Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell #3)(52)

He withdrew. Dropped his hold on me completely and backed up a step. I could see the blue pinpoint of light beyond him, overlapping where his heart beat inside his chest. And I probably should’ve been worried when the blue changed to bright silver, but I was distracted.

That thing happened again. Just like in Tambuku: something ran down my leg. Something cold and thick and smooth.

The elevator ground to halt, startling me out of my fear. Darren, too. His blue halo swirled as he shook his head like a dog that had just emerged from a rainstorm. He lunged at me again. Both hands were on my throat now. And any fear or doubt I’d been harboring just went up in smoke. I emptied my mind and focused on the now-silver dot. Internally spoke what I wanted, loud and clear.

Get off.

His big body flew backward. Slammed into the elevator doors. A second later, the doors opened. He lost his balance and fell outside, landing on his back. I felt the impact in my soles of my shoes. Felt something else, too—a growing pressure on my leg. Something moved there. My jean leg tightened uncomfortably. It was cutting off the circulation in my thigh. Throbbing. I limped out of the elevator, following Darren’s path as he crab-walked backward into the parking garage.

Before I turned to see what was hurting my leg, Darren reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. He was fumbling with something on the key ring. Pepper spray.

Big trust fund party-boy was going to mace me? Fuck that.

I meant to kick the mace away. That was definitely my intention. But something popped on the back of my leg. The pressure around my thigh released. And then, lightning-quick, instead of my foot, something else smacked the spray canister.

Something that came from behind me.

Something connected to me.

I felt the cool, jagged edges of his keys before they sailed across the garage. Felt them with what? Did my magick solidify and mold itself into some sort of weapon?

Darren shouted—I saw his mouth open and heard the sound in a distant, removed sort of way through the filter of my moon sight. He was on his feet way too fast, towering over me again. He had something else in his hand and was highly pissed off. His arm lifted. Metal glinted between his whitened knuckles. A pocketknife.

The jerk was going to stab me.

Anger and Heka got jumbled up inside me. Seethed. Boiled. Raged. I couldn’t even make any rational, focused thoughts. All I could do was let it out before I went crazy with it.

Energy ebbed from me. A gush of Heka. It reached out for something—moon energy, perhaps—and came back like a boomerang, charged and ready. I made no conscious decision about what to do with it. I just unleashed it.

A cloud of silver swirled around me. I pushed it out across Darren, expanding it. There was nothing but the fog. I was creating it, spinning it . . . and it was part of me. He was a bug on my web. I spun the fog around him, encasing him in tight circles of silver smoke.

I felt Darren’s heart pounding furiously, and his life draining away. I’m not sure how I felt it, but it was as if I had my hands on him and was measuring his pulse beneath my fingers. I was strangling him with the fog.

I was going to kill him.

The thing was, for a moment, I wasn’t even sure if I cared. God help me, but I think I almost wanted to kill him. And then some tiny voice of reason raised its hand inside me and waved—as if to say, You sure you want to go this far?

I didn’t.

Straining, I tried to let go of the magick. It was so hard. Unnatural, even. But I kept trying, and my grip on Darren slackened. I felt him fall away and drop to the ground. The dark overlay of the moon magick lifted. My normal sight returned. I could hear a car driving on the parking level above us. It was gone. I’d done it. Pushed it away.

Maybe I really could control it.

And I never heard my mother. Not once. No whispering, no visions.

A small, joyous laugh escaped my lips.

My chest heaved with labored breath as I glanced down to check on Darren. His body lay crumpled at my feet, arms askew, mouth open. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

My silver halo was stunningly bright. Bigger. I could tell because it was outlining the sleeves of my jacket with a silver light. It shone like a spotlight behind my head, one that cast a long shadow over Darren’s body and the cement below. And I saw myself in that shadow: the curve of my hips, the shapes of my legs and arms, my hair standing around my head like it sometimes does when I’m channeling electricity.

And the long, rope-like shape of a tail.

A goddamn tail!

Like a reptile. Like a dirty rat.

I suddenly knew what had smacked the keys out of Darren’s hand. What had wrapped around his body along with my silver fog.

I panicked. Hard. Cried out in shock.

Without thinking, I called up the moon magick again. It came so fast, like snapping my fingers.

I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I just wanted to retreat—that’s all. Never in a million years would I have imagined what power a simple thought could wield.

The scent of cool, damp earth filled my senses.

A memory floated by: falling down a summertime grassy hill when I was five or six. Skinning my knees. My face pressing against the ground as I wept. And no one coming to my rescue. I remembered crying until I couldn’t cry anymore before I’d picked myself up and walked home alone. My mother had taken one look at me and said, “Oh, le petit cochon!” And after that, my father built a fence around our yard, and I wasn’t allowed to leave.