Page 19

T he blast hit before anybody had time to so much as flinch. For a moment, there was nothing but a boiling multicolored cloud, crashing and beating and battering at us like a wild thing, like a whole squad of furious demons straight out of hell. It was huge, it was ferocious, it was terrifying—

And... not touching us?

I realized that we’d been saved, but I didn’t know by who. Or how, because that spell had the strength of several dozen war mages behind it, and not just any war mages. The elite who had somehow survived this long despite all the odds.

And watching their power claw at us, I knew why. They’re so strong, I thought dizzily, staring at the intensity barely a few feet away. And so angry. I could feel their emotions through their magic, and all on their own, they were almost enough to knock me down.

The Corps hated this, the detestable actions this world had forced them into; they hated me , the Pythia who was supposed to lead them but had instead turned up missing when they needed her the most. And who was now trying to get away instead of helping them. They’d had decades of seeing their comrades die attempting to do my job for me, and they were bitter and furious and grieving—for their friends, their world, their lives —and they were taking it out on me no matter what Jonas said.

Only it wasn’t working, and I didn’t know why.

Pritkin? I thought dizzily, but he wasn’t in the little warded bubble that someone had created. And I didn’t think he had the juice left for something like this anyway. I didn’t see how anyone could, and the witches weren’t helping.

They were just standing there, wands out but drooping, as they stared around in shock. And then, slowly, their eyes all focused on the same spot. Me.

I stared back in confusion for a heartbeat, not understanding anything. Then my eyes went to my outstretched left hand, which was in the universal STOP position, inches away from where all that fury was trying to consume us, while my right...

I recoiled in shock and almost dropped the thin golden thread snaking its way under the side of our little bubble and into the hand I still had at my side—and I do mean into . It was gushing into my body like a garden hose, but that was a bad analogy, as no hose that slender could have carried much at all. But you don’t need much when you’re sucking on the lifeblood of a god—

Stumbling back, I almost fell and got the impression that most of the witches were willing to let me. But Zara caught me, her face grim and terrible but determined, too. And I suddenly knew who had sussed out the spells for making those skinwalker cloaks.

“We do what’s needful,” she hissed and caught my wrist, the one connected to the hand that was about to drop the lifeline I’d formed to the dying god.

Instead, I felt the connection firm up, with enough power flowing into me to counter the fury lashing at us from the other side of the shield. If anything, it increased in intensity, like the chaos outside. It looked like the war mages had realized that we were getting away, with Zara pulling on me and our little knot shuffling across the floor toward a new blur of color I could just make out through the haze of spellfire.

I couldn’t see it very well, as the ward I was somehow keeping up looked to be six feet thick, to the point that it blurred the room. But fortunately, I didn’t have to. The portal had started up again, or maybe another one had, as this one seemed farther down the wall, although who could tell?

But I could feel it through the stones under my feet, vibrating so hard that my teeth chattered; I could sense it in the air, as if a couple extra atmospheres had suddenly descended on us; I could track it through the war mages’ increasingly desperate attempts to stop us.

They were good attempts.

The floor suddenly reached up with clay-like hands, clawing their way out of cracks in the stone, and tried to grab our feet. Alphonse yelped and stomped on them, and the witches zapped the hell out of them, but it didn’t matter. They reformed almost at once, looking oddly beautiful, like shards of a Michelangelo statue with veins and nails and determined, grasping hands.

“Hit ‘em again!” Alphonse screeched as several began climbing up his legs. Forearms, featureless heads, and torsos followed, pushing the heavy stones of the floor aside and scrabbling upward at us. And no matter how much he fought them, how many times he smashed them to dust, they just kept coming.

“Manlikans!” I yelled, recognizing an old fey trick, and the witches paused their struggle because coven magic is based on that of the fey, and they knew this one.

A second later, a trio of spells hit them, and the arms, torsos, and, in a few cases, entire bodies were gone, bursting apart and cascading off the people they’d been attacking. The sand hit the rocky slabs in a loud scattering, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Or... I tried.

