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C ontrary to popular belief, witches don’t have unlimited power; they just use less of it than mages when casting a spell. The reason is that wild magic, the stuff the world creates on its own, loves hanging out with other magic. It loves it so much that a tiny piece of a witch’s power placed at the end of a wand like a lure can attract enough wild magic for said witch to throw a hell of a spell.

And I hadn’t just used a tiny bit.

I’d used everything I had left, and while the chaotic pile of broken furniture, firewood, tree debris, and whatever else the drunk bastards had been stacking up for their bonfire wasn’t a nice, well-made wand, it was wood . And I guessed that was enough, especially with the lightning still flashing overhead, because did I mention? Wild magic loves lightning, too.

So there was plenty hanging about in the skies overhead until suddenly, it wasn’t. It was stabbing down, hitting the massive pile of wood and the pool of magic that I’d just thrown on top of it, and causing the whole thing to go up like, well, like a bonfire. Only not like any I’d ever seen.

This bonfire was suddenly spearing as high as the clouds in a furious column of strange pinky-red light, like the world’s biggest wand. Which in turn attracted more wild magic and then more and more until, suddenly, the formerly greenish-black night was flooded pink, and fire danced in the middle of it. And I do mean danced.

I stared as a mass of fire sprites, tiny man-shaped creatures I’d seen in the hells once, spilled out of the column of flame like a red tide and leaped at the horrified crowd. There were hundreds of them, each looking like a tiny bit of lava had suddenly come alive, with boiling red-gold skins and eyes of searing, yellow-tinted white. And claws that started fires on everything they touched—

And everyone, I thought, as a mage screamed by, his whole body on fire from the five sprites who’d jumped him and were now ripping him to pieces.

Guessed I knew what Pritkin’s plan had been, I thought, as the horde gleefully started torching everything in sight. And it was my partner’s horde, not Rosier’s, based on the fact that Pritkin’s old man was screaming and cursing and zapping the little demons off himself with the same fury as the rest of the crowd. At least, that part of it that wasn’t busy trying to get away as the night descended into madness.

Only no, it wasn’t mad yet, but it was about to be. Because somewhere I couldn’t see, but somewhere close enough for a bellow to go up and spread across the night, was another party crasher. And this one...

Yeah, okay.

This one was my fault.

“What did you do?” Zara was screeching into my face. “What did you do?”

I didn’t answer because I was on fire.

Some sparks, whether from the bonfire or the imps or a stray spell—I couldn’t tell anymore—had ignited on the skin I was wearing. And damn, someone might have mentioned that these things had the ignition point of flash paper! I tore it off and looked up breathlessly, trying to see through the rain of fire falling all around us.

Only to see Pritkin, the familiar blond head pinker than a fey’s with reflected light, running headlong for—

“Why are you bothering with me?” I yelled, gesturing at the sky where the great bellow was still echoing like a clap of thunder. “Get Jonas! We need to leave! ”

But he grabbed me anyway, and the usual shaking commenced, which I shrugged off because we didn’t have time for this! “I just summoned a god! ” I yelled back at him because he was saying something, but I could no longer hear in the utter pandemonium that had broken out. “Get Jonas! ”

Pritkin stared at me wildly for a second and then had a wadded-up human skin thrust into his arms by Alphonse, who had just ripped it off. Probably because he’d seen how fast mine had ignited, and if there’s one thing vamps hate, it’s fire. And it was everywhere now!

“For the old guy,” I saw him mouth, and Pritkin grabbed it and went running back the way he’d come like the madman he looked to be. And so was I because there was only one of him and a lot of Black Circle guys, and Caleb was still in his cage and—

Damn it!

Pritkin couldn’t get both him and Jonas in the time we had left, so I sprinted forward like a lunatic, which I absolutely was because this had to be the stupidest thing I’d ever done. And that was saying a lot! But this was definitely a contender for first place because I was pelting headlong toward the approaching god with Butch Cut by my side while the other witches cursed mages out of our way left and right from behind.

And they cursed a lot because everybody was running across the burning ground now, with the grass under our feet going up thanks to the rain of sparks and the fiery little imps who were leaving burning trails everywhere.

“Pritkin!” Rosier’s panicked, enhanced voice trembled the ground under my feet, and damn, he even used the right name, I thought, right before he attacked a god . It happened just as I looked up and saw him striking it with some kind of energy bolt before being batted the length of a football field away by a massive hand.

