“Run, men!” Ascher shouted to the men fighting beyond the shield bubble. “Run for your lives!”
Emma could see several of Ascher’s soldiers—men whose faces she had seen on a daily basis—lying motionless in the snow.
What happened next was so disturbing she knew she’d never forget it. The Elki were feeding on the fallen soldiers, greedily burying their faces into the bodies and chewing. It was the chewing she couldn’t bear, as well as the sight of entrails steaming in the cold air.
“Oh, gods,” she said, clutching her stomach.
She heard a distorted thumping and opened her eyes to see enemy soldiers slashing at the shield bubble with their swords. Elki threw themselves against it, yelping and growling in protest as their bodies slammed like fists against a Plexiglas window.
“It won’t hold,” Lily said, on the verge of tears.
Emma ran over to Lily and held her hand.
“A little longer, sis. Just a bit more.”
Then the pounding stopped.
And there was silence.
The soldiers and Elki were now stepping away from the dining room floor and the shield bubble protecting it. They walked backward over the shattered walls and Emma saw with growing terror that the men were smiling. He was finally here.
Iolus.
CHAPTER 72
“ T here you are.”
The voice seemed to come from all directions at once. Emma swung her head around to look over her shoulder, thinking the sorcerer had stepped up behind her. She breathed in and out, on the verge of complete panic. Despite everything that had happened in the past six months—like watching her father murdered—Emma had never seen death as clearly as she did now. A new fear overtook her—not of death but of something much worse: that she would never get to say good-bye to Milo or her mother.
“A semi-permeable shield,” Iolus said, still invisible in the darkness. “Who would’ve thought Ascher had such a talented magician in his pathetic little orphanage?”
“She won’t be his for long,” said a much heavier voice, and Emma saw a giant, gray-skinned, bearded man holding a massive hammer step forth from the crowd. His beard had been braided across his chest, and the top of his head was bald. His muscles were huge and obscene in the low light, like misshapen boulders.
Iolus emerged from the darkness next to him. He stepped over pieces of broken wall, his soiled hair falling in ragged shreds around his head. He was carrying a brown sack, and there was a sword strapped to his back. Other figures emerged; Emma saw a Dark Acolyte who looked familiar, and then she understood why. He was one of the men who had come to kill her father and kidnap her mother. The Acolyte met her eyes, his face twisted into a poisonous scowl.
“Golden wings,” she heard him say to his companions. “Clever trick. It won’t stop me from tearing them off.”
The third figure to join the group was a well-built woman with orange hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a leather suit of armor with a fur-lined cloak draped over it. Something long and shiny curled by her knees. Emma studied it for a moment, and then her mouth opened in horror. The woman had a tail like any other Feral, except that hers was the segmented, metallic-looking tail of a scorpion.
“A Pestilent.” Calista said.
Emma didn’t stop to think what the word “pestilent” might mean. Instead she kept her eyes on Ascher to see what he would do next. She could tell by his furrowed brow and partly open mouth that the man had no idea how to proceed.
“Ascher,” Iolus said, rapping on Lily’s shield with his knuckles. “Knock, knock. I have a gift for you and your pups.”
He lifted the sack he was carrying and reached into it with his free hand. He pulled something out that looked pale orange and bushy in the torchlight—with glinting black eyes and white hair.
The orphans squealed in terror.
“Oh gods,” Emma said. Her stomach tightened, and for a moment, she was almost sick.
It was Sevarin she was really worried about. He wouldn’t stand for what Iolus had done.
“You son of a…” Sevarin muttered an obscenity Emma hadn’t heard since her time in the human realm. He was shivering with rage.
“Hold him back,” Ascher said, going over to restrain Sevarin.
Calista began to whimper. Barrel went to provide some comfort.
“See what happens when I get angry?” Iolus said, holding the obscene thing much higher so they could all get a better look. Emma heard a growling sound and realized it was Ascher. He was baring his teeth and growling at Iolus like an animal.
