Artifice - Man x Man - Book Six

Chapter 29

Focusing on the task at hand was more complicated than I imagined, knowing the pursuit happening on the streets below. The remnants of the wind howled in my ears, and for the first time in this godforsaken place, I felt as though I might not suffocate in the unbearable heat and density of the air. 

My lips parted as I exhaled my concern. This is an easy task for me. It's just conjuring a simple storm; it doesn't compare to stopping an army or ruling a country. 

"Are you ready?" I ask Tyler though, I will proceed without him if he chooses to succumb to his concerns for his wife. If there was anything that disgusting woman taught me, it was that my fears for Verando would get me killed. 

Never before had that rang truer than now, faced with someone who struggled to get past their love. In his defense, I might feel much the same if I hadn't damned that man to hell for his acts against me. 

"Chant with me. Feel the water flowing, I'll find the source, we'll bring it up, and then disperse it into the air. Understand?" 

"It feels impossible," Tyler admits.

"It's not impossible. It's magic." I follow the current, feeling the familiar flow I tracked when we filled the tanker truck. 

Shutting my eyes, I calm my mind as I block out the gunfire around me. The streets below clammer with life, we're trapped in a box of commotion, and silence is a stranger to this land that is seen for the first time in many years. 

Finding the spout, I close my fist and call the water to me. The resistance of the pipe is surprising, it feels familiar to the pipe in the ground. I almost want to back off, reminded by what followed that dreaded reveal but I surge forward, pushing back against the reluctance in my own mind. 

Pulling the water up and out, I maneuver my hands in front of me as the flow moves through the streets like a serpent, obedient to my command. 

"Puts your hands out. Feel it." I command Tyler who does as I ask, I note the tremble in his arms. He is truly spent, how many times had I fought with Penelope only to find that she burned out my energy before I could even touch her? I recall a particular fight on the ice shelf of a frozen lake, the first time I bested her, I had felt so weak then. 

"You are your own barrier, your mind is your limit, feel as though you can do it and you shall accomplish it." Those green eyes fall on me in a way that says I've lost my mind. Would I have believed me either? I didn't believe it in the school, I resisted its teachings every step of the way.

 "Think about each individual drop, separate them out and we're going to send it up into the sky as vapor."

"On the roof!" I hear a voice, loud and clear, coming from the street. 

How is that possible? 

"You are stealing valuable resources from the people of this city. Release the water, or we will shoot you!"

I cringe. Surely they couldn't reach me from so far away? I glance over my shoulder and see Marcello and Tonic are backed up against us, we are totally surrounded by darkly dressed men. Where our cat adversaries are gone, these remain and their numbers are extensive. 

Rhea is unconscious on the ground not far from our feet, her hands bound behind her back. It reminded me of our time fighting the infected in the courtyard, they kept coming, one after another. We felt overwhelmed then, too. 

"Don't stop," I tell Tyler. We'd come so far, best to die now than give up and not have tried. 

I begin the process of separating out the water, spreading it out in the form of a barrier. It catches the bullets that rain down on us, slowing them down as they flip out of the substance and crash back to the earth below. They're firing on us, truly they are.