And then we skidded to a stop around the suddenly abandoned cage because the guards were smarter than us and had already left.

“That... was amazing!” Butch Cut screamed, sounding out of breath.

“The cage!”

“What?”

“The cage! I don’t have anything left!”

She stared at me and then zapped it, drawing a tendril of pink magic from the towering conflagration threatening to immolate us barely a house length away. It was pulling in the scaffold now, ripping it apart to feed its insatiable appetite, and suddenly looking less like a column than a fiery tornado. But it gave her plenty of magic to work with, and she used it.

Unlike the Circle, which acted as if wild magic was the most dangerous stuff around, witches rode that insanity all the time. They loved it, and it loved them back, and as a result, the ward on the bars ended up fried in seconds, sizzling out with a green flash and a smell like burning sandalwood. And I burned myself jerking the doors open, but there was no time to waste.

“Give me your skin!” I yelled.

She stared at me. “What?”

“Your skin! Your skin! ” She finally understood and flung off the cloak. And we put it on Caleb, who looked up with a different face. “Come on!” I told him, but he didn’t move.

“I knew it was you,” he whispered. “I knew . Not even John…”

He passed out, and Butch Cut and I stared at each other for a second before she started looking around frantically. “A platform!” she screamed. “I can levitate him if I have a platform!”

But there were no platforms. There were, however, a couple of passing imps, which I grabbed and had my palms burned for my trouble. “Pritkin wants you to help us!” I yelled. “You know, Prince Emrys?”

They looked at me blankly, and I smacked my ear a few times to get the damned translation spell working, hoping it spoke whatever language they did. And then repeated my request while they stared at me. And then at Caleb. And then at each other.

“Hurry up!” I screamed. “And be careful! Don’t burn him!”

I didn’t know if they understood, and they didn’t say anything back. But the vibrant red of their hands and arms, which had resembled molten lava a second ago, suddenly changed to a crusty black. Something I decided to count as a win.

“ Yes! Yes! Now grab him and come with me!”

I got under one of Caleb’s arms and pantomimed lifting him because there was no way I could do it for real, and Alphonse was AWOL, probably cowering under something to get out of the fire that had just set my hair alight. I cursed and beat it out, and the demons finally got with the program and dragged Caleb out of the cage, putting a hand under each butt cheek and an arm around his back, and damn . They were stronger than they looked, I thought, as they hoisted him up.

They took off, fleeing across the now merrily burning churchyard, possibly because we were out of freaking time. I looked up at the night sky, and what had been a dreary ceiling with low, rumbling clouds and flashes of lightning was now a vibrant candy-colored wash of flame, except for the massive, dark shapes heading for us at a lumbering run. And I do mean shapes because there were two more giant-sized, ravenous dark outlines coming at us like furious mountains and—

I just wanted a little help, I thought blankly, staring at them. I wouldn’t have even bothered if Pritkin had told me about the imps. And now—

“Fuck!” Butch Cut screamed in my face, and yeah. Summed it up.

“Run!” I told her, and we tore after the sprites and their awkward load, whose head and arms were flopping all over the place because Caleb was still out cold.

But they were flopping fast because the little demons were picking them up and putting them down alongside everyone else. The entire area had been packed with what must have been thousands of furious mages a minute before because some of them had been bent on fighting rather than fleeing. But now it emptied like someone had taken a stopper out of a drain, almost faster than I could believe.

And many of them were headed to the same place we were.

“No! No! We have to go back!” I yelled at the sprites. “We have to—”

But I didn’t even get a chance to finish the sentence before we were swallowed up by a mob of terrified dark mages, all crowding into the small cave-like opening Jonas had come out of as if their lives depended on it. Which they pretty much did. I threw one short, terrified glance over my shoulder when another great bellow echoed around the skies, close enough almost to deafen me, and saw mages getting snatched up in hands the size of cars and stuffed down gaping black maws.

The “gods” looked like Eldritch horrors, with long, greasy, dark hair, faces that weren’t remotely human, and eyes glowing ever brighter as they consumed and consumed and—

And then the cave opening abruptly sank back into the earth, and we were gone.

◆◆◆

You lead an interesting life , echoed in my head.

“Mircea?” I said hopefully, and then the timber of the voice hit. Mentally, Bodil still sounded like Bodil, and bizarrely, she seemed amused. I would never understand the fey!

