Page 134 of The Song Rising

There really was a weakness. Itcouldbe destroyed.

Time seemed to slow as I looked at the core. I searched it with my eyes, then with my gift.

It took me a few moments to find the ectoplasm. A vial of it, locked inside the sphere, holding the spirit firmly in place and emanating a greenish light. One of Nashira’s boundlings—her fallen angels. I could feel the thousands of delicate connections that branched out around it, reaching toward every Senshield scanner in the citadel, in the country.

I didn’t know its name, so I couldn’t banish it. But surely if I destroyed the casing that imprisoned the spirit, it would disperse its energy into the æther and sever those connections.

Surely.

I raised my gun. At the same time, Vance pointed a pistol at my exposed torso.

“It will kill you,” she said, “and achieve nothing. The spirit will continue to obey the Suzerain. It will continue to power Senshield.”

I stayed very still.

She could be telling the truth. She could be bluffing.

“You will die in vain,” Vance said.

Perhaps I would.

But there had to be a reason she was suddenly talking,tellingme how Senshield worked. There could be no gain in that. She would only be this free with her information if she was . . .

If she was lying.

And Hildred Vance only lied when it was necessary.

“You know a lot about human nature, Vance,” I said, taking my time over each word, “but you made one, fatal error in your calculations.”

She looked at the core, then back to me.

“You assumed,” I said, “that I had any interest in leaving here alive.”

Vance stared into my eyes. And somewhere in their depths, deep in those pits of darkness, was a flicker, just the softest flicker, of something I hadn’t truly believed she was capable of feeling.

Doubt.

It was doubt.

I pulled the trigger.

When the bullet struck it, the sphere broke apart, releasing years of bridled energy, and gave up the vial of ectoplasm. It shattered at my feet. I hurled myself to the floor and scrambled away from Vance’s gunfire, my fingers slipping through Rephaite blood. Before I could get up, the spirit, freed from its prison, came flying toward me—and seized me by the throat.

A poltergeist. It was enraged, murderous. The Suzerain had commanded it to stay, to power the machine, and I had disturbed it. It slammed me between the wall and the floor. I choked on blood. The gun flew out of my hand.

Vance was a strategist. She knew when to retreat. As she backed toward the door, the spirit cast me aside and raced across the room to slam it shut. Vance stopped dead. She was blind to the æther, unaware of where the threat would go next. Pulling myself on to my hands and knees, I looked up at what was left of the sphere.

She had been right; Senshield was still active. Its light remained as bright as ever.

“You belong to the Suzerain.” Vance addressed the spirit, her voice full of authority. “I am also her servant.”

I crawled across the floor, toward the gun.

If I was going to die tonight, I would take the Grand Commander with me.

My movements distracted the fallen angel. It whipped away from Vance, pitched me on to my back, and brought its weight to bear against my body. A wall of unseen pressure descended on me like a shroud. Sparks erupted from the wreckage of the sphere and threw wild shadows on the walls as the spirit smothered me inside and out, flinging my aura into a frenzy. Sweat froze on my skin. I couldn’t breathe. All I could see was the light from the core.

I didn’t know how to fight back. I didn’t know how to stop fighting, either. Desperately, I tried to dreamwalk, but I was so weak. All around us, the corporeal world was straining at the seams.

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