At the slightest movement of my arm to gouge him, Parker dove back.
"She, go home," he ordered.
Mase turned slightly as if to run, but the white lightning still ringed him and the albino alien even as it leaped toward him. It crawled up his back and slowed, pulsing up his spine as if winding around each vertebra. He threw his head back and screamed. The inside of his forearm, scarred with track marks, lit up from within. Lightning crackled across his blue eye, then his clouded half blind one, and zipped a beaming white glow behind the scar down his face in wild pulses, as if the light was sawing his skull open. He screamed again, agonizing, soul-wrenching.
I hurled myself at Parker, my teeth on edge at Mase's yells. "Stop!"
A loud thud sounded from behind me. And a gunshot. Parker lifted into the air, a blurred corkscrew of white and black energy, and vanished. A rumpled black cloak lay where he'd been moments before.