It was all too much for Emma. She wanted to scream in terror, and yet, despite her revulsion and fear, and the weeping of the other orphans, she couldn’t help but look one more time at the horror in Iolus’s hand.
It was Vastanon’s head, severed at the neck, his once pristine hair dirty with crusted blood.
“You sick bastard,” Ascher said, keeping an arm across Sevarin’s chest to hold him back.
Iolus tossed the severed head into the snow. Then, as if carried by invisible hands, his sword detached itself from his back and danced in the air. It was not just any sword. It was longer than any Emma had ever seen, one that could float and slash through the air by itself.
It tapped its point along the shield, as if in search of a weak spot.
Sevarin glanced over his shoulder at Lily. “Is the shield one-way only?”
Lily spoke as Barrel uncorked another Manaris Brew potion and handed it to her. “Yes,” she said. “Why? Sevarin, don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t,” he said.
He broke into a sprint toward the edge of the barrier. He moved so fast that Emma didn’t know what was happening until it was over.
The muscular, gray-skinned man carrying the hammer flew back. He’d been knocked backward by Sevarin’s punch. He fell with a loud crunch against a pile of broken wall segments, his hammer landing with a dull thump next to him.
A look of fury twisted Iolus’s face.
“You’ll pay for that, Sargonaut. You think this is a game? You think I’m joking around? I’m here to kill you and your gold-winged girlfriend. In fact, I might just let Basher here pluck her feathers out, one by one, and make you watch.”
“You just try that,” Sevarin said.
Basher pushed himself off the ground. He peered at Sevarin through rage-soaked eyes and wiped his mouth. Elki gathered around his legs and joined him, snapping their jaws at the boy.
“I’m gonna pound you into a bloody paste, Sargonaut. Then I’m going to smear your remains all over a canvas and call it art.”
Sevarin started his own comeback, but Ascher stopped him.
“Quiet, Sev.” Then he looked at Iolus. “You won’t get Milo. As you can see, he’s not even here. He’s somewhere far away and safe.”
Iolus scanned the orphan’s faces. The floating sword was now running its point all around the shield, making a high-pitched keening sound like a fork scraping across a plate.
Iolus frowned. “Let’s take a closer look, shall we?”
He raised his right arm as high as it would go. His hand caught fire, and the flames gathered until they became a crackling, white-hot ball. The sword buried its tip in the fireball’s core and pulled it up into the air, becoming a hovering torch that crept along the shield-bubble, illuminating the orphans’ frightened faces.
“So, it’s true,” Iolus said. “But that’s just fine. I’m sure you’ll tell me where he is, especially when I start plucking eyeballs out of your beloved orphans. Followed by their teeth, their fingernails, and finally their…”
Iolus stopped. The smile dropped from his face.
A sound had risen in the night. A thin rumbling in the distance.
“What is that?” Sevarin said, looking around.
Oscar, who had been holding on to his father (the man looked as though he might die of fright any moment now), pulled away from the group and approached the far edge of the bubble. He cupped his
ear with one hand and listened.
“It is men running,” he said in a whisper. “Many men running from there”—he pointed north—“and there.” He pointed south.
“They’re flanking us,” the Pestilent woman said.
Iolus backed away from the shield, his sword torch following him. The Dark Acolyte, the Pestilent woman, and Basher also backed away.
“We’ve been set up,” the Dark Acolyte said.
“Shut your mouth, Coscoros,” Iolus said, then turned to his soldiers. “They’re coming from the north and south. Ready yourselves for battle.”
With a flap of his wings, Coscoros shot up into the darkness.
“Acolytes, fly,” he shouted over the gathering of soldiers, which Emma noticed was much larger than she had originally thought. Black shapes darted up into the sky. Coscoros flew among them, shouting orders and dividing the Acolytes into those who would defend north and those who would defend south.
The Pestilent woman shouted, “Ferals, phase,” and immediately phased into a huge, ugly gray wasp that buzzed louder than a tractor engine. She flew away, over the crowd, and Emma saw many others phase into giant wasps, beetles, and mosquitoes.
