Chapter 87: Lightning

"I can probably punch through them alone," Kate said. "Carrying you slows me. They’d close before we cleared the square, and you wouldn’t last three minutes in the middle of that." She looked toward the fight. "Even if we slipped the bats, there’s still the Tiger King and the Hornscale Beast. Both Quasi-King. If either decides to follow, I can’t promise my own exit. I won’t promise yours."

He said nothing. He had already run the exits in his head. Space was the usual door, and the Hornscale Beast had nailed that door shut. Until the seal cracked for real, jumping out was a story he told himself. She was right about the swarm. A plan that needed several monsters to look the other way was not a plan. It was a wish.

So much for an easy leave.

Kate watched him think. "There might be another way."

He looked up.

"The animals are here for a reason. Something in the Museum is pulling them. If you find it and put it in that Space of yours, you might block whatever sense they’re using."

"You think they’d go?"

"I don’t know. If the object is the hook, taking it off the board might change the room." She paused, and the lightness left her. "If you can’t find it, leave as soon as you can. This place is turning into a pit for strong zombies and strong animals. It won’t be long before the whole center is a slaughterhouse."

He glanced at the broken dome. Dust still fell through it in a slow, dirty snow. Somewhere under the Museum, a fossil that should have stayed a fossil had stood up and climbed. That alone was enough to ruin a night. It did not explain the square.

Peacocks burning red lines through the bats. Wolves in the wreckage, snapping at wings. Monkeys with steel in their hands. Goats charging horns-first. A python rolling in the dirt with its teeth in a throat. Things that should have been killing each other for a block of street were piled on the same pavement, screaming, and not leaving. Territory did not work like that. Hunger did not work like that. They were tolerating enemies to stay near the building, and tolerance in this city meant the prize was bigger than the fight.

Something else was in the Museum. He could feel the shape of it without knowing the name. Important enough that a Quasi-King would smash through floors to reach it, and a swarm would black out the morning to circle it. If he did not find it, the building would finish falling with him still inside, and the thing pulling them would still be here when the next monster arrived.

The question was whether he had hours, or minutes.

"One more thing," Kate said.

Her tone changed. The casual edge left it. She was not performing now.

"The Hornscale Beast has a weakness. It fears lightning."

He turned back so fast the sword shifted in his hand. The seal, the reflected spear, the neck that had closed while he watched ~ all of it rearranged around one word.

"Lightning?"

"I saw it. Two nights ago. It was about to take an Ability user, and the person hit it with a Lightning ability. It backed off."

Interest, real, for the first time since he had stepped out. "You’re sure?"

"Sure of what I saw. I can’t tell you how deep the weakness goes. It was enough to make it retreat."

Hope, small and mean. The beast’s defenses had been absurd. It ate attacks and threw them back. It healed. It sat on his teleport like a lid. If lightning could force it off, it was not a god. The problem was obvious. He did not have Lightning. Neither did Elena. Neither did Aria.

Kate spread the golden wings. Dust jumped off the floor from the first beat. "I won’t wait at the Wealth Building forever. If you want Daisy, come when you can."

"Understood."

She gave him one last look and launched at the broken dome. The wingbeat shoved grit and glass across the tile. She shot through the opening and climbed. Several bats broke from the swarm and came at her. She did not slow. One wing tilted and struck the first bat. It burst in the air and tumbled. Another tried the side and met the other wing, smashed aside, gone. She tore the gap before the rest could close it. As she passed, a faint glimmer of Cores flashed between the feathers. She took them without breaking stride.

In seconds she was above the dome and lost in the circling mass. Ethan watched until he could not tell gold from morning light.

Then he looked down.

Lightning. The word stayed.

He needed a way out, and now the thing sealing the door had a crack in its nature. If he could get a Lightning ability, the Hornscale Beast might stop being a wall. His thoughts snagged. A memory. The white Core from the basement. He still had it.

He put a hand in his pocket. Smooth. Cold. He had kept it off his tongue on purpose, because the last white Core had vanished into the Space on its own and he had not wanted a second surprise in the middle of a crocodile’s aisle. Space, maybe. Something else, maybe. Kate’s lightning sat in his head next to that cold weight, and he did not know if the two things belonged together.

Outside, the square roared again. A beam of red cut the bats. Something huge hit the western rubble and the Museum answered with a shudder that walked up through his boots. The seal was still there. He could feel it when he reached, a wall in the air, softer when the beast was busy, never gone.

Daisy was on the top floor of the Wealth Building, south side, with Bella and Clara, and Kate was already leaving the city in her head. Six days of diesel, if they were lucky. A beast that hated lightning. A Core he had been afraid to swallow.

He closed his hand around it and did not take it out. Not yet. Not with the hall still full of glass and the sky still full of wings. But the easy exits were gone, and the woman who had used him once had just handed him the only lever he had.

The question was whether the white Core was that lever, or another way to die faster.