“Imogen!” Mom grabbed my arm from behind. “The door.”
Right. Escape. Don’t waste this.
Dizzy, I turned. My vision was doubling. Was it shock that I’d killed someone, or the moths within me degrading? But we were so close to freedom. Only a door to go.
I blinked to clear my sight. Blasting was easy and came standard with witch avatars on Legendelirium’s lowest levels. I needed no real skill, just a bit of precision.
“Step back,” I told Mom.
She did, and although she still had her tough face on, I could tell that she was slightly favoring her good leg. Yeah, she was hurting. That knowledge was enough for me to forget about the gnome-man behind me—good riddance!—and focus on getting my mom to safety.
Left hand out, I aimed and flexed my wrist.
A pale lavender energy ball whooshed from my palm.
With a dull bang, the metal door shook. The L-handle hissed and smoked, and the red paint behind it bubbled. But the door didn’t suddenly hang open, as I’d hoped.
I kicked at it, flat foot against metal, but the door held fast.
I glanced over my shoulder. Alling had managed to wriggle out from under Jen 2.0’s body and was on all fours, swaying and shaking his head.
“Just one more time, honey,” Mom said. Steady, encouraging.
I really didn’t feel so good.
Left hand out, I couldn’t miss that the X was only a couple of red slashes. And all of me ached. My stomach gnawed on itself. Darkness narrowed my vision.
But I flexed my wrist, my clawed fingers looking as brittle as graphite drawing pencils.
The door merely rattled on its hinges. No good. Not like I could make several flights of stairs in my condition anyway. I swayed on my feet. My vision blurred.
“The elevator.” Mom tucked herself under my shoulder to givemesupport. “I got you,” she said. “We can do this.”
That she would carry me just about undid me. If she had that kind of strength in her, then I did too. I was her daughter, after all. I wasn’t going to fail her. Not now.
Arms tightly around each other, we stumbled and lurched, hobbled as if running a three-legged race, back through the maze of server racks. The lights twirled red-yellow above us. This time, the lingering vapor was cold on my skin. The acrid stench of smoke and singed wires burned at my nose, and we both coughed as an ominous sizzling-crackle rose around us. The fire-suppression system had failed. But we shuffled on, finding our rhythm, her good leg taking our weight, then me muscling enough for her bad leg.
Apow!behind us told me that Alling was armed and firing. That we didn’t fall meant he’d missed. He might not a second time. But I wasn’t giving the bastard more chances for target practice.
We crashed into the elevator, and while Mom pawed at the keycard slider—it seemed we couldn’t call the elevator without a keycard, which I found hilarious in the moment—I turned, leaning on the wall, to defend us from Alling.
And Daddy Alling emerged from the fog with the matte black jut of the gun ahead of him. His face was blanched and drawn, determination in the squint of his eyes. “Imogen. Stop.”
“Stop?” Too weak to fight, I lifted my hands before me, as if to stop the bullet with my flesh and bones. Or, okay, maybe to beg.
Something cold and hard pressed at my spine. Fear… No, Mom’s scissors. She nudged me again, but I shoved one elbow back, blocking her. No way was she lunging at Alling with that wimpy weapon.
“Don’t come any closer,” I warned him. I shuddered, as if my whole body were turning to nano dust, but I would blast this motherfucker if it was literally the last thing I did.
Behind Alling, smoke and fire crowded into the elevator corridor like shadow trolls from the volcano realm.
“You had your chance.” Alling angled the gun—just a tiny quirk that would take the trajectory on an entirely different path.
He fired—pow!—right at Mom.
I was ready.
In a rush of adrenaline, I pulled my hands wide in the [shield] spell. Hazy purple light laced with a deeper indigo expanded around me like a cocoon. With everything I had left, I held the energy taut, electric pain zinging up through my arms and knitting across my chest, reaching inward.
