I realized it was the one Adam had identified as the killing rune. The other symbols floating in the air flickered. I had the strangest sensation I could read them, if only I looked at them a certain way. They had to be Cyrinthian. My demonic side seemed well-versed in the language. Unfortunately, I didn't have a way to summon those lingual abilities at will.
A thought occurred to me. The desperate thought of a person who has run out of time and with nothing left to lose. Reaching inside me, I let the anger and frustration free. I let the incubus within loose. Focusing on Conroy, I reminded myself of all he'd done. Stolen my sister. Brainwashed her. Betrayed me to Maximus. Anger piled upon hate and grew to rage. Blinding red fury washed across my eyes and a skull-piercing headache cracked into my head with all the force of a boulder. I touched my forehead and felt the tiny points of horns.
My eyesight shimmered as I crossed the threshold from somewhat human to demonic. Some of the symbols suddenly held meaning for me, clear as reading about Dick and Jane. But there was so much to read. My gaze locked onto the last rune. Even with this new understanding, it looked like a mass of gibberish. As the spell rotated around Ivy, I realized with a start, I had been viewing the rune from the back. With it facing me from the front my vision zoomed in until I could see the hundreds of tiny symbols creating the pattern, almost like ASCII art.
It was like looking at a picture with two different images hidden inside it. Like seeing a face on the surface of the moon. The meaning of the pattern clicked inside my head. I traced the symbols until I found one tiny part that held the meaning of the rune together and defined it. I willed it to vanish, but the single character was bound by the symbols around it, held into form by the magic used to create it in the first place. Digging inside, I pulled up every shred of energy I'd absorbed, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't erase any part of it. Doing so would erase the rune and cause a vacuum, some part of me realized. There was too much energy bound in the spell to allow it.
But there was an alternative. One thing that might work. Instead of erasing the tiny symbol holding the rune together, I could add a tiny slash through the center, like changing the letter "C" to an "E". It took everything I had just to make one tiny mark. As my will finished adding the slash, I collapsed—or at least would have if I hadn't been held captive in Conroy's anti-gravity field.
Ivy was already summoning more energy, renewing the vortex around her as she started the incantation to power the last rune. To commit mass murder. As exhaustion took hold of me, my demonic sight flickered off. Tiny nubs fell from my forehead as my manifestation aborted itself. I had done all I could. I hoped.
Knowing my luck, I'd come up with an even better idea after the fact and curse myself. Like the time Phyllis Jenkins had called me a loser during recess in eighth grade, and by the time I came up with what I should have retorted, it was already lunchtime.
I wondered how Elyssa was doing and prayed she'd been able to evacuate the place in case my plan failed.
The last rune burst into red light. Energy washed across the cavern as the powered runes glowed with the brilliance of a small sun. Ivy, a look of triumph and pride on her face, placed the staff in the center of the runes and shouted a word. Bolts of white energy speared into the staff. A sphere of power gathered atop the ivory shaft, growing larger and larger. It floated up into the air, gathering size until it was the size of a watermelon.
It exploded.
A wave of energy washed over me like the mother of all static electricity charges. The hairs on my arm and head prickled straight up with the sensation of needles all over my skin. The prickles across my lower regions made me glad I at least didn't have back hair to add to it.
Light bulbs exploded. The air thundered. Whatever had been supporting me cut out and I tumbled to the ground, my jaws suddenly free.