Chapter 55 Breaking Links 2
"Carmen! Do something!" Jace screamed, seeing the wisps of smoke rising up from around the twins, from their skin.
Their faces begin to contort in agony as their powers fell. The lashing, twisting web of blue power surrounding them was pressing ever closer, ever tighter, beginning to cut into them with a skin-eating heat.
Carmen sprinted forward, no plan in mind but to simply touch the twins and hope that her powers could somehow stabilize them. Before she got even ten feet from them, a snapping whip of ragged blue power arced outwards from them and struck her directly in the center of her chest. The raw power of it sent her airborne, flying backwards across the room.
She skidded along the floor twenty feet before bouncing off the wall, a crushing impact that filled her ears with the resounding crunch of her own breaking bones. Every last drop of air in her lungs was blasted outwards, and her core muscles began to spasm, no longer working in concert to pull in another breath. Tiny white dots, blurry edges flaring brighter, then dimmer, swam around her vision, confusing her. What had happened? Why did it feel like her entire body had been dipped into molten steel?
Desperate and confused, she sent her powers down to her hands, feeling them begin to tingle with that familiar pin-prick dance of icy-hot energy, feeling her power well up inside like a giant snake of fire with fangs of ice uncoiling from a hidden pit behind her memories. Coughing weakly, blood dripping from her mouth to paint the floor, she allowed it to reach higher than she could ever remember before wrapping her hands tight around her midsection. And her own power surged into her, a rush of power without direction.
Her voice echoed around the room as she screamed out her agony, her power healing the damage within her brutally fast. Broken ribs violently sawing back into place, tissue hurtling back together, muscles snapping back into place. She found herself lying on the floor on her belly, gasping like a dying fish. Her eyes were clear, and her thoughts began to structure then as she became aware that she was no longer in pain. In fact, as she climbed to her feet, she realized she felt more alive and vibrant, than she could ever remember.
She looked down at herself in amazement, seeing a faint nimbus of softly glowing gold wrapping itself around her, seeming to drift in and out of her body everywhere it traveled. And everywhere that flickering gold light went, it left a bit of unnatural strength behind. The image brought a dark memory up from the grave inside her mind, slithering and drooling with madness. She pushed it down with a well-practiced wall of ice, burying it behind apathy. As she had done for so many years.
She channeled that power down to her legs and sprinted back across the room, her mind wondering at the unnatural, exhilarating burst of speed. She moved faster than any human should, almost seeming to dart from where she was standing to right in front of the twins in an eye-blink.
This time, when that snapping whip of power arced outwards to strike her, the faint golden nimbus around her repelled it, deflecting it outwards in a scattering spray of sparks. It still made her stumble, it still shook her, making her teeth click painfully together. But it didn't take her off her feet, it didn't throw her across the room.
The arcs increased in intensity, rapid-fire lightning bolts slamming into her golden shield, beginning to hurt bad enough to make her whimper as she waded forward, her hands outstretched. She needed to touch the twins. She needed to get inside their minds and convince them that this was just Callin, that they didn't need to kill themselves, and most likely him, holding him out.
She felt guilty at that thought, knowing that she herself couldn't bear that reality. She herself had held him out, had rejected him completely. But the twins...couldn't they hold that link with him because there were two of them? Weren't they together stronger than her alone?
She didn't know how she knew it, but she absolutely knew that if they didn't stop resisting him, they would die. And so would Callin. That thought gave her the strength to push forward that one last step, and at last she could reach out her hands and lay them on the bare skin on the forearms of Jen and Jesse.
Her power surged wild again, a striking cobra forged of golden fire, sinking its fangs into all three of their minds. Tying them together despite the impressive shield the twins had surrounded themselves with to hold out that primal, blue fire web that was trying to cut its way into them.
"Jen, Jesse! It's me! Carmen! You have to let down your shield! You're killing yourselves and Callin!" She shrieked, sensing that the twins minds were so focused on their shield that they wouldn't register her.
She was right. Their minds barely acknowledged her presence, dismissing her within the same instant that they recognized her. They were fully in fight or flight mode. There would be no reaching them when they were like this. Unless....
Carmen let her power strike much deeper, much harder, the Cobra line connecting them all whipping its head back and forth, sawing their minds about like intangible rag dolls in its jaws. Shaking them to the core.
Now they focused on her! Carmen opened her memories to them in a flood, sending them everything she had sensed from Ahleena, everything she knew about Callin. Everything.
