Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [114]
Cesca shouted, "Fight the chaos inside yourself--"
Karla's expression rippled from distaste to hatred, then fury. "I remember." She unleashed a second rippling blast that pounded her son with ice and cold. Jess shuddered like an anvil struck with a sledgehammer. "My little boy." She ignored Cesca completely.
As Jess reeled back, struggling to recover from the blow, Cesca cried to the wentals, shouting into a howling wind. "You couldn't tell this was happening here? You couldn't sense it all along?"
The tainted wental is not part of us. Her energies flow in black currents. She wishes only to destroy, to embrace chaos and increase entropy.
"Unless we stop her," Cesca said.
The woman moved forward, her legs pillars of ice, but each footstep burned a mark into the frozen ground. She raised a fist to deal her son another blow. Jess was already doing his best to prevent further destruction.
Cesca wouldn't let him fight alone. She summoned the tingling power within her tissues and deflected the blast enough for Jess to recover. He joined his power with hers and turned it against his mother.
While Karla staggered in the backlash of the strike, Cesca turned to see a new threat coming directly at her. More than twenty slithering nematodes flexed scarlet bodies and flashed diamond-chip fangs, rushing to attack her.
When she had seen these creatures long ago at Ross's funeral, the prehistoric worms had seemed hauntingly beautiful, graceful denizens of Plumas's primordial sea. Now they were demon soldiers controlled by the Karla-thing, intent on keeping her apart from Jess. In a hypnotic, serpentine movement, the nematodes swarmed to surround Cesca.
She faced the scarlet worms, knowing she had to keep these creatures away from Jess and away from the other victims in the grotto. She already saw far too many bodies sprawled among the wreckage.
Though not yet familiar with her new powers, Cesca fought back in any way she could manage, learning from the wentals as she went. First, she imagined her method of attack, concentrating on the energy of lightning and cold water--and the wentals responded by flowing through her, out of her hands, out of her mind. Cesca blasted two nematodes and froze a third one solid.
As Jess squared off with his mother, the tainted wental seemed to be dredging up words, memories, ransacking frozen cells within Karla Tamblyn's preserved brain. "You . . . Ross . . . and Tasia--your little sister." Her voice seemed to come from somewhere else, certainly not from her heart.
As more nematodes swarmed out of the sea and onto the ice pack, old Caleb came forward in a foolish attempt to protect Cesca. "Get away, you slithery things. Go back to the depths!" He stabbed his makeshift spear hard enough to puncture one of the nematodes. Several more raced toward him.
Cesca intercepted them with a blast of power, which distracted her from the dozens more swarming around her. She shouted at Jess's uncle, "Caleb, go stay safe so I can concentrate!"
When the old man looked at her in surprise, she wanted to shove him away with both hands, but her energized touch would have killed him. That thought led to a new idea--perhaps the discharge would also destroy the worms. She reached out to the nearest nematode and touched its slimy skin membrane, but there was no deadly release of power. The creatures, controlled by a spark of Karla's wental energy, were immune.
Hundreds of nematodes swarmed closer, hissing and hooting. She tried to fight them but could not focus her mind to summon her blasts quickly enough. The water elementals themselves were preoccupied with the more important conflict against the tainted wental.
Karla let loose an incredible flurry of blasts, and Jess could barely block them all. His mother hurled random bursts at the ice miners, at the few still-intact dwelling structures, at the machinery, then pummeled her son, driving him back with the sheer power. Cesca could see the anguish behind his eyes when he had to fight back, when his mother attacked him.
While Cesca's attention deflected