But the air in here had become thin while we struggled. Hot and stifling, it was like being locked in a coffin underground for hours while the atmosphere slowly ran out. But it hadn’t been hours!

It had been maybe a minute, which, even if the ward was air-tight, shouldn’t have been enough to do this. And then I knew it wasn’t when the remaining oxygen was abruptly sucked out, leaving us staring at each other in what was essentially a vacuum. My throat started to burn, my mouth to gape like a fish, and my eyes to dart around desperately searching for something that no longer existed.

And the witches didn’t seem to know this trick or understand how the Corps was doing it any more than I did.

“What’s going on?” I could see Alphonse mouthing the words, but couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in my ears, as everything else had gone eerily silent, with no air to carry the sound anymore.

The Circle was forcing me to drop the shield or die, but I didn’t think that doing what they wanted would have a better outcome. I could still feel the hate raging at me as they were going to do as soon as our protection failed. Or maybe before then, since I’d no sooner had the thought than a sickly green smoke started boiling up around the outside of the ward.

I stared at it in fear and despair—what was it this time? I didn’t know, but it swirled beyond the confines of our small circle of protection, cutting off my limited view of the room and showing me a dim reflection of my face. I looked scared, confused, and utterly, utterly out of ideas.

The Circle had forgotten more magic than I’d ever known, and there were hundreds of them, including Jonas, who wasn’t hitting us with his little bazooka only because he couldn’t afford to let me die. Not until he got a chance to blow me up with his stupid plan that wouldn’t work, that was never going to work, like standing here and suffocating to death! And I was the only one who could stop it.

Faces appeared in the smoke, pressing against the surface of the ward and turned monstrous by its distorting effect. Like their hands, glowing with power as they tried to force a path through our protection, fingers tearing at the cracks that were forming all over the place, maybe because of the gas, maybe something else, because who the hell knew? But they were suddenly everywhere.

I belatedly realized: the storm of magic they’d unleashed had saved us for a few moments, as they couldn’t get near us as long as it lasted. It hadn’t been enough to overcome us on its own, and so had bought us some time as they didn’t like the idea of expending power fighting their own spells. But it had dissipated now, along with the added protection it had brought, and they were coming through.

“Do something!” Zara screamed at me, audible because of the air rushing through the cracks now spidering everywhere.

“Don’t breathe, you idiots,” Topknot was yelling. “It’s poisoned!”

Purple Hair hit the ground anyway, lost in a fog of green. I could see her through my own blurring vision before Butch Cut sent a spell exploding around the inner surface of the ward and shooting outward, forcing back the smoke. Then she and Gray Curls grabbed up our fallen as Alphonse tried to drag us all forward through sheer force of will, and half a hundred guys did their best to oppose us.

“Increase the flow!” Zara said, shaking me.

“I can’t!”

“Why not? He’s still alive!” She gestured outward, I guessed at the dying god, and had her wrist captured by a gloved, war-mage hand that had just broken through a fissure, because our shield was down to maybe an inch thick.

She screamed, Topknot swore, and Butch Cut stabbed the glowing end of her wand into the man’s hand, causing him to curse and withdraw. But the ward was crumbling now, and the Circle’s men were everywhere, and we were out of time if I didn’t—

Shit!

I increased the flow because, as dangerous as that was, the Corps reaching us would be worse. But the shield was all but gone now, with little left to shore up, and it was slowing us down to a crawl. So, instead of repairing it, I used it, sending all those crumbling pieces outward and blasting the surrounding war mages back off their feet.

They landed in the battle that had begun with their former captives while we’d been sidetracked, sending dozens of bodies stumbling, falling, and rolling—

And clearing a path.

“Go!” I wheezed at the witches, trying to be heard over the battle, but I was too out of breath. Before Alphonse grabbed me, cradled me to his chest, and sprinted for the portal.

Pritkin and the rest were somehow defending it, maybe because we’d been taking most of the heat. Well, we and the dark mages, whose bodies were everywhere, almost tripping Alphonse up before he started just jumping over them. While also having to dodge the spell fire that was starting to focus on us as the rest of the room realized what was happening.

