“So if I need exfil, I can either request it by pressing and holding the button, or if I screw up any of the signals, you all will assume I need help and come for me anyway?”
Darrishaw nodded.
“Thing is,” I said, “I doubt the soldiers can even enter the ley lines without magic. Second, even if they managed to get there, I’m not sure they’d survive it.”
Darrishaw nodded. “Then let's hope we won’t need to do it, but if push comes to shove, given your unique abilities, your survival is the priority.”
“Over the lives of the other soldiers?” I asked.
“We’ve been told to ensure your survival at all costs,” Darrishaw said. “So if saving you would put my men in danger, how about you do me a favor and don’t screw this up?”
“Yes, sir!” I said, feigning enthusiasm. I didn’t intend to mess this up. It wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with the ley lines, and I was more powerful now than I’d ever been. I could feel the magic as we drew near to the source. I could not only sense just the magic in the ley lines, but also how it resonated with each of the five elemental spirits. As we got closer to the source of the magic in the earth, it was like the energies within me swelled.
The cool sensation of water. The burn in my chest from fire. The heaviness and grittiness of earth. The purity of air filling my lungs. And the thrill, the freedom, of aether.
By these powers combined, I am Captain Planet!
Okay, sorry. I couldn’t resist. Watched too many episodes of that show growing up.
Captain Planet was better than the code name they’d given me on comms: Magic Seal.
Made me sound like an off-brand press-and-seal sandwich bag.
I should have been flattered. I figured the term “Seal” was reserved for those who’d completed their BUD/S training. I only knew that much since one of the members at Holy Cross had a grandson who was a Seal. We’d prayed for him regularly, even when he was in BUD/S. She was proud. We all were, for her.
I shook my head, thinking about it. I wasn’t part of those people’s lives anymore, but it wasn’t the job I’d miss. It was the people. I could keep in touch with most of them through e-mail, social media, or Philip, but what would they think of me? Most of them weren’t thrilled about all the recent changes. My excommunication would probably be viewed as vindication that they were right to be concerned, or so they’d believe.
I probably wouldn’t reach out to anyone from the church. That chapter of my life was over. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t miss the people, and it certainly didn’t mean that I wasn’t still fighting for their salvation.
But now, I was doing it differently. I was diving into the ley lines, hoping to lure a deadly elven legion to Earth for them. For the people I’d always wanted to give hope to. For the people I cared about. For the world, as broken and as cruel as it could be, that I loved. For love. For Layla, because this was her home now too.
They passed me around to several military folks who, in their fatigues, helped me into my wet suit, hooked up my comms, and ran me through a series of tests to make sure I understood how the signal system worked.
I was impressed by their competency. This was undoubtedly a unique situation. I couldn’t imagine that they’d trained for anything like this, but they were operating like they’d done this mission a thousand times.
They couldn’t have been as calm on the inside as they appeared.
I could see it in their eyes, a mixture of curiosity, determination, and fear. I was doing this to save them too.
I just hoped I could.
I shook Brag’mok’s hand. Fucker didn’t know his own strength. His hand enveloped mine, and he squeezed harder than I’d have liked.
I winced, swallowing the pain.
Then I glanced at Ensley, who’d made an appearance on Brag’mok’s shoulder. “No pranks, right? You didn’t fill this suit with Gorilla Glue or anything?”
Ensley giggled. “Damn! I wish I’d have thought of that! But no, no pranks this time. May the Furies be with you, my friend!”
I made a mental note. If we survived this, I’d have to ask him about the Furies. I suspected they had something to do with fairy magic. If push came to shove, I could use it, hopefully before any of the soldiers risked their lives in a futile exfil attempt.
When I looked at Layla, I don’t know why, but tears started to well up in my eyes. She was tearing up too.
“I love you, Layla,”
“I love you too, Caspar.”
I kissed her as if it was going to be our last time because when it came to things like this, there was always the chance it might be.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I dove into the river. By dove, I mean belly-flopped. I’d tried to learn how to dive as a child. Took swimming lessons. Earned my swimming merit badge in the Boy Scouts. But when it came to diving, I sucked. I always hesitated a split second too long, kicking my legs out behind me and tucking my head. The result?
Belly-flops every time.
Thankfully, my swimming ability wasn’t in question, nor was it relevant.
The moment I hit the water, I felt the elemental power of water and its coolness well up inside of me. I didn’t need to swim. I created a current around my body. The rivers would obey me. I could have stopped their currents if I’d wanted to. I almost did, but I figured it would probably flood the city upstream. Instead, I created a current of my own that carried me deep into the water.
I knew where the gate had formed: right at the confluence. I could feel where it changed, where the current grew stronger as the force of the Meramec was added to that of the Mississippi.
But it wasn’t the rivers’ currents I needed to harness; it was the Earth magic, the magic of the elements coursing through the ley lines just beneath the muddy riverbeds.
So much power flowing through my body was overwhelming. I didn’t feel human anymore. I wasn’t just a man, charging through the water like a torpedo.
