Page 100 of Fuse

“Well. Congratulations, Miss Crist. You thought to surprise me earlier and failed—but now it seems the depths of your stupidity have truly succeeded at the quest.”

My heartrate triples as Emma advances by a couple of calm steps. Jesus, if that’s really her…and she’s really facing off against Faline…

“I don’t give a shit if you’re entertained or not, Faline. Or about your assessment of my IQ, for that matter.” Another two steps, in which her self-sure strut is augmented by a battle-ready flick of her hands. “I don’t care because you don’t matter. Because you can try to hold me back right now—and maybe you can—but that won’t stop me from getting right back up, no matter how hard it is or deeply it hurts, and coming at you with every molecule of air left in my lungs and every drop of strength left in my limbs.”

In response to Faline’s scoff, Emma merely shakes her head. “Because in the end, I’ll still have what you desire most—yet can never understand enough to have.”

For the very first time, she fully looks over to me. Then straight into me.

“I have true love. Real love. Complete fusion with another, beyond labels and legacies and who-saved-who.” For the first time, her hear-me-roar countenance gives way to another look. A face full of the Emmalina from before. The tender longing of the woman who owns my heart and now captivates my soul all over again. “Not just the love of my life,” she rasps. “The love of my existence.”

Once more, I give up on even trying to breathe. Or comprehend. Or figure any of this the hell out.

Even as Faline breaks apart the air with her slow, mocking smacks of applause. “What an adorable little oration,” she spits. “The ‘love of your existence,’ sí?” She shakes out her reddened fingers and jerks them upward, abandoning Morticia for a true witch resonance this time. With palms turned in and fingers slashing upward, she bursts with a gloating shout before charging, “Then you will certainly not have any issue about dying for him, hmmm?”

With that, she twists and lifts her hands again, and I almost expect a black cauldron to explode out of the floor to suck Emma down into its glowing morass.

What does happen is no less jarring.

The bitch’s electric web is back, only now it sizzles across the air over and around us, an electric force field reinforced with strands of bright-red light. If every inch of those strands weren’t sparking like electrical wires in the rain, I’d call them pretty—but when they start splitting on themselves in order to slither horizontally through the air, it’s past time for poetry. Each of those buzzing snakes hisses and crackles with the obvious potential for killing someone at first touch.

And three of them are headed toward Emma now.

Then four.

Then five.

“Fuck!” I shout. “No!” And wrestle like a madman against my bonds, shaking the entire table. And finally, finally, have managed enough residual power to notch a tear in the shackle on my right ankle. To ram it hard enough over and over to loosen the damn thing. And then to do the same on the binding around my calf. Then my knee, and my lower thigh, and my upper thigh.

Not fast enough.

She’ll be dead before I can…

But she’s sure as fuck not dead.

With balletic sweeps of her arms, my avenging angel fries every damn one of those crimson snakes—literally, she’s cooked them off the air like drips of butter in an atmospheric pan. Once that’s handled, she spins and burns half of the spider webs lining the room too—not a development Faline takes with diva dignity. Her shriek is like a Gorgon with bubonic plague, medieval fury mixed with a leaf blower that just sucked up a ground squirrel, as she lunges forward with hands outstretched. The sickening sound worsens as her fingers slam into another strand of Emma’s heat, and the eight tips of her longest digits are burned to nubs like candles stabbed into the sun. Which, when it comes to my girl’s power, is a damn appropriate comparison.

Christ.

My girl’s power.

I seriously just thought that.

For a second, I can’t even focus on escaping more of my bonds. Confusion and bewilderment mix with awe and elation, centering on one actuality that can’t be ignored any more than the blinding, resounding, resplendent star my woman has become.

The freak she’s turned herself into…for me.

And is now fighting as an army of one to save me.

Not acceptable.

“Goddamnit,” I snarl.

Not. Acceptable.

But I don’t waste the time or the oxygen to vocalize it. Every cell in my blood is ordered to the warfront of my body, blasting back into my limbs and muscles until I burst with a roar, straining and pushing—and popping every shackle on my arms free at once.

My yell has barely been noticed. Faline, barely taking breaks for air between charges at Emma, has clearly turned up the game on her volume to offset the epic fail on her offensive. Where she’s plunging and squawking like a deluded sailor, Emma is still a poised ballerina of light and lucidity—though swapping the tutu for the tightest, hottest leather. Every move she makes is the epitome of flawless brevity, corresponding to at least four or five from Faline. Not that the bitch stops long enough to notice. Not that Faline is even thinking straight anymore.