Basher howled in a way that made him sound like he was speaking an alien language. The Elki surrounding him turned and sprinted off in different directions. He pointed at Sevarin, made a slashing motion across his own throat, then turned and disappeared into the gloom.
Iolus grinned once at Ascher and then at Emma. The man’s toothy, razor-sharp smile made cold fingers tickle her spine.
“I’m coming back for your children,” he said in that raspy, eloquent voice of his. “So don’t go anywhere.”
When Emma looked again, Iolus was gone, and all she could see was the sparkling spread of torches in the distance. The lights trembled in the snowy darkness as forces clashed and the battle began.
CHAPTER 73
“Who are they?” Sevarin asked no one in particular.
No one answered. He stood halfway between the group of orphans and the edge of the shield bubble, staring off at the battle down the hill. Men wearing dark armor and carrying swords and shields had come through the forests to swarm Iolus’s fighters. Emma’s heart swelled with hope.
Sevarin turned to the group. “What now?”
“Now,” Ascher said, “we wait. Whoever brought this army is trying to protect us. We have no reason to lose hope just yet.”
“I’m cold,” one of the orphans said.
“Ascher,” Coral said, “the children will freeze.”
Sevarin scowled. “We just sit here? No way. Let’s get as far away as possible.”
“We can’t run,” Ascher said. “We have nowhere to go. We’ll freeze to death if we go into that forest.”
Sevarin was shouting now. “That’s better than sitting here and waiting for Lily’s shield spell to break! They’ll come back for us!”
Andres spoke up in his broken English, keeping one hand on his son’s shoulder. “Sevarin is correct. We should to be running.”
Ascher looked at Lily. “How’s the shield spell?”
Emma studied her friend’s face. Lily’s eyes were closed. Her brows hung low in a look of deep concentration.
Barrel answered for her. “She’s good for now, but I’m almost out of these Manaris Brew potions. As it is, she’s had too many. She’ll lose consciousness if I give her more.”
Ascher shuffled over to where Lily was standing.
“What would we do without her?” he said, smiling down at the girl. “Well, if the shield breaks, at least we’ll have one more line of defense.”
“And what’s that?” Sevarin said in his snotty way.
“This.”
Ascher stepped back from the group and grabbed the lapels of his fur-lined winter coat. He cast it off and let it drop to the snow-covered wooden boards of what had once been the dining room floor.
The orphans gasped at what they saw. His clothes looked normal—a simple brown outfit made for the winter—but it wasn’t his clothes they were staring at.
It was his tail.
“A Feral,” Oscar said. “Que chévere!”
Ascher spread his arms.
“I love you, Coral,” he said to his wife.
Coral spoke in a sudden rush of emotion. “My love.”
Snow swirled around Ascher’s legs and became a tornado that swallowed up his massive body, stinging the faces of those around him. His long hair and dangling, curly beard were swept to one side as the wind enveloped him. It swept the artificial lenses out of his eyes, leaving them a golden orange.
The transformation was sudden, but Emma noticed the details as if it were happening in slow motion, such was the intensity of her concentration. Ascher’s head and limbs grew stockier and longer, and the skin on his face darkened as brown fur appeared in tufts. His eyes blackened and reformed themselves into round, marble-like pebbles. His hind parts thickened as he dropped on all fours.
Emma gasped. Ascher let out a deep roar, no longer a man, but a grizzly bear the size of her mother’s minivan.
The orphans stepped back in fear. The bear sniffed a few times and raised its head. A pair of rounded ears twitched as it scanned the crowd of orphans. It was Ascher, without a doubt. It even looked like him.
“Pop?” Sevarin said. He ran forward and threw his arms around the enormous creature. Ascher raised himself on his hind legs and wrapped his arms, each ending in a set of long black claws, around the boy’s torso. A gruff sound worked its way out of his throat, sounding like laughter.
Calista and Oscar stepped forward, their tails swishing behind them.
“I don’t believe it,” Calista said. “All this time.”