“Base to Magic Seal. Click twice to confirm status.”
I clicked the button twice. So far, so good.
I didn’t feel like myself. With so much power around me, consuming me, the woman’s voice in my comm was barely audible by contrast.
I was the magic. The ley lines were part of me. How had Ensley described manipulating magic? It was like I had new arms and legs extending in four directions.
All I had to do was flex like Jag, admiring himself in front of the gym mirror.
I didn’t know how much it would take to blow open the gate.
I pulled in magic from all four directions and concentrated on the confluence where the gateway usually formed. Streams of magic colored blue, red, green, white, and gold coalesced on my frame.
There was a pop in my ear, then static. So much for the military comm. It was waterproof but not magic-proof. I could only hope they wouldn’t overreact and attempt an exfil. So far, everything was going exactly as planned, other than the comms shorting out. I’d hate for that little hang-up to spoil the whole mission.
When the magic forces collided at the confluence, a luminescent gold circle formed and expanded.
It was working; I’d blown up the gate.
Step two, try to draw the magic back out of it. Give the elven king the notion that we’d done it by accident while we were trying to destroy the gate.
I inhaled, drawing all the magic I could back through the gate.
It poured on me like a deluge. Like I’d uncorked a dam and all the water it was holding back came flooding through.
Too much.
I tried to slow it down. I tried to focus. I needed balance; that was what Aerin had taught me. But no matter how much I tried, more and more magic poured through the gate.
It consumed my body. Why it wasn’t ripping me apart or exploding me into a million molecules I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t contain anymore. I couldn’t force it back into the ley lines.
I tried, but it was as if I’d overwhelmed the source.<
br />
The gold gate expanded into a massive column of magic, then poured out of the water and into the sky.
It carried me with it.
Other bodies all around me. I felt them. I could sense them, some of them attempting to strike me.
Elves!
Like a blur, hundreds of them flowing through the magic, each taking their best shot.
But they couldn’t break through the magic that formed around me.
The king had taken the bait. He’d sent his legions through.
But this magic was more than I’d channeled into the gate. It was like I’d pulled more through the gate—the magic I’d previously used to recharge New Albion, all of it exploding into a mushroom cloud above the confluence. A magical bomb with all the elemental energies exploding all around us.
I had to focus. I had to get out!
Aether! I could use aether and air.
I harnessed their power and flew like a missile out of the cloud of energies. All I saw below was devastation. The tanks overturned. The whole convoy of military vehicles overturned, some of them on fire, pillars of black smoke pouring out of them.
I harnessed the power of water. Giant bulbs drawn easily from the rivers doused the fires.
Where was Layla? Brag’mok?
A green orb formed in front of me as I soared through the sky.
“Ensley!” I shouted. “Where are they?”
“Just over the ridge. They need your help!”
I nodded and followed Ensley. I couldn’t port there since I didn’t have a good visual.
Darrishaw was lying in a pool of blood. A dagger like the Blade of Echoes was sticking out of his chest.
Brag’mok was fending off two assassins in black with the broadsword in his hand.
I tossed a stream of fire at each of them, sending them tumbling back.
Brag’mok took advantage and thrust his sword into the gut of one, then withdrew it and did the same to the second.
A third assassin charged him from behind.
I reached for the power of fire again, but an arrow took him out from behind. I followed its trajectory.
“Layla!” I shouted.
She probably didn’t hear me, but I dove after her.
She didn’t see the assassin behind her, and he was only twenty feet away. I had fire ready to go, and I released it.
The purple magic around him was angelic power. It was Fred. He threw a dagger as I blasted him with fire, but a shell of magic formed around him. He thwarted my blast and disappeared in a violet haze.
I hit the ground, barely landing on my feet. I turned. Layla lay with her bow held tightly in her grip and a dagger in her back.
I ran to her, pulled the dirk out of her back, and pressed my hand into her wound.
“Layla!” I screamed. I had to focus. I’d healed people before. I’d healed a stroke. I’d cured a girl of spina bifida. Surely I could handle this wound! I visualized her wound closing as I channeled the power of aether into her body.
Layla gasped for air. She was alive.
“Caspar!” Ensley shouted. “Behind you!”
I turned. A hundred yards away on one of the bluffs stood King Brightborn. An elf beside him carried a massive flag on a pole—his battle standard, I presumed.
And hundreds if not thousands of legionnaires stood beside and behind him in single-file lines.
Several of them, the most magically adept of them, I assumed, extended their hands to the sky, and they drew on the magic that was pouring out of the gate.
Then, as if they’d had a fairy portal of their own, a circle of magic passed over them, and the entire legion disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I pulled a fairy portal over us, and we appeared in my apartment. It was either there or go back to the cult building. I wasn’t eager to deal with anyone, not until I knew what had just happened.
We couldn’t stay there long, and the cult building wouldn’t be safe either. The assassins, at least a few of them, were gone, but Fred was still out there. And who knew where Brightborn and the legion had gone. Chances were good he had more assassins he’d send after us.