But I understood being trampled if I tried to run and hold a conversation at the same time, so I dragged Butch Cut into a room off of the insanely packed main hall. It wasn’t much; it looked like a janitorial closet, and the door wouldn’t fully shut, but it was better than being flattened outside. If not by much, I thought, as the earth quaked around us and everyone screamed, almost in unison.

“Where are we?” Butch Cut demanded as a steady stream of mages pounded down the shuddering hallway.

“HQ,” I told her breathlessly. “Where are you?” I asked Bodil.

“Right here,” Butch Cut said, frowning.

Making our way to you—

“Well, make it fast! The gods are here!”

So we saw , it was dry.

“Make what fast?” Butch Cut said. “What’s wrong with you?”

Too much to list , I thought, and heard Bodil chuckle.

I was glad someone was having fun!

“Fey in my head,” I said to my companion, which didn’t seem to help. “Bodil, the tall, elegant one?”

Butch Cut nodded.

“She and the others are headed this way—”

“They can’t come here now! They’ll be killed! ”

You think I’m elegant? Bodil asked wryly.

“Butch Cut has a point,” I told her. “Plus, we’re underground—”

I know. Interesting place... ah, there it is.

“There what is? Where are you?”

Here, in the complex. I just opened the door. The mages had shut it again, and—where are you?

“Down the corridor to the left. Don’t take the one on the right; it’s booby-trapped. They always booby trap—”

I distantly heard ?subrand swear and didn’t know if he was that close or if his voice was an echo in Bodil’s mind.

Yes, it is booby-trapped , she confirmed. One moment.

“Where are they?” Butch Cut demanded. “What’s going on? You know we can’t stay here, right?”

“Yeah, kinda got that,” I said, as the ceiling partly caved in along with a bunch of dried-up tree roots. I pulled her into the doorway, the lintel of which was reinforced.

Cassie! Pritkin’s voice suddenly sounded so loud in my ear that my whole head rang with it.

“Aughhhh!” I said, and he swore.

I’m trying to boost the power on this thing. That cloak you’re wearing has been interfering—

“I’m not wearing it now! Turn it down! Turn it down!”

“Turn what down?” Butch Cut was starting to look frantic, staring up at the ceiling like she was ready for the rest of it to fall and bury us. “We have to go! ”

You have to go! Pritkin yelled. Now! Those bastards are coming in—

“I know! I’m waiting for—”

We’re coming. Don’t you dare leave! Bodil commanded.

“Then come faster!”

What? Pritkin demanded. Who are you talking to?

“Bodil! She and the others are—”

The other half of the ceiling caved in, probably because someone was now stomping on it. I had half a second to glimpse massive toes coming down through the soil, and then I was dragging Butch Cut out of the door, just in time to see Bodil coming down the hall with an armorless ?subrand in tow, along with Enid, her bright red hair floating around her like she was underwater. Which she soon would be because the internal wards were failing, and the river was flooding in!

Or it was until Bodil sent it upward instead, in a giant column headed like a fist toward the creature tearing through the soil after us. We pounded down the hallway just ahead of it and behind the horde of mages, going I didn’t know where because these corridors changed . It was what they were designed to do when threatened, to confuse an interloping force, but I didn’t know how well that was likely to work with a god or two ripping apart the landscape.

Or how I was supposed to find my way through here with the hallways constantly shifting and our group having to wade through a field of mud because there were leaks everywhere!

But I didn’t have to worry about it, because Pritkin had it handled. If by “handled,” you count the floor suddenly dropping out from under us like a glacier had just calved with us on top. Leaving us sliding down an almost perpendicular drop with just enough of a slope to keep us from going airborne.

I screamed, mud splattered us from all directions, and a couple of mages that had fallen in with us were bisected by giant knives suddenly sticking out from the wall—more of the Circle’s old protection wards waking up and getting lethal. And Pritkin was yelling something loud enough to shatter my head. Goddamnit!

“What?” I yelled as we hit down hard enough to rattle me. And as Bodil and ?subrand dragged me off the ground after landing as surefooted as two cats, and jerked me down the hall between them.

Because there was a hall there, the same one in fact, just stories lower than it had been a minute ago. Or maybe it was a new one; I couldn’t tell with all the mud in my eyes. I couldn’t tell anything, and they were pulling my arms off!

I said there’s no time! Pritkin’s voice crackled. Jonas has invoked Far Horizon. This whole place is about to go up!

