were more than fast enough to read my molasses-slow human motions and dodge the strike when my arm flung out. So no more open motions… wait… I remembered something Levi had told me about kung-fu. Something about a lying hand or distracting hand. Hah.
I rolled over and let my feet fall through the rafters, grabbing the wood only long enough to slow my drop a bit. As soon as I hit the ground, I flung one hand forward but projected the electricity in an arc that wrapped around my shields. A loud snap and crack and a sharp Russian word sounded from behind me. My chalk was lying on the concrete nearby and I grabbed it, finishing my partial circle and powering it instantly.
A body smashed off the circle, smaller than Arkady, but bigger than Tanya.
“Hah! Very good, Declan,” Chris said from the darkness. “You’re learning. Now, how to move forward? You’ll have to leave the circle sometime.”
Tempering the impulse to waste my borrowed charge of electricity, I instead used basic telekinesis to grab the two-by-four that had bounced off me earlier and whip it in his direction.
“Oh, but I’m not there any more,” he said from the other side of me. I pulled the wood back till it floated in front of me. One four-foot piece of wood wasn’t going to work. I mentally snapped it in two, something I couldn’t have done physically. Then I snapped both pieces again, and again. Now I had eight roughly six-inch-long blocks and I swirled them around me in a continuous weaving circle, speeding them up till they were moving in a blur. A quick look around didn’t show anyone visible. I broke the circle and ran forward, the spiraling blocks moving around me.
“Nice,” Tanya’s voice said from the darkness. “But wooden blocks aren’t very scary.”
“I thought we were training? If this was for keeps, I’d make them all wooden spikes or pull up concrete from the floor, or just flatten the building,” I said, slamming to a stop at the far end. A short set of unfinished stairs climbed to the second story and I rushed up them before anything else interfered.
“Breaking my building is a fail,” Tanya admonished from the dark. Couldn’t tell if she was below or up on the rafters. I shivered at the thought of making her mad. She was just playing with me—I’d be a smear of red jelly if she wasn’t.
“But points for out-of-the-box thinking,” Chris added, his voice echoing. “But how to cross the rafters? Can’t put a circle down up here, now can you?”
No wiseass, I couldn’t. Not on a broken floor. A witch would have to bring their own circle with them and that was impossible… or was it? A piece of bright copper wire, a grounding cable, hung from a nail on a nearby beam, like an electrician left it there when he was called off the job. Called off by a vampiress who wanted the building left rustic.
I grabbed it and held the two ends together, requesting the metal to bond with itself.
Now I had a circle of copper four feet in diameter. Too big. I twisted the loop like I’d seen Ashley do with her infinity scarf, making a doubled two-foot circle. It lay across the rafters and I stepped into it and powered it up, keeping my winding rope of spinning blocks outside the circle. The curving blue wall extended straight down to the concrete floor ten feet below and straight up to the wooden ceiling ten feet above.
Now to see if it could move. I willed the copper up an inch, till it floated just off the wooden joists. When I stepped forward, my circle stepped with me, the wooden blocks still swirling like a hyperactive nest of giant bees swarming around me.
Something giant smashed into my circle, completely ignoring the blocks that pelted it, but bouncing off the glowing wall of my circle. I snapped out a bolt of electricity without moving my arms and scored a satisfying yelp from the massive Russian vampire.
Stepping quickly but as carefully as I could, I crossed the open floor. A glance back showed Arkady was gone, not that I expected to actually see him.
I made it to the other side without attack and found another stair, this one as old as the building. It led up through the thick planks of the third floor. I took down the circle, climbed the stairs in a rush, and tossed my wire