Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle

sighed and I sang.
    The lightning flickered and sizzled and flowed continuously into my palms.
    And still I was dropping.
    Air gusted past me. The tornado threw me around like a speck of dust. I curled into a ball. I felt full, so terribly crammed with energy that my skin might split open.
    Thunder trumpeted nearby, but softer.
    Thunderbird.
    Wings flapped up around me as his body flew under me. I stretched out and clung to his neck.
    Beside us, the tornado dwindled and the wind died down, the roar falling into near silence. The griffon glided to the ground beside a white picket fence.
    Here, there was no fog, or the storm had blown it away. I could see the pale barrier stretching endlessly across the land of my meditation world, penetrating the surface, an obstruction that divided this place that needed no separation.
    Why, Menessos?
    With my hands hovering above the white wood, I reached into my core again. Electricity crackled across my knuckles and I grabbed the fence, letting the energy and heat flash out of me.
    Sparks crackled from the pickets, stretching in either direction. The wood blackened. Smoke wafted up. I opened the conduit as wide as possible and shoved all that I’d absorbed into this fence.

What binding there was is about to fade.
The spell is broken, magic unmade.
What binding there was is burned and scorched.
In signum amoris is no more.
In signum amoris is no more.

    The fence exploded, shattering pickets into little more than splinters one by one for as far as I could see. When the energy of the bolt was used up, the land on either side of the fencing was unaffected, but what remained of the posts was reduced to ash.
    I was awestruck by what I’d accomplished, but horrified by the ease of destruction.
    “It’s done,” Thunderbird said. “And time for you to go home.” Behind me, he flapped his wings, and the talons of his foreleg wrapped around my arm.
    I awoke from the meditation to a cold world of wetness and fog and pain. I threw my arms, splashing and thrashing, caught in a swift-flowing river.
    The fog above me swirled and parted. Thunderbird descended through the mist, talons out. He gripped my arm and dragged me through the water. In minutes, I could hear voices, and weeping. My heels bounced over rocks and I twisted toward the shore.
    Nana was sitting on the bank. Her cheeks were red, but she was silent. My mother stood a few feet away, sobbing, with her arm clutching her stomach, as if she were about to be ill. The griffon dragged me ashore, released me and flew away.
    Both turned as I scrambled to my feet.
    “Persephone,” my mother blurted in a choked voice. “Is it really you?” Her eyes were wide and watery with disbelief.
    “Yeah.” As I shivered and rubbed at my aching head, everything that had happened snapped into place and I realized what they must’ve thought. “Yeah. It’s me.” I glanced from her to Nana. “What are you doing on the bank?”

CHAPTER SIX

    A fter crawling up the embankment—swearing all the way over the ruined dress—I hurried into the fog. Just as I was sure my feet had veered to one side, the light of the candles brightened the mist. On target, I was able to locate the parking lot.
    In the days that had followed my mother’s accident, we’d all understood that Eris wasn’t ever again going to drive the old stick-shift Corvette. So, partially as a pity-present and partially as a thank-you-for-acting-to-save-my-boyfriend, I offered to buy her an automatic vehicle that she would be able to drive when the doctor gave her the okay.
    She’d picked a ten-year-old Dodge Dakota SLT from the third car lot we’d visited. It was a high-mileage vehicle, but neither the rust edging the wheel wells nor the American flag and eagle decorating the rear window had deterred her decision.
    I think she decided the candy-apple-red vehicle was perfect when she saw the SLT emblem on the side. She laughed and said, “Get the salesman. Tell him I want to take the Slut for a test drive.”
    Of course I hadn’t repeated that to the salesman, but the truck’s name had stuck.
    I ended up driving the Slut here tonight. That left Nana to drive the Corvette—the image kept me amused the whole way. Zhan, my personal bodyguard from Menessos, had been reluctant to let me out of her sight; I’d only been able to get her to stay behind by giving her orders to obtain some sneaky cell phone video footage of Nana getting into the low-riding sports car.
    By the time