My father glanced over at me, frowning and stepping back as well. “They’re regrouping.”
I nodded.
Then I felt a pulse of magic from the gateway. A churning spiral of power.
I spun back. Mory was standing now, her arms stretched out over her head. Gabby was still behind her, still amplifying her. Thick cords of magic twined around both of them — as Mory began to slowly unravel the energy holding Haoxin aloft.
“Dad!” I cried out. “The gateway is opening!”
A massive cloven hoof stepped through that opening gateway, landing only a couple of feet away from Mory. It was followed a moment later by a broad, tusked face.
A creature was crossing through the gateway, apparently made out of some sort of metal. It was massive. Far larger, in fact, than the aperture it was attempting to squeeze through. The magic that was calling it forth didn’t have to obey the laws of physics, though. Or any laws of nature or science, for that matter.
The metal beast glowered at Mory and Gabby, blinking eyes that were too small in comparison to its massive head.
Gabby screamed. Then she screamed again.
But she didn’t run.
Foolishly brave. Ridiculously brave.
My heart rate spiked, but my limbs felt sluggish. Slow to respond — even though I knew that was just the feeling of the creature moving faster than me.
Mory was windmilling her arms, rapidly coiling up the magic — the life force — that she’d been untangling, then wrapping it around her.
“Run!” I screamed, even as I attempted to close the space between us. “Mory!”
She didn’t run.
The beast thrust its shoulders through the gateway. It tilted its head, angling its tusks to the side as if intending to knock Mory and Gabby out of its path.
There was nothing that would save them from that. Nothing in any magical protection that either of them wore that would be strong enough to protect against such a blow. Not even the bodies of Mory’s zombie elves.
I screamed, weapons forgotten, reaching for the necromancer and amplifier as I ran toward them. Terror had seized my heart.
A mass of elves swarmed the barrier behind me, engaging my father as one coordinated force.
Called forth by my desperate need, magic welled in my necklace, burrowing into my skin. And suddenly I was standing beside Mory and Gabby.
I had inadvertently teleported. I’d forgotten I could do any such thing.
With no time to do anything else, I wrapped my arms around the fledglings, taking the creature’s vicious blow across my back. My ribs shattered. Pain ricocheted through my torso and filtered through my limbs. But I held on to the girls.
The three of us were lifted off our feet and flung across the stadium. Zombie elves flew through the air all around us.
I tried to twist, to get myself between Mory and Gabby and the barrier speeding toward us, to absorb our landing. But inexplicably, we slowed. Then we slowed some more.
The zombie elves splattered against the barrier. But we didn’t. We were somehow decelerating, suspended …
I glanced back toward the beast and the gateway.
Thick tendrils of magic — the life force that fueled the gateway — were still attached to Mory. Specifically, attached to her arms. Arms that I had clamped to her sides in my crushing hug. The ropes of magic were thinning — but were somehow still elastic.
“Let go, Mory!” We paused for the instant it took for me to put everything together, suspended about twelve feet off the floor. “Let go!”
“No,” Mory grunted. “I can’t.”
“Jesus Christ!”
The life force magic jerked, yanking us back the way we’d come. The metal-plated beast, now about halfway through the gateway, lowered its tusked head, watching us return.
I swear to God it was freaking smiling. Toothily.
Either that or the beast couldn’t properly close its mouth. You know, because of the massive tusks and the full complement of jagged, sharp-edged teeth.
“Gabby!” I cried. “Grab my arm!”
Unbelievably, the amplifier did exactly as I asked, grabbing hold of me with both hands. I dropped my arm, holding onto Mory one-handed while lowering the amplifier. We sped back toward the beast.
I had time to notice that it had two-foot-long metal spines jutting out all over its back. Delightful.
I dropped Gabby three feet from the ground. She hit hard, then rolled.
Mory shrieked defiantly, bringing her knitting needles up over her head, both in her one free hand, as if she was ready to stab the beast through the eye.
It opened its massive maw, already anticipating chomping us down.