But it couldn’t seem to outrun a master vamp who was taking a crazed, zigzag course across the chaos, merely a blur against the eerie shadows being thrown by the portal.

Until it did.

“Stop her!” I heard Jonas bellow, and his men listened that time, abandoning their fights to focus everything on us.

A dozen spells hit Alphonse at once from different directions, but they didn’t hit me as he had hunched over to shield me. We slammed into the ground with my palms, already puffy and swollen from catching the sprites, abraded further by the rough stone floor. It was enough to stun me all on its own, and then the big body of my defender landed heavy and breathless on top of me.

When I finally shook off the effects of that and crawled out from under, not knowing if he was still alive or not, I was confronted with a scene of utter devastation. Half of the room was on fire, with strange, magical flames burning in a dozen colors. The smoke was drifting everywhere and rising to the heights as if a bunch of nosy clouds had come in to see what the ruckus was about.

And they were getting a show.

Magical weapons were circulating everywhere, many of them masterless now and firing at anyone who came near their fallen owners. Fights were still going on, including up on the catwalk, where somebody’s burning body plunged over as I watched, still screaming. It joined the corpses from both sides that were scattered everywhere, unmoving, and some no longer in one piece.

The witches were about to add to them, being overrun by a furious group of mages, and Pritkin and the others were getting slammed hard. Another large group, including some of those I had sent shards of the shield into, was slowly approaching me, fanned out in a semi-circle, with faces no less terrible than they had been when distorted by that same shield. I wondered if they remembered Jonas’s command not to hurt me.

I wondered if I cared.

I didn’t seem to, suddenly, but not because of despair or even terror, which anyone facing forty or more bleeding, enraged, homicidal war mages would have every reason to feel. But I didn’t. Because I’d forgotten something.

It was the same thing that had slipped their minds as they approached with caution, only not nearly enough. Not with my skin starting to boil with light to the point that a golden halo began staining the floor around me as if I were a human torch. But it wasn’t fire in my case; it was power, and I was being fed even more through the umbilical cord attaching me to my energy doner, which was still in place.

And in my shock and panic, I’d forgotten to constrain the flow.

“No!” someone screamed, but it barely registered. Instinct had taken over, which was why I watched the big golden body strapped down in the middle of the carnage flicker once, twice, three times... and go out.

Its light was extinguished, but its power wasn’t. I felt all that energy hit me, flooding my starving cells right down to my fingertips, which felt like they hadn’t had a meal in months. And they hadn’t.

Not since that day on the Thames when I’d tapped into the power of my opponent, the All-Father’s boundless energy, and fed and fed and fed. It felt like that again, so wonderful, so perfect, so sweet, that I couldn’t help but laugh, and why shouldn’t I? Why should I deny myself anything?

I looked around the floor, and they were so small suddenly, so petty, with their stupid wars and their little plans. What did I care for that, for any of it, when there was this? I sucked the last of it down, that wonderful, life-giving, life-affirming power, and laughed some more.

And saw Jonas’s face up on the ledge, where I guessed he’d gone to help direct the battle. Saw him suddenly understand and yell something I couldn’t hear because I couldn’t hear anything but screams as the war mages attacking me found out why that was a bad idea. Very bad, I thought, as I sent a dozen of them flying with a gesture, smashing them into their leader and burying him under a pile of his own men.

I didn’t see if he got shields up in time; didn’t care. It hadn’t been like this last time, I thought as I sent another group up in flames and watched them burn almost curiously. Maybe because, on the Thames, I’d been sending the energy I stole outward almost as soon as I sucked it down, channeling it into the battle, not holding most of it inside me.

I hadn’t thought that I could hold it, as the few times Pritkin and I had jury-rigged the power of a god by using his incubus abilities, it had almost burned us alive. I wondered what was different this time, holding up a hand and watching something move under the skin like sunlight rippling on a pond. I felt nothing at that moment but awe, wonder, and pure, unadulterated joy.

Until something hit me, and this wasn’t one of the pathetic little spells that some of the mages had been throwing. They hadn’t been holding back, having finally taken the gloves off, assuming they’d been using any. And there had been no stun spells in their barrage.