The sounds of battle rang down the hill, adding urgency to the situation. Emma found herself thinking about Milo again. Where was he?
A vision flashed in her mind of men with torches and swords running up the hill, Elki loping beside them.
“We need to leave,” Emma said. “Now!”
“Damn right, we do,” Sevarin said, taking her hand.
Then Lily began to cry.
The shield spell had fizzled out.
CHAPTER 74
T he grizzly bear swung its snout towards the forest to the west. Ascher was trying to tell them something.
Barrel was the one who spoke.
“To the forest!”
Then Emma heard the worst sound she had ever heard in her life: the wheezy gasping and snorting of hungry monsters.
“Run!” Coral shouted, gathering a few of the smaller orphans into her arms and taking off toward the forest.
Emma and Calista grabbed Lily, who in her weakened state looked ready to faint, and pulled her along. Oscar had allowed Barrel to climb onto his back and was carrying him through the knee-deep snow as quickly as he could.
“Where are we going?” Barrel asked against the howling wind.
“I don’t know,” Coral said. “Oh, gods, Ascher!”
Ascher, still in grizzly bear form, had stayed back to engage the Elki. Emma looked back and screamed at what she saw. The Elki clung to Ascher’s fur like attacking wasps, and the growls being torn from his throat were so loud they overtook the clamor of the battle down the hill.
Then another figure—this one shaped like a person, and dark of skin—began to dance around the grizzly bear, swinging and punching as it moved. Elki were tossed aside like stuffed animals, their wounds gushing blood all over the snow.
Sevarin.
“Get off him!” he shouted, stabbing at the creatures. The Tiberian blade flashed in his hand.
Owen and Gunner ran sideways so they could watch.
“Yeah, kill ’em, Sev! Kill ’em!”
Sevarin managed to break Ascher free from the Elki. As father and son ran back toward the group, the grizzly bear raised its front paw. Sevarin reached over and victoriously slapped the giant paw in a high-five.
Up ahead, the forest was black. The trees were heavy and
white with snow. Emma fell several times. Each time, she thought she’d rather get eaten by Elki than enter that shadowy forest.
“Stop!” Owen shouted. “Everyone stop! Elki in the forest!”
The group stopped as one, many of the orphans falling forward into the snow. At first, they saw nothing but the darkened forest in the distance. Then, among those dark trees, a galaxy of red stars blinked to life as hundreds of Elki opened their glowing eyes. Low growls left their throats and rumbled across the field, sounding like an avalanche.
“No,” Coral said. “Oh, gods—no!”
Ascher ran ahead of the group and let out a deep, bearish growl. It did nothing to stop the Elki from sprinting out of the forest toward them.
Then the sky lit up.
The snow was awash suddenly in artificial white light, accompanied by a blast of wind that made the orphans shield their eyes and melt into crouches.
An aircraft swooped over them and flew toward the forest. It was a boxy thing with stubby wings that looked like it was meant to carry cargo. It hovered before the forest, casting down its beam of light and scaring the Elki back into the trees.
Two figures descended from the craft, carried by an invisible force, too far away for Emma to identify. But she could tell it was two men. One was a bit shorter than the other. They wore white, which made it difficult to see them against the snow.
Her heart flipped inside her chest. Could it be Milo? Maybe it was, with that man she had seen in her vision.
Then, watching the two men—and it was clear they were two men, not a man and a boy—she came to the conclusion that it couldn’t possibly be Milo. Even the shorter one was too tall to be her twin brother. And to make her even more doubtful, the shorter one began to cast a fireball spell that Milo could not possibly have learned in only two days’ time.
“Who are they?” Coral said.
“Magic users,” Lily said. “From Theus.”
Lily no longer looked tired. She was peering at the two men through narrowed eyes and shivering.
The taller of the two men had cast a glowing spark up into the night sky. Its light was weak at first; it resembled the orange spark that shoots up before bursting into a fireworks display. But as it hung in the sky, it grew brighter and brighter.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 40