The Opelux and Other Monsters || Book One

CHAPTER 54 - ORION

I blinked hard to clear the stinging. "Daniel, please. There has to be something you want. Anything. He's Emperor."

Daniel smirked. "If your memory was there, I'm positive you wouldn't dream of asking me any such thing. It's almost laughable."

My heart thudded in my chest, in my ears, so loud it was almost deafening. There had to be something I could do. The Neutralizer was cutting off my Poeir.

But it wasn't my only strength.

The Carnac lifted Tritteon between them, at the balconies edge, over the stormy, black lake.

"NO!" Claws shot out of my right hand. Pain lanced through me as I swung my hands over my head, the movement so sudden and unexpected Cort didn't see it coming, and I sliced down into his wrists.

He yelled, his grip faltering, and I pulled free and tumbled forward into a roll. Daniel reached out a hand to stop me, but I sliced through his palm as I came up, easily dodging past him.

"Throw him over and grab her," he yelled to the Carnac.

Time slowed as the Carnac launched Tritteon into the air. I heard only my own roaring and felt a strangely warm sting of heavy rain against my face. Carnac claws came at me, but I sliced at anything that entered my range, dodging around and under them to the balconies edge. I didn't stop to think. Lexicon already had the calculations flashing through my head.

I leapt onto the railing, all cracking ice gone, and jumped as far as the strength in my legs would allow, straight for the foaming circle Tritteon had disappeared into.

I'd thought swimming in water would've been its own special kind of hell. Pulling Tritteon through the rain to safety after he'd been shot had been horrendously painful, so I'd been preparing for something a hundred times worse. But the water rushing past me as I dived was only uncomfortably warm, almost a relief to the ice still coursing through me, threatening to resolidify if I stopped moving.

I looked wildly around. Even below the surface, the water swirled me about. Tritteon had to be nearby. This was where Lexicon had calculated his fall.

"He may have sunk like a rock," Lexicon said.

I dived deeper, kicking my feet as hard as I could to stay on course. Freed arms would've been really helpful. "Where is he? It's getting too dark. How deep is this lake?"

A burn, not water related, began to squeeze around my lungs.

"Go back up," Lexicon urged. "You can regroup. You will not be able to help him if you do not have enough air yourself."

I kicked downward even harder. "He didn't have air to begin with! He's going to drown!" The blackness pressed in around me, filling me with that sense of hopeless panic. How would I ever find him down here?

"Go back up, stupid girl. You will never find him without air. He will die because of your idiocy."

Light blazed above me, so bright it could've been the sun, except that it was blue.

The blackness disappeared and my knuckles collided with something solid and sharp. I grabbed onto the boulder as another swirl of water attempted to throw me head over heels across the lake bottom.

And then I saw him, ten feet from me, the rope binding his feet caught on a jagged bit of stone protruding from the lake floor, one of his boots wedged in the small gap between that stone and the one next to it. His eyes were still closed, and apart from the movements caused by the turbulent water, he was lifeless.

I kicked off a rock and grabbed onto his leg, pulling myself down to his boots. I just managed to cut the ropes with a claw before another swirl of water pressed down on me, throwing me against the closest bolder. My gut slammed into it, knocking whatever air remained clean out of me.