Deep River Reckoning (The Reckoners) by Durgin Doranna

Author:Durgin, Doranna [Durgin, Doranna]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Blue Hound Visions
Published: 2010-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

6.

"Well?" Katherine demanded.

"Can you not think of another way to feel in charge?" Garrie asked her crossly. "Because really, bossing me around this must feel like one great big fail."

::No guns,:: Sklayne said, even as Katherine narrowed her eyes and started gathering her own energies. Losing perspective, thinking of nothing but the need to control. Sklayne added, ::Blades. Club. Funny hair.::

"They're coming," Trevarr added, standing solidly between the access bridge and Garrie, if still within the bubble. Still tense with the pain she'd caused him, but not at all with what lay before him. "Tell me when it's safe."

It's never safe.

But she understood. Safe to move outside the shields. "All right," she said, and managed to make it matter-of-fact at that. "I think I should probably say, this isn't a good idea. But—"

Put this off, and men might die. Trevarr might be hurt. She'd lose the entities and more cyclists could fall ill.

Could die.

"All right," she said again, and knelt in the damp, heavy clay-filled sand—only to come face to face with Katherine, her distorted features telling the tale of perspective lost, ethereal explosion on the rise.

Garrie narrowed her eyes and gave a good hard shove—one that sent Katherine flying back into the water, splashless, her energies thinned, her entire being an expression of astonishment. Garrie pointed a finger at her—a warning. Pull yourself together.

It would buy her a few moments, anyway. She swiftly reinforced layers of protection—around her heart, her soul. Filter. Maybe not all that different from conduit. She'd done that before. Surely she could do it again.

Of course, it hadn't been pretty, then. Not pretty at all.

A man's voice called out in challenge. Not quite upon them. Carefully, so carefully, Garrie thinned a spot in the shield.

Rapacious in their deep-seated fury, the entities instantly sensed the weakness, fighting each other to reach it—a roiling swarm of nastiness, blocking her view.

"Fark!" Garrie frantically threw her hands up—palms together, then spreading wide—letting the breezes surge up between them. Another shield—this time, permeable, to allow ethereal energies and none of the gunk. Lisa McGarrity, living filter.

If she'd done it right.

Please work. Please work. Puh-LEEZE—

For extra points, she had to nab them before they reached her—or worse, before they reached Trevarr.

"Oh, my," Katherine said, reappearing nearby and significantly subdued—and looking not at Garrie's efforts, but beyond her to those who approached. "Those men look like bullies."

"Yeah," Garrie muttered, not daring to turn away from the thinned shielding. "And he responds so well to that, too."

Their harsh words, full of expletives, scraped against her attention—but she didn't listen, nor to Trevarr's deep-throated response. Not with the first little entity glob squeezing itself through the thinned shield to strafe her at manic hummingbird speed. "Incoming!"

"Safe?" Trevarr asked, breaking his exchange with the men, his back against hers as she snared the entity. Safe to leave the shield?

"Busy!" she gasped back. Her voice vibrated with the incompatible forces between her hands, the entity closed in and fighting mindlessly for freedom. Maybe a fish, maybe an insect.

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