I didn’t ask what that meant. I didn’t want to know. “Caleb—”

We have him! But we don’t have you!

“Then how do we get to you?”

Hold on!

And, damn it, he meant that literally because the corridor suddenly took over, swinging abruptly enough to the right to throw us all against the wall. That included some wide-eyed mages who had somehow survived this far, but even though none of us were in disguise anymore, they didn’t try to attack. I doubted they could have even if they’d wanted to, as we had just commenced the wildest ride ever.

I’d pelted down some corridors in my time, but that wasn’t what was happening here. The corridor was doing the moving, and we were left hoping for the best as it burrowed through the ground like a crazed earthworm. Or like one of those moving walkways at the airports, if it stopped churning under your feet and started slamming through the concourse like a runaway train.

The mages hit the ground, Butch Cut grabbed a rock jutting out of the wall and held on for dear life, and ?subrand grabbed Enid, shoved his pike into the ground, set his feet, and hung on. Only Bodil didn’t seem affected; she stood there with her arm around me, with the air of someone in an elevator waiting for the ride to end. The gentle white light that all fey give off in our world shimmered around her, serving as the only illumination this far underground.

Until it wasn’t.

“What is that? ” Butch Cut screamed.

Since the wildly bucking corridor we were in contained mages getting slammed back and forth like candy in a pinata, falling earth, flailing tree roots, and water that was constantly hitting us from various directions as the hallway squirmed this way and that, I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Until she grabbed my head and turned it toward the golden glow coming from behind us because one of the gods had figured out that it was easier to get down here if he wasn’t the size of a small skyscraper. He had shrunk himself down and also lit up like a floodlight to be able to see. Or maybe that was just the spillover from all those mages he’d been eating.

And he obviously wanted more.

Or maybe he wanted something else because a roar of ravenous intensity rippled through the air around us, and those laser-like eyes focused—on Bodil and me.

Shit! But Pritkin had noticed him, or whoever was driving the crazy train we were on. ‘Cause the god suddenly disappeared as the shaking, moving causeway suddenly tore through the earth—

Straight down.

“Auuggghhh!” we all yelled, even Bodil, because she’d lived a long time and probably done crazier things than I had, but it didn’t look like she’d done this. And then it got weirder.

The floor surged up at us in a bubbling field of mud because it was tunneling under the river now, leaving us sloshing around as the tunnel played hide and seek with a god. We could see him intermittently as the flood of golden light he was giving off strobed the mad little hallway. But every time I thought he’d almost caught up, and we were all screaming our guts out, a dirt wall slammed into his face as we and our mud pit were flung in another direction.

Strobe, scream, slam; strobe, scream, slam; strobe, scream—fall when the floor abruptly gave way again. The mages we’d been traveling with had disappeared, whether eaten or buried, I didn’t know, but our little knot kept slinging back and forth and plummeting down, down, down, like we were off the train and on the world’s weirdest elevator. If elevators also shot ahead at random intervals, or to the side, or up and over some impediment before dropping wildly again.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Butch Cut said thickly, her eyes huge and her fingers white as she clung to her rock.

Until we came to an abrupt halt and were sent tumbling along with an ocean of mud down a short flight of steps and into a large room with a bright blue portal thrumming on the opposite wall. Which promptly ate the god who tore out right on our heels, leaped over our prone bodies in his hurry, and stumbled straight into the portal’s hungry maw. Which caught him even as he tried to fight it, as he turned and struggled back toward us, as a great golden arm stuck out of the sea of churning, vibrant blue reaching, reaching, reaching—

Until the light suddenly increased, probably because Bodil was reaching out, too, lying on the floor covered in mud, and no longer appearing quite so regal. But putting everything she had left into increasing the portal’s power, turning it from royal to brilliant azure, and to my shock, it was enough. The furious god was sucked backward, still bellowing, and sent somewhere frigid, judging by the icy air blowing in at us for a second.

That was all the time I had to take it in, along with a glimpse of Pritkin off to one side of the portal with his hair standing straight up and his eyes gone crazy bright. He was with a bunch of wild-looking men in war mage gear, one of whom flipped a lever on the wall while the rest started for us. And before I could ask what the hell, we were snatched up and flung into the heart of the now bright green portal.

I felt it grab me, swallow me down, and send me spinning toward a destination I couldn’t see with an all-encompassing glare searing my eyeballs, and didn’t even care about.

Because anything was better than here!