Read Online Curse of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 2) by Rebecca Chastain - Free Book Online Page B

water almost twenty feet across, and the magic stuttered around us. Water element rising from the physical liquid clashed with fire, extinguishing a patch of polarized element. The influx of fire magic feeding into the earth section slowed, and the advancing border of the entire polarization bubble halted. The weight of earth against my senses eased.
    I spun. On the opposite side of the earth section, water still drank down the earth element through the earth–water seam. Magic continued to push through the constructive weave—water into wood, wood into air—draining the magic from each section. Before I could celebrate, the built-up energy hit the air–fire border and whooshed through, strengthening the fire element. The calm waters of the reflection pool burst into a boil. Steam gushed into the air as the entire pool evaporated. Fresh fire magic fed into the earth section, constricting earth around my skin again, and the outer rim of the bubble jumped several yards, negating the progress we’d made to the border.
    “So much for that,” Velasquez said, turning back toward our goal and setting a ground-eating pace.
    I fell in behind him, gasping when I caught sight of his back. Long rips in the shirt of his gray uniform exposed bleeding cuts and pebble-embedded abrasions.
    “Good thing I came with you,” he said. “Otherwise it would have been Marcus flambé.” When I didn’t respond, he shot me a look over his shoulder. “What, too graphic?”
    “Your back. I thought your uniform had protection weaves in it.”
    “It did. That blast, this”—he gestured to the polarized energy around us—“burned through it.”
    My hand lifted to my own torn sleeve, the only damage my unspelled clothing had taken during the explosion. My skin beneath it was unharmed. “Ah, did I thank you for . . .” Would it be too dramatic to say saving my life ?
    “Letting you use me like an air cushion?” Velasquez grinned.
    I caught my breath. The man needed a permit for a smile like that. Maybe that’s why he didn’t pull it out much. He should, though.
    “I couldn’t invite you to the party, then let you get hurt,” he said.
    “You have a weird idea of a party.” I stepped around a bench seat and into a well of pain.
    Invisible bonds wrapped around my legs to my waist, and agony welled from my bones, burrowing outward through my joints and my skin. I screamed and wrenched to free myself. Nothing held me, yet I couldn’t move. I folded forward to clutch my legs—
    “No! Don’t!”
    —and the trap slid over my head. Pain pulled from my pores, and I flailed against the invisible bonds, gasping on air too thick to breathe. My foot shifted. I clawed for magic, but even earth didn’t respond. A hollow nothingness pressed back where magic should have existed, stunning me. I could see the element eddying above my head, but I couldn’t reach it and none penetrated the invisible spherical barrier holding me.
    Velasquez thrust his arm into the air beside me, fingers splayed. Thick bands of earth pushed from his fingertips, the movement of the element the most beautiful magic I’d ever seen. The trap eroded and distorted the magic, flattening it and almost extinguishing it before feathery tendrils brushed the inside edge of the invisible sphere. It imploded, and magic sucked into the void, the raw earth sharp and welcoming.
    I collapsed sideways, rubbing the fading cramps from my legs as the pain ebbed from my body.
    “What was that?” I asked, accepting Velasquez’s help up.
    “A null pocket. When the purifier exploded, this nook of balanced elements must have canceled each other out.”
    I glanced around. The five elements were equally represented in a tight circle around the stone bench. Dozens such setting existed throughout Focal Park. “Why didn’t it get consumed by the earth?”
    Velasquez shrugged. “We’re dealing with bizarre magic. Somehow that tiny explosion took down the ward, too, which doesn’t make