The Bleed: Book 2: RAPTURE by David Moody (best selling autobiographies .txt) 📕

undoing the only thing keeping us from finding out exactly how that is used.” He was pointing up at the very thing Maddie had no intention of looking at.

“What if I…”

“I want to stop you there. Yes, we both know you can manipulate power. What you don’t know is that you siphon power from the source to do so. This sphere is perhaps half as strong as when I originally conjured it.”

“Is that strong enough?”

“I suppose it is for now, but do we want to test it any further?”

“People are dying. We can’t do nothing!” Maddie was frustrated.

“What is gained by our deaths? It does not matter if Gregg Hampden of White Plains, New York, twenty-seven of your Earth years and father to three children (one of which he knows nothing about) dies.”

“That a real person?”

“He was, until a few seconds ago. See? You didn’t even notice.”

“Giving them names makes it worse!”

“I didn’t name him; Joan and Desmond Hampden named him.”

“Shut up!”

“I don’t know what it will take for you to understand, Maddie. These deaths, while unfortunate, are inconsequential. Every single one of you will eventually die regardless of our action or non-action. Not only have you foolishly endangered your life too soon, but mine as well. I understand the risks I take, but they are my decisions. You have forced us into a foolhardy position and greatly reduced our chances of success. It is possible I could fight my way through; can you say the same?”

Maddie sat on the fence over whether she was ashamed for her maneuver or angry at Kalandar for calling her out about helping. Instead, she said nothing. There was nothing she could say. The bogalites batted and moved the sphere; Maddie felt like a tiny mouse trapped under an old peanut butter jar surrounded by starving alleycats.

“Umm, Kalandar, is the bottom as strong as the rest?” She was pretty sure it was, but not enough to risk not asking the question. “They’re burrowing. I’ve seen this before; they’re going to come up underneath.”

Kalandar reached over and pulled her in tight to his chest just as the bottom hopped up a few inches.

“You’re going to crush me!” Maddie was pressed as if she were Kalandar’s favorite stuffed animal and his parents were fighting.

“This is preferable to the alternative.”

“Are you sure about that?” This was followed immediately by another thump.

“If we are moved suddenly and far enough, you will be outside.”

“What? Won’t you as well?”

“It is my magic; it is going nowhere without me.”

The next jolt made the two bogalites on top fall off, and before they could clamor back up, another hit sent the ball into the air some ten feet. Maddie instinctively clung to the demon; any reservations she’d had about the close proximity were quickly dismissed when she saw the alternative. Kalandar got into a fetal position, wrapping his considerable body around Maddie, making sure no part of her was not encased within his own. As they came down, the collision snapped three of the legs of the bogalite that cushioned their landing. The shriek was ear-splitting. Maddie wanted to cover her ears but did not dare to let go.

“Make it stop,” she begged.

They were saved from further auditory nightmares when a bogalite burst through the ground and into the sphere. There was a crunching sound, much like that of a dinosaur egg being cracked; Maddie hoped it was the tick’s head, but Kalandar knew it wasn’t. He watched as a spider web-thin crack appeared, looking as if it were hovering in the air.

“That’s not good,” he spoke as he watched tiny veins spread away from the initial starburst.

“What’s not good?”

“Hold on tight. I need to let go so that I can make another sphere.”

“Do you have the power reserves to do that?”

“I feel as if I may…in any case, it is approaching the point where I do not have a choice.”

“Can’t you just strengthen the one we got?”

“Doesn’t quite work like that. There will be a moment where we are completely exposed.”

“Are you serious?”

“I can only have one field in existence at the same time…at least on the same plane.”

“Can you get us to another plane?”

“I can get me to another plane.”

Maddie quickly understood what that meant. If he left her now, she was dead, a plain simple fact punctuated by a copious amount of her blood.

“Would you?” She meant would he leave her. Yes, she had got them into this particular mess, but that didn’t mean she wanted to make restitution by dying.

“I will save you if I can.”

Again what he didn’t say was implied: he wasn’t going to sacrifice himself for her. They were being batted around on the tops of bogalites, like a beach ball at a rock concert. Maddie watched as the crack spread. She knew if her traveling partner was going to do something, it needed to be done quickly. They were moved around so much that they weren’t near any particular bogalite for that long, but like a toddler that immediately heads for the most dangerous thing in the room, the creatures seemed to know that the shell protecting the duo was failing, and they would invariably attack that spot. Maddie wondered if the crack was sufficient enough that their scent was leaking through.

Kalandar’s eyes were closed. “Ah, it would appear that your friends are aware of our plight,” he mumbled.

22

THE MOON

“What are they doing?” Sam asked as she watched Kalandar and Maddie approach the wall.

“Idiots are tearing it down,” Sandra sneered as the wall began to collapse in on itself.

“I don’t think they’re going to make it.” Thistle had her hand over her mouth.

“Would that be the worst thing?” Sandra asked. “One’s a demon and the other is a giant creature of the underworld; how much worse off would we be?”

“My mother left when I was very young to fight in a war; it’s too bad yours didn’t go with her.”

“Not so long ago, that would have made me mad…not