I’d registered them distantly—immolation spells, skin-piercing spells, spells meant to cause the flesh to slide off my bones. But they’d been no more than tickles or the stings of a particularly weak insect, some half-dead mosquito trying to suck a little blood and getting crushed by an absent-minded palm for its trouble. But this—this I felt.

And roared in rage, my voice magnified and booming around the room even though I hadn’t told it to.

For how dare they, these inconsequential creatures? How dare they approach me, touch me, do anything but fall on their faces and worship me? How dare they?

I knew how the golden god had felt, more outraged than anything, when they hit him with their stupid bazooka. He’d been shocked, like a human seeing a bunch of ants working together to pull a trigger. And they were about to do so again, I realized.

Jonas, damn him, wasn’t dead yet, and was getting ready to fire once more. But I wasn’t a god driven half mad with hunger; I was a demigod energized with it and used to fighting against the odds. My chest was on fire, but I healed it with a thought; easy, as the blow hadn’t gone all the way through, maybe because I hadn’t been bisected like—

Bisected.

The word stuttered across my brain, rewound, and did it again, like a record scratching over and over in the hands of an expert DJ. I stared at the dead god, looking small and dark now, just a shriveled pile of nothing recognizable in the middle of the other bodies. And then my gaze went to the portal, churning around and around on the wall.

I wondered if the rest of his power was still on the other side, lying there where it had been cut off, separated from his mind, and helpless. Could the gods resurrect that way? I had no idea.

But even if he could, he’d be at half-strength and vulnerable, with little way to fight back, and if he couldn’t...

If he couldn’t , then all that power was just lying there, sizzling in the mud and waiting... for me.

Suddenly, this stupid fight seemed like a minor inconvenience. I dodged the second blow Jonas sent at me as easily as thought and sent one back at him, not bothering to wait to see if it landed. I didn’t care about him and his little weapon, or his war, or his men who I knocked out of the way with flicks of my hand or set ablaze with a glance from my eyes.

I only cared about one thing; only no, that wasn’t entirely true. Because if I found that other half, if the damned creatures who craved power as much as I did hadn’t already cannibalized it, then... there were others, weren’t there? I’d seen at least two more, and while one was probably hiking around the Arctic right now, that still left one in Stratford.

Only not for long. And once I had him, well, the rest were mindless, weren’t they? They barely knew who they were or where they were, and many probably didn’t understand that much. They were vulnerable, little more than animals anymore, and I... I was not. I could lay traps, could hunt them down, could—

Feast.

The word rang in my head and hastened my steps as I ran through the portal, only to stop on the other side, confused and discombobulated. But not because of the stinging spells still snapping over my skin that the Circle had thrown or the pathway’s mighty suction, which I’d hardly noticed. But because this…

Where was this?

I stared around in disappointment and fury. I wanted my prize, the one that was supposed to be lying here waiting for me. Half a god with no mind and no defenses, just glorious, golden energy for the taking!

Where was he?

I didn’t know, and all I saw was an empty, ugly, warehouse-looking structure, nothing like the burnt-out remains of the pretty medieval town where my feast waited. It was still whole except for a few holes in the roof, allowing birds to make nests in the rafters. And filled with dust motes that turned in shafts of moonlight spearing through said holes.

Otherwise, there were only dunes of reddish sand that littered the floor, piling up in drifts in the corners. It reminded me of the coven’s enclave, with the Earth slowly reclaiming its own. Even the sand was the same color—

Vegas, I thought, suddenly understanding. The others had gotten another portal working, or had reset the first one to the place they wanted to be. But not me!

I roared again before turning to stride back through that gateway, to force it to bend to my will and to take me where I wanted to go, whether it liked it or not. And I could have; I knew it instinctively. I could rip it straight off its foundations and—

There was a man standing in front of it.

I started to knock him aside like I had all the others, but stopped halfway through the gesture. He had dark hair, glowing golden eyes, and a huge scar bisecting his otherwise perfect face. A face that was strangely familiar.

“Hello, Dulcea?? ,” he said with a small smile. “I have been waiting for you.”

And then the world fell away.