Bright Blaze of Magic (Black Blade, #3)(80)

Then the lightning zipped over my body, sinking deep inside me, and I started screaming.

And I didn’t—couldn’t—stop.

Every single part of me burned with hot, unending, electrical pain. My legs flailed, my fingers twitched, and my teeth chattered together from the shocking jolts of power. I bit down on my own tongue by accident and blood filled my mouth. Sweat streamed down my face, and I felt like every nerve ending in my body was on fire. White stars flashed on and off in front of my face faster and brighter than they ever had before. Or maybe that was just the lightning flashing over me again and again. I couldn’t really tell.

It wasn’t that the lightning just hit me and that was the end of it. Oh no. That would have been too easy. The lightning crackled over my body again and again, never stopping, never weakening, not even for an instant. It coiled around and around me like a copper crusher, as though it were a monster with a mind of its own and it wouldn’t be satisfied until I was burnt to a crisp.

Through the dazzling white flashes, I realized that Victor was slowly advancing on me, the lightning streaking from his fingers, through the air, and straight into my body. But all I could do was writhe on the ground and scream and scream and scream some more.

I was dimly aware of my transference power flaring to life, and the familiar chill of magic surging through my body the way it had so many times before. But it had never, ever been this intense, this painful before, and I realized that Victor’s magic was greater than my own. He was going to kill me, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Right now, it was all I could do to suck down air between my screams, much less actually get to my feet and fight back.

Victor kept coming closer and closer to me. Even through the lightning, I could see his golden eyes, glowing brighter than any monster’s. He was a monster all right, through and through. His power might be pure white energy, but his heart was as black as the darkest night.

I kept screaming as the lightning flashed over me again and again. I was dimly aware of people yelling, Devon and the rest of my friends, most likely, but they couldn’t do anything to help me. They couldn’t even step onto the bridge right now without getting electrocuted themselves.

Victor stopped beside me, looming over me and giving me a triumphant sneer, lightning still pouring out of his hands in steady, crackling waves. His face twisted with sly satisfaction, and he drew in a breath, as if preparing himself to unleash a final wave of magic that would end me once and for all.

And that’s when the lochness decided to strike.

Just as Victor raised his hands to finish me off, a long, black tentacle whipped through the air, then slammed straight into his chest. The blow knocked Victor back and made him lose his grip on his magic, the lightning dimming to white sparks flickering around his hands.

But it didn’t stop him for long.

Even as the lochness reared back its tentacle to lash out at Victor again, he scrambled to his feet and gave the waving tentacle a cold, unconcerned look.

Then he unleashed his magic on the monster.

Lightning erupted on Victor’s fingertips again, but this time, instead of pouring into me, the magic streaked across the bridge and straight into the lochness. Not only that, but the harsh, crackling power zipped down the long, black tentacle, traveling over the side of the bridge and all the way into the water below.

The thought of Victor hurting the lochness gave me the strength to roll to my side, push myself onto my hands and knees, and then stagger up to my feet. Every part of me still hurt, twitched, and burned with electrical pain, but I managed to stumble over to the side of the bridge.

By this point, Victor’s lightning had lit up the entire surface of the river, perfectly outlining the lochness’s enormous, octopus-like body in the water below. Perhaps I only imagined it, but I thought I could even see the creature’s two sapphire eyes, staring up at me, silently begging me for help.

“Stop it!” I screamed. “You’re killing it! You’re killing the lochness!”

Even if Victor had heard me, he didn’t care, and his face was twisted into a snarl, his eyes shining with absolute, bitter hate. In that moment, I realized that he despised the monsters just as much as he had my mom. He was going to kill the lochness, just because he could, unless I did something to stop him.

I didn’t think—I just acted.

I grabbed my mom’s sword from where it had fallen and stumbled forward again. I tried to raise the weapon to attack him, but it was all I could do to hold on to the sword, and I ended up just slamming my body into Victor’s instead, knocking us both down.

His head snapped back against the cobblestones and the blow stunned him enough to make him lose his grip on his magic again. Lightning still crackled around his body, though, and mine too, washing over both of us in wave after white-hot wave.

Only this time, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as before.

Part of me wondered why, especially since the lightning kept crackling and crackling around me, even though it wasn’t actually sinking into my body and burning me alive anymore. I looked down, and I finally realized what was different this time.

I was holding my mom’s sword in my hand.

And it was glowing the blackest midnight imaginable.

The blade practically pulsed with darkness that was as intense as Victor’s white lightning. I’d always thought you had to get blood on a black blade in order to make it glow, but that didn’t seem to be the case. At least, not with Victor and his lightning. Maybe that’s because it was blood magic in a way—power born of all the blood that Victor had cut out of others in order to steal their Talents and make them his own.