It was a torrent of such magnitude that it swept the twins up and threw them helplessly down into the halls of Carmen's memories. Straight into a pure link to her darkest memories, tied to what was happening now.
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The hand, thick and calloused, swung down and across, racking the young girl across the face so hard that she spun in place before collapsing. The heavy blow had nearly dislodged her jaw, sending a thunderous explosion of agony through her entire head, her entire face. And yet she made not a sound.
"Get up, witch! Get up!" The hated, low voice above her demanded.
Her fingers trembled, her entire body threatening to disobey her as pain went racing down her spine and turned her muscles to jelly, she managed to climb back to her feet. Her head hung down, ragged blonde hair limp over her face. She didn't want to look up and see that leering face. She didn't want to meet those insane, crackling eyes. She wanted to drift, she wanted to escape, she wanted to fall.
Rough fingers crushed her delicate jaw in a vise-like grip and snapped her head upwards, forcing her to look into the man's eyes. The pain in her jaw sent tears streaming down her face, lines of agony streaking the parchment of the 10 year-old girls face.
"Look me in the eyes and tell me no again, witch! I dare you!" The huge man growled, shaking her head back and forth with every word. Sending fiery bolts of razor-edged agony down her spine.
Inside her mind, she wondered if this time maybe something critical had broken. Maybe there was nerve damage in her spine. Maybe she was one more vicious jerk away from being paralyzed forever. Her thoughts, so far receded from reality, almost welcomed that thought. Until she realized with absolute horror that that wouldn't be an escape. That would be the final prison. They would still use her, they would still force her on the others, except they would do it with her limp, helpless body.
"Yes. I'll do it." She whispered, terrified of the idea of being paralyzed.
The huge man grinned his mad grin, all cracked teeth and wet lips, very pleased with the new terror in the girls eyes. It excited him, to see her fear and pain. He threw her back, her small frame flying across the room to bounce off one of the massive wooden beams that supported the log cabin roof.
"Then go now." He growled, watching with satisfaction as she scrambled to her feet and stumbled from the room, her breath coming in short, pain-soaked gasps.
She staggered down the hall, the glossy hardwood floor, smooth and cool under her bare feet, bringing no relief from the heat of pain and hatred radiating from her small frame. Her tears dripped down her face, clear drops of misery, falling free for a moment, before splattering onto the uncaring floor. The floor she had scrubbed that morning for hours, until her fingers bled from the harsh cleaners and abrasive scrub brush.
She washed the floor with her tears and her blood, vowing inside yet again to paint them crimson with the others blood. Her power flickered darkly in the background of her running thoughts, soft golden strands being forced into thorns, against nature, almost against her will. She hated it, this inner battle.
She had the power to be free from this prison of torment and misery. She had the power to destroy all those that used and abused her. But her power wouldn't obey her, treacherous and uncontrollable. It wanted to sooth and blend, not hurt. It wasn't a weapon, no matter how desperately she wanted it to be, no matter how hard she tried to force it to become one.
Her power, the warm, soothing light inside, used against her nearly daily. Used to amplify her agony, used to make her less than a puppet, less than a tool, before the purified evil and greed of her captors. They forced her to bond with their customers.
They used her powers, her ability to link and bond, to tie their customers together forever. Uncaring that she was ravaged inside every time just a bit more. Uncaring that there was an end, a terrifying wall of infinite blackness approaching a bit closer every time she did their sick bidding.
She stood outside the door to the bedroom, trembling in fear and sick desperation. Why was today different? She felt like a web of that blackness had reached out and was even now beginning to wrap around her. It was the unknown, it was the coldest pit with no bottom, it was the gaping maw of insanity and it was about to swoop down and rip her away from reality.
Far back, deep inside her mind, her power flickered ever more fitfully. Awakening. The golden glow was fading, replaced by a diamond hard light, complete with razor-tipped thorns, glittering harshly in the darkness of her mind. Abruptly she recognized it for what it was. It stunned her completely.
Her power, that ability to sooth and heal, that ability to blend and link, had reversed. It was structured now to seek out those old wounds, those places where terror and fear lay, and rip them open. To amplify them.
She shivered in ashen-faced fear as she realized it would feed off the damage it would do. Even as it destroyed someone, it would feed her, it would rip their life-force away and give it to her. Was this really what she wanted?
