Part of a pillar, flowing with the others. Cherry and chocolate. Mowed grass and wet soil. Mint and licorice. Lily and myrrh. A cornucopia of scent.
All flowed up through her-their-our body. Down deep to the ground, the earth, the molten power, then up again.
Brief awareness that her body sagged over a dying man, and then she-they-we were gone again, down. Down to comfort and warmth and no tasks to do.
No! She was Vallon. There was no task too difficult to do. She was a fighter, dammit.
With a snarl she pulled partially free, and let the cycling power haul a part of her down again. What made this happen? Where was Rebecca?
She flowed up through the earth, seeking. There.
Power, one with the pillar. Power, drawn from the pillar; all one and the same. Rebecca’s hands moved over vellum and the cavern was flame and heat and the magma boiling in a cauldron too deep and wide for anyone to stop it now.
But someone tried.
Through the waterfall of the pillar’s colors she -reached- and saw Xavier fight, the ruddy light painted his leather trench crimson. He stood with arms outstretched, and she could imagine his eyes—black as night, his scent of cedar and incense.
Almost at his feet a huge chunk of floor fell into the seething cauldron. It was clear he couldn’t hold much longer against whatever Rebecca had become.
Vallon had to do something.
Up through to her body again and down. She clawed her way towards Rebecca; saw Rebecca’s pen stab at the map she had drawn of the cavern.
A roar and more floor fell away. Xavier teetered and fell back.
Vallon plunged through the pillar—just as Rebecca drew from its power.
Vallon followed the power and rammed through into rage and hate and fear so great it riveted her in place. Worse than the fears her father had left her with. Worse than the fear of always being alone.
Rebecca’s fear of what could—would—come as surely as the night followed day and the morning mists blocked laser instrument readings--if the AGS turned the Gift to weaponry.
Vallon shuddered at the thought and almost let go. Power stripped her back to the pillar. Back up to her body. She clung to the link she’d formed—more terrifying than any bond with a man.
Rebecca/Vallon triangulated on Xavier and Vallon seethed with Fi’s mother’s hatred. Raged, because this powerful stranger blocked her purpose. Feared, as Rebecca feared, because he might defeat her.
[He will defeat you,] Vallon managed to send.
Rebecca staggered, and almost knocked Vallon loose from her tenuous link. The pillar’s cycling started to lift her away, cycle her back to her body and away—down into the earth.
No! She grabbed for the rancid hatred, and Rebecca’s power wavered. Xavier reformed the footing under his feet. The floor grew towards her, magma cooling. Heat dissipating through the walls. Stone dripped to stalagmites, forming stone pillars across the floor.
Rebecca stabbed her pen at the vellum she held. Pillars cracked. Floor trembled.
Xavier steadied them.
Rebecca -reached- for the power in the golden pillar. Reached for the strength that flooded in from the earth through the comatose Gifted above.
With them acting as unwitting channels to the unending earth’s power, there was no way Xavier could defeat her. Vallon had to stop her.
She stabbed through Rebecca’s concentration and flooded through the other woman. Change, Vallon willed, just as she would change a landscape. Change!
Rebecca screamed. She clutched at her head and staggered to her knees. The pillar wavered as Vallon tried to control what Rebecca did with her pen.
Fi’s mother struck: A bolt of power rammed into Vallon’s head. Her body screamed. The pillar wrenched her back. Her last sight was Rebecca—stabbing her pen through the vellum.
Vallon slammed into her body. The pillar’s power shuddered like a broken gear, the power cycle broken. The pillar broken.
She fell over and lay shaking on the floor. Afterburn burned through her and so did the terror. It filled her nose with a sour, coppery smell.
She bolted upright. Not her shaking. It was the tunnel. Concrete walls flaked and faded. She scrambled to her knees and heard a groan. At least the pillar was gone.
Jason. Xavier.
She -reached- and the power pulsed. Her connection to the earth almost flickered out, she was that tired. The afterburn throbbed like a migraine. Whatever the pillar did for Rebecca, those it fed on—those that fed Rebecca—were left naked and hollowed out as an old tree.
[Xavier?] She managed to reach through the earth, her body trembling.
There. His bright form flickered at the edges, but still his core burned bright as he worked. Blending, mending. His essence a barrier to the maelstrom around him, as across the cavern Rebecca Murdoch shredded her map.
Fissures formed in the floors and walls. Still Xavier held. Somehow he felt Vallon’s presence. A whiff of cedar and incense. [Go. Get free. I’ll hold as long as I can.]
[But you can’t do it alone.]
[Creation above. Would you do as you are told just this once?]
Then he was gone. His brilliance holding against the insanity Rebecca set loose.
Vallon opened her eyes and vertigo swung the tunnel around her. She managed to find Jason.
His espresso gaze flickered until he closed his eyes. “I was worried there a moment,” he sighed.
His words were barely audible above a growing rumble in the earth. Beside him Fi stirred and opened blue, blue eyes.
“Vallon? Where did you come from?”
“We have to get out of here.” Vallon staggered up. The fallen Gifted stirred around her. “We have to get out of here,” she yelled, and grabbed the man closest to her. “Get the others up and heading up the tunnel. This whole place is going to blow.”
He looked at her uncertainly.
“Just do it, dammit.”
