Eona - Alison Goodman [56]
Merciful gods, he was using me to kill Ido.
“Dillon, no!” I slammed my body back, yanking at his hands, but I was still held fast.
“Eight.”
From nearby came the clash of steel meeting steel. Swords! My heart contracted into a hard ball, then burst back into drumming fear. Had the soldiers attacked Kygo? A dark knot of struggling men flickered past. Ryko, beating back three soldiers.
“Nine.”
There was nothing I could do to stop Dillon in the earthly plane; he was too strong. Focusing on his ecstatic face, I tried to shift into mind-sight. It was like forcing my way through a briar made of pelting water and panting terror. As he spun me around, I managed three deep breaths. On the fourth, the graygreen earthly plane yielded to the iridescence of the energy world.
“Ten.”
I staggered into the next spin, disoriented by the sudden assault of bright color. Before me, Dillon’s flesh and blood shifted into the streaming pathways of his energy body. I gasped, repulsed by the swollen network of dark power that flowed through him in a thick, oily slip. What had happened to his Hua? Even the seven points of power along his spine—usually pumping with the silvery life force—were black and bloated. And something else was wrong with them. I stared at the heart-point in his chest, only a faint tinge of its green vigor left in the murky depths. It was spinning in the wrong direction.
He raised his head, the dark energy swarming through his eye sockets.
“Eleven,” he said and smiled. “He’s dying.”
My head snapped back as he pulled me into the secondto-last pivot. I locked my eyes on the crimson dragon above, desperate for a fixed point of sanity. Her huge, sinuous body thrashed against an invisible enemy. Ruby claws raked the air in futile slashes. A channel of bright gold Hua stretched between her and Dillon—he was siphoning her power, with no return of vital energy. With no defense against the ten bereft dragons.
“Dillon, let her go. Before the others come. You can’t control this!”
“I can do anything,” he yelled.
Fury roared through me, bringing a new surge of strength. He was hurting my dragon. Using my power.
“Eona!” I screamed, calling our shared name, but there was no answering cascade of golden energy through me. It was all streaming into Dillon. Somehow, he was blocking us from union. Another channel, thin and stuttering, leached from the blue dragon. The beast was barely an outline, its small, pale body rolling in agony.
“Dillon, stop it! You’re hurting them.” A terrible thought seized me—could he kill the dragons?
He cannot. Ido’s voice. It was barely a whisper in my mind, ragged with pain and effort.
Are the others coming, Ido? Can you hold them back?
They will not come near the Black Folio, he rasped. Stop the boy from draining my dragon. Please, before— His voice broke into a scream that ripped through me.
“How?” I yelled. “How do I stop him?”
Get the book, Ido panted. Cut him from its power.
I did not want to touch the book.
“Twelve!” Dillon shouted, triumphant.
He wrenched me into the final spin, breaking my hold on the energy world. Its jewel colors slid back into the dull, wet landscape of the mountainside. With a shrieking rush, the rain and wind disappeared, the flooded ground suddenly dry and hard under my stumbling feet. No more driving rain. My face, gown, hair: all dry. Ryko and the three soldiers flashed past again, but they were no longer fighting. All four men were staring up at the sky.
“Look at that!” Dillon shouted through a new roar of gushing water. He stopped spinning, the sudden halt jerking me into a gasping standstill. “Look at what I can do.” He threw his head back, laughing.
Above, the rain was still streaming from the heavy clouds, but not downward. It was horizontal,