I got my feet up and forward seconds before we hit that maw, jamming each foot against a tusk on either side of the creature’s mouth. Then somehow, I managed to hold myself in place just long enough to lower Mory a bit closer to the ground before I dropped her.
The beast roared, flipping its head upward — and me along with it — before I could see if Mory was safe.
I slammed into the well of magic fueling the gateway, hitting hard like it might have been a solid wall — and came face-to-face with Haoxin.
The guardian of North America’s eyes were open.
I saw the moment she recognized me, as anger contorted her pretty features. The gold of her guardian magic was literally bleeding from her sky-blue eyes.
Her mouth moved, forming the word, “You!”
Then I was falling, tumbling down from the gateway and landing on the back of the beast. With those metal spines. Which sank into my own back like I was a pincushion. I wasn’t certain my ribs had healed yet from the first hit I’d taken.
As agony seized me, holding me in place, I got the strong feeling that Haoxin wasn’t going to forgive me. And that a guardian’s retribution might be way more dangerous than hundreds of elves, or dozens of elven metal-spined beasts, or Reggie.
The beast snarled and spat, twisting to get me off its back. Unfortunately for me, I appeared to be skewered to it. The creature completely cleared the gateway as I managed to peel myself off its spines. My armor had apparently saved any vital organs from being punctured. But I was leaving way, way too much blood behind.
Then, because I was an absolute moron, I called my knife into my hand and tried crawling toward the creature’s head. Mory had the right idea. Stabbing it through the eye would certainly —
The beast bucked.
I slipped, slamming down — hard — with one leg on either side of its metal-plated back. I stifled a scream. Black dots swam before my eyes, and I just had to hang on for a moment, blinking, absorbing the pain.
Yeah, that was going to bruise.
“Get down from there, Jade!” my father shouted, peeved. “Now is not the time for a piggyback ride!”
A snarky retort rose up, but I didn’t have the breath to voice it.
“Yeah, it’s you I’m calling a piggy!” my father crowed.
Yep. My father was smack-talking a metal beast from another dimension. A creature that was the size of a freaking bus. A double-decker bus. From my vantage point, at least.
The beast swung its tusked head around, completely forgetting about the annoyance currently, though involuntarily, straddling its back. Namely, me.
My father’s sword flashed, its magic singing a gleeful, hungry chorus.
Lovely.
Singing weapons of mass destruction. That ran in the family, apparently.
Thankfully, the beast was easily distracted.
I slid down its back, landing hard on my ass as it charged my father. I crawled, then scrambled in the opposite direction.
A cluster of elves had surrounded Mory and Gabby, who were pressed together to one side of the gateway. Freddie was perched on the necromancer’s shoulder.
Screaming fiercely, I pulled my sword and launched myself forward. And only then realized that these elves were under Mory’s control. Her zombies. Or maybe replacement
zombies.
I had to abort my attack in midair, landing seriously awkwardly.
My father bellowed. Then he laughed. Not at me, though. Apparently, he found the metal beast entertaining.
I pushed through the zombie elves, glancing over at Yazi. He was dancing around and slashing at the beast, goading it. It was already missing an upper tusk. So much for my father not playing with his prey.
“Jade!” Mory was hunched over, holding her ankle. But she still held onto the life force she’d untangled. “I can do this. I can still do this.”
I glanced over at Gabby. She was holding her arm, looking too pale. Badly injured.
The amplifier nodded.
“That’s ridiculous —” I started to say.
Mory jabbed her finger, pointing past my shoulder. “You take care of the elves, Jade. I’ve almost got Haoxin out.”
I snarled.
“You promised,” Mory hissed.
“Yeah,” Gabby echoed. “You promised.”
Clenching my jaw down on my need to argue, I spun away. Heedless of my own injuries, which were thankfully already healing, I pulled my sword again. I shoved my way free of Mory’s zombies.
A half-dozen elves had made it over the barrier while my father was distracted with the beast.
I charged toward the warriors, unleashing the centipedes on three moments before I attacked the other three, decapitating one with my first strike.