He did, and she turned back to Jason. With Fi’s help they managed to get him up, even though the tunnel’s trembling worsened. Xavier’s barriers weren’t holding. The tunnels provided the perfect channels for the magma to get to the surface. If she and the others, were to have a chance, they had to move fast.
She and Fi half-carried Jason in a staggering run up the tunnels following after the others. The lights flickered and dimmed. Dimmed again, and the floor wrenched and shuddered. The whine of metal torquing grew as the tunnels contorted around her.
“We have to go faster.”
“Leave me. Behind.”
She snorted. “Like that’s going to happen. I need you to clear me.”
Jason hung silently in her arms.
“I better do that, huh?”
“Damn straight,” She agreed, but his pallor made it hard to believe he was going to make it anywhere.
The other Gifted, unburdened, disappeared up the tunnels.
“Just like old times, huh Vallon.”
She glanced across Jason. Fi’s gaze held a clarity Vallon hadn’t seen in a long while.
“Trouble and Trouble ride again. Are these frigging tunnels ever going to end?”
The tunnel wrenched so hard it threw them down. Wrenched again, and somewhere not far behind them a huge crash and a cloud of dust said the ceiling had come down. The lights went out. Vallon struggled up from covering Jason.
[Vallon! To safety!] A string of love-hate-caring that caught her breath and then it was gone.
She swayed and tried to re-establish contact. [Xavier?]
Nothing.
[Xavier?]
No sign of his bright flame, but a maelstrom of power rose twisting and burning through the tunnels. “We have to move!” She fought to her feet, trying not to cry, and hauled Jason’s almost dead weight up. Fi helped as much as she could.
Her chest was so tight it was hard to breathe. She shouldn’t feel this. She’s trained herself not to feel.
“I don’t care,” she m
uttered, careening them through the darkness, choosing the tunnels that seemed to lead most steeply upwards.
But the clean air she followed steadily deadened. Heat chased them upwards. A blast of iron brought a little moan from Fi. The darkened tunnels seemed to go on forever.
A hint of must through the growing heat brought Vallon’s head around. “Stop.”
“Fi, can you hold him?”
“I’ll try.”
“I can hold myself up. Just prop me against a wall.”
The sound of Jason’s voice was a relief. “I didn’t know you were still with us.”
“I’m what you call, conserving my strength. Let the ladies do the work for a change.”
“Nice.” Fi’s voice, surprisingly dry, but there was no time to rejoice that her friend seemed almost normal.
Vallon followed the scent. Concrete dust showered down. The horrible writhing of the tunnels seemed to have slowed, but the walls vibrated around her with a humming sound she knew wasn’t good. Pressure could cause such a vibration. So could something moving through the tunnels.
They had to get out of here—fast.
She ran her hands over the tunnel wall, following the scent. In the darkness her palms found a break in the concrete that gave onto damp earth and stone. When she felt along it, there seemed to be a fissure that led upwards. It might be wide enough for her if it didn’t cave in. A slight movement of air suggested cool breezes above. She took a chance and climbed up until she caught a glimpse of dim light above.
The way looked broad enough they could get through.
She scrambled back down to Fi and Jason. The humming sound was so loud it hurt her ears. She helped Jason up and led them to the fissure.
“There’s light up above,” she yelled. “Fi, you go first and help Jason. Jason, I’m afraid you’re going to have to climb. I’ll push from the rear.”
A blast of heat came from down the tunnel with a sound like a train. A distant red glow brightened moment to moment. They didn’t have long now. Any moment the magma would come.
She shoved Jason into the fissure. Fi was already climbing, reaching down to help. Vallon shoved form behind.
He was so weak she almost had to carry him, and her own strength waned. Up and, slow, laborious, up.
“I’m up,” Fi yelled. Then she burst into laughter as she reached down for Jason’s arms. Vallon helped shove him the last few feet, then scrambled up and understood Fi’s reaction.
An old toilet—the kind that had frequently flooded during the days when the underground had still been above ground—lay on its side on a wooden platform that had split in two. They’d climbed up through the privy.
“Figures,” was all she had energy to say.
She shoved to her feet and almost fell, but kept hold of the wall and stood. Grey light came through the door to their left.
She went to help Jason up. “We’re almost there.”
He shook his head. “I’m done. Leave me.”
“Like hell.” Vallon blew her hair back from her face. “Not after I’ve carried you this far?”
She grabbed his arm and heaved him up. Afterburn ate through her veins like acid and from the privy came a blast of heat and sulfur that set all three of them coughing. They were almost out of time.
“Just a little farther.” Who was she kidding?
Half-dragging Jason, they staggered through the door and found themselves in a corridor, with a ceiling of a long line of glass bricks that let in daylight.
That explained the light, but it didn’t explain the fresh breeze that blew in their faces. There had to be a way out.
The earth shuddered and sent them stumbling. They careened around a corner into a stretch of collapsed tunnel.
A pile of debris blocked the tunnel and their path, but above it hung blue sky and the silhouetted form of what could only be Smith tower.
Pioneer Square. And freedom.
Behind came a hiss and the scent of wood burning. The toilet platform most probably. The magma was here. Vallon -reached-.
The magma core was almost to bursting.
Chapter 27—Almost Hero