Reckless

Chapter 16 Part 4

Present Day

Character POV: Roxanne

I remove one of my hands from trying to uphold the barrier and try to summon a lasso of energy to keep her tied here in the safety of the barrier. But the moment my hand is outstretched towards her, it gets pulled back behind me as I am yanked back. My head snaps behind me to where Zebulun has grabbed me, his face unreadable. "What are you doing?" I scream at him, yanking back from him but finding he's too strong. "If she dies, you all die. Let me save her." He drags his dark gaze to me, and I watch as a single tear slides down his cheek, betraying his real feelings about this to me, but he still holds onto me. "She's going to die!" I sob, my vision so blurry that he's just a mass without any features at this point. I double over, as someone grabs my other arm and they start dragging me back into the safety of the woods. "Please, don't make me watch her die. Please."

They drag me back into the woods as the rest of the vampires leave, hiding from Drusilla's wrath. I struggle against Zebulun and the other vampire with all of my might as I watch the barrier I created disintegrate without my arms being up to direct the flow of my powers. Drusilla pulls back her magic into her body as the rain begins to fall all around us, a torrential downpour that leaves mascara running down her face. I watch as Ariadne advances towards her, her wavy brown hair plastered down her back as she circles Drusilla. A sob escapes my lips as I twist in their grasp again.

"I know, a last stand. How cliché of me," Ariadne drawls as she prowls closer to Drusilla. "But we both knew that it was just going to come down to the two of us in the end anyway. Just like it did in the past. There's something beautiful in the symmetry of that, right?" I can't see Ariadne's face, but I can easily picture her winking at Drusilla just to enrage her even more. Her tricks of getting people either scared or angry so they get sloppy vaguely registers in my head.

I feel Zebulun and whoever else is holding me relax for just a moment, and that's all that I need. I shoot out a blast of my power that sends them both reeling back. I glance over my shoulder to see that the other one holding me back was Sita, and both of them are sprawled on the ground, struggling to rise. I take advantage of the momentary gap in their ability to chase me, and run as fast as my damaged leg will carry me. My leg screams at me in pain, each slam of my foot against the ground making me feel like my leg is going to break all over again, but it's amazing how little pain can stop you when you are afraid for someone you love.

The scene plays out before me in slow motion. Ariadne shoots for Drusilla, hands outstretched this time to snap Drusilla's neck rather than drain her dry. But Drusilla won't be caught off guard again, especially not that easily. She holds out a hand in Ariadne's direction and I watch in slow motion as a section of a tree branch shoots straight for Ariadne's heart.

Two things happen in that split second before I watch the love of my life die. The first is that whatever self-imposed barriers to accessing my full powers just snaps. My fear of looking like a bad person or feeling things that would make me remember the past melts away as my priorities become super clear to me. All of the sudden, I see the world not in simple colors or with the five senses, but I see the flow of magic in the world around me. All around me, there are lines of color that throb and pulsate with light. When I look at Drusilla, I see a knot in rainbow colors, with thousands of different threads of magic woven through to her, each witch's powers a different color. When I look at Ariadne, I see a blood red thread that shoots from her towards the trees where it branches out like blood vessels to the other vampires. It's the magic that keeps the other vampires alive.

Half a thought tells me that if Drusilla could absorb magic, then I can shift the flow of the vampire magic from coming just from Ariadne to flowing from me as well. I can alter the spell to save the entire species, to make it so that if one dies, the rest don't follow. With one hand, I reach out and pull the magical pathway towards me. When I pull on the thread, I catch a whiff of a scent, the smell of incense that used to burn in temples in Egypt when I learned from Zahra in ancient times. I can feel the presence of Nitocris emanating from the spell, where she threw her all into this one measure with the hope that, in the long run, it would destroy Drusilla.

The moment that the magical pathway is in my outstretched hand, I open myself up to the power of it like I did to Drusilla's lightning. Suddenly, I feel thousands of presences. I know where every vampire is in the trees, I can see their names and their appearance flash before my mind. The connection is strong, and it makes me wonder how Ariadne has managed all of these years with all of these vampires crowding her mind for attention.

The second thing I do as I draw closer to Ariadne, is I start to pull back on the wooden shard as Drusilla drives it forward with all of her considerable magic. I just reach Ariadne's side when the shard of wood pierces her skin and starts to drive to her heart, but I stop it dead in its tracks. Ariadne falls to the ground, her breathing shallow as she tries to pull at the shard of wood and help me save her life. Tears are sliding down her cheeks even as her eyes remain defiantly red. I kneel down beside her, reaching out with my hand as the shard begins to appear back through her flesh. I gasp ahold of it with my fingers, pushing from the bottom with my magic and pulling from the top with my fingers, managing to keep the wood out of her heart.

I feel the hairs on my neck stand up, a sign that magic is amassing, and I simply hold up a hand towards Drusilla, without even looking at her. There's a vibration as something harmlessly bounces off of me. "Are you alright?" I ask Ariadne, my voice hoarse from screaming.

She smiles wickedly at me as she opens her mouth to say something, but then the ground opens up under her, and her eyes go wide as a scream forms on my lips. Beneath her is a black hold that gives off red light. This isn't a hole into the center of the earth. She falls back from me before I can grasp ahold of her, and when I try and shoot my magic after her, it bounces back. I watch in horror as Ariadne, clawing for me, is sucked down into this tunnel, as the ground starts to close around her. Drusilla's ability to try and send Ariadne down to the underworld seems to outweigh my magic and focus.

There's a bright flash of searing golden light and I hear Drusilla cry out as the tunnel that Ariadne disappeared down stops closing, allowing me a chance to gasp ahold of her. My fingers finally grasp ahold of Ariadne's hand, and I use my magic to hold our hands together. A green band of energy holds us together so that she won't slip free of my grasp. Ariadne's frightened violet eyes slowly fade back to her enraged red as she snarls, "I am so going to kill the bitch. I was five seconds away from meeting Hades, and seeing as I've put that off for centuries, I'm not really down for meeting him at all if I have a choice." She almost didn't have a choice.