The other two drove me back a step before I incapacitated them. The next half-dozen drove me farther back.
I fought.
The elves kept coming.
From the corner of my eye, I saw my father take the beast down, then hack off its head for good measure. But the elves simply swarmed over and around it as it began to decay and crumble. The refreshed onslaught beat both of us back, pushing us closer and closer to the gateway.
“Mory!” I shouted. “Now, Mory!”
“Don’t rush me, Jade!” she screeched.
There were too many of them. Reggie had managed to get too many warriors through the gate while I was injured and healing. Then she’d buoyed her numbers even more while we snuck through the maze.
And she was willing to sacrifice every last one of them.
We were going to lose.
The elves would take Vancouver.
I tripped on a fallen elf, taking a blow to the head and stumbling. I blocked the next hit … but just barely. Desperate, I called the centipedes back into my left hand.
Then I tasted salvation.
I risked a glance to my right.
Warner and Kandy were charging over the top of the barrier. The elves nearest to them were already spinning to protect their rear flank.
“Jade!” Kandy screamed. Then she flung out her arms and simply leaped up into the air.
I shoved my left hand into my satchel, ripping the golden cuffs out of its depths and flinging them toward Kandy in the same motion.
The elves pressing me stumbled back, unsure of what I’d released.
The cuffs flew upward.
A seven-foot-tall monster with three-inch claws tore through Kandy’s human visage, stretching her stained and torn clothing. The cuffs clicked into place on her wrists. She tucked her knees to her chest, deliberately stalling herself mid leap. Then she dropped to the floor, riding three elves down as she landed. She tore off two of their heads with her massive clawed hands, then ripped out the throat of the third with her teeth. And all the while, she chortled madly through her misaligned, toothy jaw.
Meeting Warner’s fierce gaze and not wanting to look anywhere else ever again, I cleared my closest opponents with the centipedes. Then I tossed him his weapon.
Having some understanding of what was happening this time, the elves in the path of the wicked-looking knife tried to knock it out of the air. I watched the weapon actually swerve around them, homing in on, then setting neatly into Warner’s raised hand.
He took two more heads with it before the elves even saw him move.
Hope bloomed through my chest, energizing my limbs. I began to cut down any elves that stood between me and the two people I loved beyond anything else, beyond destiny, beyond death.
The elves shifted before me, trying to reorganize on the fly in order to fight opponents on two fronts. But Warner and Kandy steadily carved a path toward my father and me, fighting side by side, her with tooth and claw and him with fist and blade. Moving together as if they’d been fighting in tandem for years.
I didn’t have any time to admire their battle prowess, though. I had my own war to wage.
A taste of peppermint tickled my senses. I quickly scanned the barrier but didn’t spot Kett or Jasmine.
“Jade!” Kandy shouted. Her words were mangled by her misaligned jaw, though she was only a few feet away from me now. “Benjamin needs you. You need to get his bracelet off!”
“What?” I called the centipedes back to me, then stabbed an elf standing between me and Kandy through the eye.
Kandy flung her arms around my neck. “Jasmine and Bitsy took out the guards while Benjamin got the cells unlocked with that brilliant pen you made him. But …”
Warner put his back to us, covering our embrace and taking over for Kandy as she struggled to speak. “Kandy and I were attacked in the corridor while the fledglings went to free Kett. Unfortunately, the executioner wasn’t in possession of his usual control, and he injured them before we could intercede. Bitsy said the witches were supposed to open an exit, but we couldn’t find it.” He growled with frustration. “Without my knife, I couldn’t get them through the exterior wards.”
Kandy mumbled into my hair, “Benjamin is seriously hurt. Dying. I tried to feed him, but he can’t … you have to get the bracelet off him.”
“Go, Jade,” my father shouted. “Warner, the wolf, and I will keep the elves from the gate and protect the necromancer and amplifier.”
The elves pressed against us. My father and Warner hacked them back, brutally efficient.
“Warner or I have to lead the dowser to Benjamin,” Kandy said. “And have her back while getting to him.”