Then, unbidden, rising up like an undead daemon from the darkest recesses of her memories, she remembered the day they had forced her to True Link with her master. That heavy handed, hated man who was at the center of the torment and pain in her life. An evil creature masquerading as a man, laying destruction about him wherever he went, laughing madness shining bright from his eyes.
She remembered that day. And it erased her fear. It erased her desire to heal. It threw her headlong into the jaws of hatred. The golden light that began to burn in her eyes was not warm. It was not a soothing glow. It was the pure fire of hatred given direction, given power.
She reached out one hand and gently tapped the door. The wood shivered for an instant as her power flooded into it. Then her power broke all ties within the wood. It exploded violently into the room, shrapnel splinters hissing through the air at nearly supersonic speeds.
The couple on the bed screamed in shock, curling into tight balls as their skin was pierced by bits of wood. The splinters weren't big enough to do any internal damage, but the pain they caused as they pieced and shredded flesh by the thousands of points was enough to reduce the two to shivering, whimpering, bloody things.
She walked across the room, serene and calm within the jaws of the golden cobra inside her mind, her mind not really her own. She stood next to the bed, radiating a fiery heat that touched nothing except their flesh.
They scrambled back from her, their cries of agony falling on deaf ears. Once they were facing her, both of them having managed to get to their feet on the other side of the bed, she met their eyes. And then she smiled sweetly, sadly, at them.
"Goodbye, hollow things." She whispered.
A strand of darkly glittering golden power snaked out from her eyes and wrapped around the two of them, then darted inside, burrowing deep. They both gasped and rose up on their toes, their bodies locked rigid. Then, her power ferreted out every cut, every bruise, every wound they had ever received. And it opened them up. It reversed the healing.
Their screams echoed out into the hall, heralding her as she stalked back down towards the great room. It was that background song of agony that had her master lurching to his feet, drawing both of his massive pistols, as she entered the room.
She stopped in the doorway, tilting her head at him, no expression on her face. Her eyes were golden, glittering holes of hatred, shining bright in the room, light beams licking about as if they sought to taste what they would before they devoured everything before them.
"What the hell?!" Her master muttered. His hard, greasy face had gone very pale. The look of a man who knew he faced his own death.
She stood in the doorway, a tiny waif of a girl, pale skin and limp blonde hair, looking like some ghostly apparition, some creature risen from a graveyard and stalking the world of the living. He had his sights set squarely on her chest, both massive pistols steady in his grip. He had never trusted this strange little witch of a girl with her dark, curling hatred running around in the back of his mind. Her thoughts there in his deepest thoughts, as if he were her and she were him. He hated her as much as she hated him.
And now he realized what that was he was feeling in his mind. He was feeling a tightening pressure. A coiling, thorn-covered line of that dark, golden power, wrapping around that link between them. The moment that realization struck home, he fired. He pulled both triggers as fast as he could, keeping his aim as centered as he could.
The guns roared and kicked, snapping, barking monsters in his grip, three times, four times, six times. Then he was clicking the triggers uselessly, desperately, as she began to walk towards him. Even though he was almost three hundred pounds of hardened muscle, he backed away from the tiny girl as if she were a slavering, rabid monster that had slithered out from under his bed.
He backed into the corner, eyes bulging in trapped-animal fear, holding his hands out to ward her off. She had no wounds on her from the guns.
She walked steadily towards him, pinning him within the unforgiving, deadly depths of her golden eyes. And in his mind, that pressure grew ever tighter. It was now reaching the threshold of pain, and he vaguely wondered what would happen to his mind as that cutting, crushing power continued to increase.
She stopped just feet away from him, one hand drifting up to beckon him to his knees. That golden, cutting band of power in his mind surged at her gesture, and his lungs collapsed in a pain-wracked shriek as he fell to his knees before her. Then, as he stared into her eyes, that coiling, raw energy surrounding the link between them flared up. A blaze of power that knew no limits. It seared into both of their minds, dropping them both to floor in the greatest depth of agony either had ever known, hurling them headlong towards insanity.
He fell first. And in the instant between the total fraying of his mind and hers, her power surged back. Back into her, back into its warm, soothing, natural state. And it instantly began to heal her, to shield her, to pull her back from that abyss she had almost fallen over. But it couldn't heal the scars.
They were soul deep scars, so foul and ugly that her mind sought to close them off, to hide them away. To bury them under a wall of ice and apathy. She had killed a part of herself, and now she would bear the scars forever.