And Joseph’s eyes stayed closed.
I screamed Marcus’s name. My heels kicked up sand. Moonlit dunes and crumbling ruins melted within my vision. But I wasn’t fast enough. Never as fast as I needed.
Marcus reached the boulder and slung Joseph across it. Then he knelt to his boot.
Silver flashed in his hand. A knife. Which meant Joseph wasn’t dead yet—and Marcus was finally doing what he’d planned all along.
But just as light glimmered on the blade, a second shimmer caught my eye. A movement in Joseph’s hand.
A crystal clamp.
Marcus stood, his back to us.
“Stop!” I shrieked.
“Attack!” Oliver bellowed beside me.
But slow. We were so slow.
Marcus reared back with the knife.
Not again, I thought. I would not let this happen. So with all the strength and soul I could summon, I threw my sword.
Tarnished and ancient, the sword was carried in a perfect line through the air by my magic. . . .
It sliced into Marcus’s back. All the way to the hilt.
His knife fell. He staggered into the stone . . . but immediately shoved himself back up. When he twisted around, blood bubbled from between his teeth.
For the tiniest space of a breath, I saw him as Elijah. My brother impaled.
But then he smiled, and his hands rose. This was not Elijah.
Magic rammed into me. Cloying and putrid, it charged over me—over Oliver and the queens’ guards.
I swayed back . . . and then clutched my throat.
I couldn’t breathe. Magic coated my throat, choked off my airway. My lungs heaved and fought, but there was nothing coming in. Nothing going out.
Shadows crossed my vision. Just a little air, I pleaded with my body, thrusting magic against him. I fought the oil sliding through me. I pushed it back out. . . .
But it didn’t work. Marcus continued to chant . . . and smile . . . and dig his fingers toward us. And the sword in his back began to push out of his body. The flesh mended with each passing second.
My legs buckled, and panic seared through my brain. Was this the end? A single spell to suffocate us?
Just as I tumbled toward the sand, I had enough time to see a dark figure rise up from behind the stone. Behind Joseph. Behind Marcus.
She lifted her arm, and a distant crack! pierced the fog inside me.
Blood exploded from Marcus’s forehead.
His spell lifted.
And I thrust back to my feet as Oliver staggered up beside me.
Crack!
Blood burst from Marcus’s chest, and Allison’s pistol smoked. She fired again. And again. Yet somehow, even as each bullet broke through him, Marcus stayed upright.
He was so strong.
But so was I.
My hand shot up. Power lanced out. Straight at Marcus’s heart, I poured every ounce of my soul into the assault. And I stumbled closer and closer.
Then from the boulder, lightning exploded. In agonizing slowness, Joseph gathered himself upright. Yet, though his body listed, his hand stayed steady. His electricity stayed true.
Like a thousand spiderwebs, my magic and Joseph’s sizzled over Marcus’s body. Then Oliver’s power unleashed, and Marcus was nothing more than a beacon of blinding light.
Yet no matter how much energy I shoved into my attack, it wasn’t enough. I could feel Marcus pushing back. Even as our souls wrapped around his, he wriggled and writhed free.
My feet carried me, shambling through the sand, toward Joseph. I was draining too fast, and even though I sucked at the world around me, the world had nothing left to give.
Marcus was taking his power from the sand, the wind, the stones.
I needed the power of the crystal clamp. I needed electricity.
I reached the stone, my left hand slung clumsily out toward the lines blazing from Joseph’s fingertips. I laced my fingers through his. . . .
Electricity tore from me. Blistering and trembling, it sliced through my veins and gathered in my heart—then surged from my right wrist. Smoke filled the air. Flames licked up my sleeve. I could barely see, and I certainly couldn’t hear.
But I could feel. Somehow, with the power of electricity, Joseph and I had stabbed into Marcus’s soul. I felt each of his heartbeats. I understood the scale of his power. And even his thoughts trickled around inside me.
And that, more than anything else, terrified me.
For Marcus was amused. Eventually our power would run out, and he simply had to wait until that moment. Then he would crush us. He had two souls to lean on. He had the Black Pullet’s soul too. And he had the very soul of the earth.
We could not stop him, and he found it funny that we even tried.
Horror choked through me, spiraling around the electricity. I looked at Joseph. His eyes shone blue, but there was fear within. We weren’t strong enough.
Crack! More pistol shots, almost lost in the eternal thunder of our electricity.