I laid Layla on the couch. Agnus jumped up next to her.
“What happened?”
“A dagger to her back,” I said, ripping off the back of her shirt.
The wound had healed, but there was a spiderweb of purple spreading out from where the blade had struck her.
I tried to heal her, but it wasn’t something I couldn’t sense or counteract.
“It burns,” Layla said, rubbing the spot where the blade had cut her.
“Purple magic, I think. Fred’s blade must’ve been laced with it.”
“It happened fast,” Layla said. “As you started to form the gate, Fred and the assassins started taking down soldiers one by one before we even knew what was happening.”
“So many lives,” Brag’mok said as he stood in my living room, shock on his face. “Too many lives.”
“What happened, Brag’mok?”
“The assassins drew fire from the magic that poured out of the gate and destroyed the military before we could even react. Fred took out Darrishaw.”
“Then I showed back up? The legion appeared. By then, it looked like the military force was all dead.”
“So many more lives.” Brag’mok kept shaking his head.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Did that magic explosion harm the city?”
“Saint Louis is untouched,” Brag’mok said. “I’m talking about New Albion. All the magic you drew through that gate. King Brightborn knew what was happening, even if his legions didn’t. He didn’t even try to stop it!”
“What was happening?” I asked.
“If all the magic was drawn from New Albion—” Layla said, her face white as a ghost’s.
“They’d all be dead,” Brag’mok said, finishing her thought. “If not immediately, they won’t survive for long. Millions of lives! New Albion is as good as gone!”
I sighed. “The prophecy said more lives in a single day than in the history of all of the worlds’ wars combined.”
Brag’mok nodded. “I fear it is done. The prophecy has been fulfilled unless Brightborn brought the rest of the elves to Earth somewhere else.”
I shook my head. “How could he possibly do that?”
“Fairies,” Layla said. “If he’s somehow convinced the fairies on New Albion to do it.”
“But the fairies there,” I said, looking at Brag’mok. “They saved you, right? Why would they now align with Brightborn?”
Brag’mok frowned. “The fairies are not aligned with one side or the other. They are and remain on the side of magic. Where they sense an abuse of magic, an injustice committed by such power, they intervene. It is why the fairies, themselves, have so frequently seemed to switch sides. Whoever has most recently misused magic in a way the fae do not endorse becomes the enemy.”
I clenched my fist and slammed it on the coffee table. “Goddammit!”
“If no one has survived,” Layla said, “that means the only elves that remain are with my father.”
“And if they did survive,” Brag’mok said, “chances are they’re on Earth somewhere, just waiting for Brightborn to seize control of this world.”
I screamed, then fell to my knees in tears. “I couldn’t control it. I tried, but the magic just kept coming.”
“This is not your fault,” Brag’mok said. “You could not control it because Brightborn’s sorcerers were pulling their magic through with them. They did this.”
I shook my head. “But if I hadn’t opened the fucking gate…”
“Caspar,” Layla said, grabbing my hand. “You didn’t do this.”
I squeezed her hand back.
“I know, but how the hell am I supposed to unite anyone except the elves if all the giants and most of the elves who lived on your planet are dead?”
“The prophecy can only pertain to the living,” Brag’mok said. �
�There are elves here on your world. There are drow, and perhaps the rest of elven kind is here somewhere. Not to mention, how many factions divide humanity?”
Layla sighed and winced in pain. “There’s only one way to unite the elves on Earth,” Layla said. “We cannot assume any of my people survived. We must unite with the drow.”
“I’m not going to marry Aerin!” I shouted.
“It might be the only way,” Layla said. “And we will need their help to defeat my father.”
“I don’t love Aerin!” I replied. “I love you, Layla!”
“No offense, Caspar,” Agnus piped up, “but what’s love got to do with it?”
I stared at Agnus.
“Sorry,” he said. “I need to work on my timing.”
“I’m not even going to consider it,” I said. “We have to figure out how to heal you. This infection, I could swear it’s spreading. It looks worse, and it’s only been a couple of minutes.”
“Caspar,” Layla said. “If I die, you need to marry her.”
“You’re not going to die!” I screamed. “God as my witness, I won’t let you die, Layla.”
Layla pressed her lips together, then smiled and touched my face. “I love you, Caspar.”
“I fucking love you too, goddammit!”
Layla chuckled. “And I believe in you. If you can’t save me, promise me you will do what you have to do.”
I shook my head. “We’re not having this conversation.”
“Caspar!”
“Ensley!” I shouted. “Aerin is the only one who knows anything about angelic magic. If anyone knows how to heal Layla, it’s her. Can you find her?”
“I can try,” Ensley said. “But she isn’t using magic, and there’s so much magic swirling around right now. It’s too much.”
I didn’t have my phone on me. I’d left it with my change of clothes before they put me in this wetsuit. I couldn’t text him, but I did have a computer in my apartment. If I was lucky, Jag would have his phone set up to alert him if he got an e-mail. If anyone knew if Aerin was back, he would.
Three Dogma Night (The Elven Prophecy Book 3) Page 19