My father laughed. “Jade has upgraded.”
I snorted. Then I realized he meant the teleporting.
“I have to be able to see … or to visualize where I’m going, don’t I?”
My father shook his head. “You know the taste of the vampire … of Benjamin’s magic?”
I did. “Sounds risky.”
My father grinned.
Yeah. I hated being right.
Warner swept me forward into a fierce embrace, practically savaging my mouth. And I welcomed the strength beneath his touch, the taste of his magic. As if I might have been dying of dehydration, and only he could —
Kandy pressed her face against ours. She slobbered across my left cheek — then practically chewed it.
Warner threw his head back and laughed. Kandy joined him. Then she grabbed the arm of an elf intent on stabbing Warner in the back and tore it off.
“Come right back,” Warner growled. Then he spun away, back to the battle.
Breathless, with a grin firmly etched across my face, I sheathed my weapons and tried to recall the taste of Benjamin’s sweet-but-sour grape-jelly-bean magic.
I’d thought I’d have to beg for forgiveness from my BFF and fiance. For what I’d done. For leaving them behind.
Apparently not.
The effervescent teleportation magic embedded in my necklace snapped out and bit me, squeezing me from the inside out. Then the battle was gone.
I was standing in a white-walled, white-ceilinged hall, dizzy and disoriented.
Clawed fingers gripped my shoulders, yanking me backward. Sharp teeth scored my neck as I slammed my elbow back. Bone and cartilage crunched. My attacker grunted, losing her hold on me. I spun, knife already in hand. Then I tasted sweet peppermint.
I had thrown Jasmine all the way down the hall, tumbling over the bodies of the warrior elves that littered the floor
all around me. Most of them were missing their heads, but a few had their throats gouged … ripped out.
Kett was kneeling a few feet away with Benjamin in his arms. The fledgling vampire’s naturally pale skin had grayed. Bitsy, propped up against the wall beside the executioner, didn’t look much better.
Kett glanced down the hall toward the golden-haired vampire struggling to gain her feet. “I told you to stop biting everyone.”
Jasmine managed to crouch, holding one of her arms across her chest. She pinned her gaze to me, snarling viciously. Her eyes were fully blood red — and not just from her magic.
Ignoring her, I stepped over to Kett, kneeling before Benjamin. The immediate area was littered with empty IV blood bags. Benjamin’s satchel was tossed to the side, his notebooks spilling out. The dark-haired vampire’s magic was dim, almost tasteless. I was surprised I’d been able to use it as an anchor to teleport.
I met Kett’s gaze. He looked haggard, worn. His magic was blazing red through his eyes, his fangs on full display.
“He’s dying,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“No!” Jasmine howled. She abruptly appeared beside me, slamming her shoulder into mine and attempting to tear Benjamin from Kett’s arms.
“I said stop!” Kett snarled. Magic lashed out with his words, freezing Jasmine in place.
Bitsy moaned, sliding sideways against the wall. Two bite marks on her neck weeped with blood. A bruise was slowly darkening the area around the punctured skin.
“Please, please,” Jasmine whispered, pulling my attention to her. “Please, dowser.” The golden-haired vampire had also been bitten, though the marks on her neck were mostly healed.
I met Kett’s steady gaze again.
“I took too much.” Regret cracked through his dispassion. “I … I tried to tell them not to open the door when I realized they were coming for me. Warner and Kandy eventually got me … quelled, but not before …” He looked down at Benjamin in his arms, sorrow chiseled across his face.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “It’s not your fault,” I said, and I knew it was true. Because the fault was mine. “What can I do?”
“We need you to get the bracelet off,” Jasmine said. “We can’t get it off Ben. Kandy tried to feed him, but the bracelet is backfiring. Or maybe it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do in this situation, stopping Ben from becoming a slaughtering fiend when he’s … when he needs …” She sobbed harshly. “Please, dowser. Take the bracelet off. And … then … I’ll feed him. I’ll feed Ben.”
Gemstones, Elves, and Other Insidious Magic (Dowser 9) Page 24