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He made a casting motion into the mine and then, after a moment, nodded sharply. “Right, there’s a secondary noise barrier in place over the gate, but if they linger nearby, they will see your body heat, so keep out of the direct line of sight. Seryn, I’ll need you to monitor the ground and tell me if there’s any movement. Alan, when I give the word, toss our bait.”

Said bait wasn’t going to go quietly, but I didn’t say anything. Better they think I remained incapable of doing anything more than what I was told. Which might well be the truth, given I hadn’t yet tried to do anything else.

Rogan turned and walked into the mine. Seryn followed. When I didn’t move, Alan pushed me forward. Thankfully, we didn’t have to go very far to find the gate. Its frame was large and ornately carved with symbols and what looked like glyphs, and it dominated the far wall of the manmade cavern. There was no actual door though, just a weirdly viscous blackness sitting within the frame. It was a void that led to hell itself—if hell was a realm where humans were treated like cattle.

The sword and the crown lay on the ground in front of the gate. Rogan stopped in front of them and rather reverently drew the serpent ring from his pocket, placing it beside the other two Claws.

Seryn walked past him to the left side of the gate, pressing one hand against the ornately carved stone and the other on the cavern wall. She closed her eyes and, after a moment, nodded.

Alan pulled me to a halt and remained close behind me. Bad move, I thought, but resisted the immediate temptation to kick him in the nuts. If I acted too soon, they would knock me out. If I moved too late, I would die.

Trouble was, lightning still burned through my veins, which suggested the drug remained active. And I couldn’t risk calling my knives to me until Rogan had begun the ritual or spell or whatever the fuck he had to do to claim the Claws.

I flexed my fingers again, my left hand less responsive than the right, and tried to calm the growing sense of doom. Patience; I just needed patience.

But the gate’s viscous center now stirred in a sluggish circle, and I couldn’t escape the sudden notion that the Annwfyn were coming.

Rogan began his spell. The crown rose, lifted by invisible fingers, and was placed upon his head. The spell’s power ratcheted up; dark purple fire ran down the fuller of the black sword in response. As it was lifted from the ground, I closed my eyes and reached for the knives. The Eye pulsed and a heartbeat later, the heavy weight of steel landed in my hands.

It hurt.

I didn’t fucking care.

The sword lay in Rogan’s hand and the ring was rising toward his waiting finger.

Time was up.

I dropped to my knees, spun around, and thrust a knife through Alan’s knee, twisting it sideways and slicing away a good chunk of his kneecap in the process. He screamed and fell, but somehow gathered air and cast it at me, throwing me across the cavern. I hit the wall with a grunt, and felt the earth moving at my back as Seryn tried to encase me. I rolled away, a scream tearing up my throat as my weight rested briefly on my broken arm. Caught a brief glimpse of the ring sliding over Rogan’s hand and knew time was up. I surged to my feet and ran straight at him, knife raised, ready to strike.

Air hit me again, lifting me up, moving me forward. Toward the gate, toward the Annwfyn gathering on the other side.

I screamed in denial and reached for the lightning that burned through my system. It erupted from my skin, a blanket of brightness that flung itself at the bleeding man behind me, covering him, binding him, burning him. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, the flesh at his throat sloughing away, taking with it all ability to speak. His leash of air disintegrated, dropping me hard. I landed on my hands and knees and white-hot pain erupted, flashing up my broken arm and rolling through the rest of me, momentarily threatening to steal consciousness.

I sucked in air, fighting the blackness, fighting the bile that rose up my throat. Air whispered a warning, and I looked up. A massive boulder was coming straight at me.

I flung up a hand, made a fist of air, and knocked the boulder to one side. It crashed against the cavern wall and exploded, sending razor-sharp shards flying through the air. I caught them and flung them back at Seryn.

She slapped the wall, and a river of stone wrapped around her, protecting her from most of the projectiles. Then that wall exploded, and the projectiles were heading back toward me. I cast a shield of air in front of me, forcing them to either side.

Movement, light, caught my eye. I twisted around, but not quickly enough. Lightning hit me, burned me, even as air grabbed me and tossed me forward. Past Rogan, past Seryn, toward the gate.

I screamed another denial and, as my feet and legs slipped into viscous blackness, stabbed wildly at the wall with the knife. It slid into stone as easily as it did flesh, and I stopped with a suddenness that just about yanked my arm out of its socket. On the far side of the soupy blackness, hands grabbed my legs—clawed hands, greedy hands, trying to pull me all the way in even as the heat of lightning arced toward me again. I raised the other knife, let the lightning hit its tip. Let it rip through the blade and into me, then turned it around and flung it back at the storm mage. It incinerated him in an instant.

My grip on the knife hilt slipped against the pressure the Annwfyn were asserting. I twisted around and pointed the other knife at the doorway and unleashed another bolt of lightning. It hit the wall and broke apart. Flesh could get through but nothing else, it seemed.

Then the stone around my anchor began to melt. Seryn. Fury hit, as deep and as dangerous as the storm that rumbled outside. I called to the air, grabbed Seryn, and tossed her into the blackness behind me, aiming her at whoever—whatever—had my legs.

It worked. The minute I was released, I jerked my feet free, yanked the knife from the stone, then dropped to the ground and rolled away from the gate. And for too many seconds, couldn’t do anything more than simply suck in air and fight the blackness that threatened to consume me.

Everything hurt. Everything ached. Burned.

The lightning. It was once again trapped within my flesh.

The answer,the master of all storms had said,will lie in using a conductor to both call down and disperse the storms.

The knives... I thrust one into the ground and imagined all the heat, all the fury, that boiled through me leeching down into it. The knife began to glow a bloody hue as the heat was channeled from my flesh into the soil, making it uncomfortably warm.

The burning stopped, but it wasn’t over yet.