Winter's Edge

Chapter 90 - Destruction

Ian

I stalked toward a corner, sensing a presence through the energy all around me. Someone was there. Someone dark.

My footsteps fell quiet on the cold stone floor. The greater power inside of me had seemingly burned out. Like Brother Lawrence had said, it was only present when he needed it. Maybe that meant whoever was around the corner wouldn't be a problem.

I hesitated then turned the corner and felt my body's magnetic poles shift. The force slammed me against the wall, sticking me to it like flypaper. Fighting against it, I pulled my guns and spotted Rawlins down the hall. Just before I fired, the guns ripped from my hands and clung to the wall across from me. The poles shifted again and my body crashed to the ground and then slid down the hall.

Rawlins walked casually past me as I slid by. My body's poles shifted again, lifting me into the air. And with another quick shift, I crashed back into the ground, hard.

"When are you going to learn, Mr. Sharp?" He spoke in his slimy, used-car-salesman way, strolling toward me. "It's pointless to resist. You'll never beat us."

I threw up a hand, trying to force my power to come out. Nothing happened. I slipped a grenade from my belt and pulled the pin. Just before I threw it, it shot backward and exploded a good two-hundred feet behind me. I ducked as a wave of flameless heat washed over me.

Then abruptly, my body rose into the air again like I was in space.

"It's a shame you won't work with us." Rawlins stared at me curiously. "Don't you want to stop running?"

"Not if it means torturing or killing innocent people." I tried to think of some way to get out of the air without my power present but came up empty. There was no escape.

"What a waste."

Rawlins didn't move a muscle, but he sent me smashing into the wall to my right, cracking it.

No, not a wall. A door. One with familiar engravings on it.

The graveyard door.

The crack my impact had put in it ran through the Ancient Hebrews' warning about the destruction held inside. Several spikes stuck out of the door's edges with little cracks of their own. Artie and Joseph had never finished opening it, but I had a bad feeling that Rawlins was about to.

My body floated away from the door, then slammed back into it, the cracks splintering out farther across the stone slab. I wasn't sure I wanted to find out what would happen if the dark one inside was released, especially without my powers. The dark one that had come out of me was terrifying.

Then something powerful welled up in my gut. Something beautiful that seemed to wipe away any worries I might have harbored before.

The greater power was finally back.

I pushed out, severing Rawlins' link to me, and dropped to the ground. He frowned as I gave him a wicked smile.

He leapt at me, and I redirected him, slamming him into the door. The cracks grew larger. He came at me again swinging, faster than expected, each punch throwing a burst of magnetic reversal that pulled me toward it. I threw up a shield, but it didn't seem to affect his punches. They flew right through it, reversing the poles of the energy it was made of. He was actually pulling off of my shield to increase the strength of his blows.

I dropped the shield.

He kicked my stomach hard and I slammed into the door again, expanding its cracks.