.