Guilt racked Saul’s chest. If only I hadn’t stupidly set the church alight…
But he didn’t have time to spare for self-recrimination right now. A PTAD agent had died in the line of duty, as many did, but they still had the opportunity to save the girls. Those poor girls, bound inside a circle drawn in blood, tears on their cheeks, fear in their eyes, faced with the truth of their mortality half a century too soon.
All the grief and suffering that had flooded this city today, and would continue to drown it through the night, was a result of the girls’ abduction committed by the sorceress, and the concurrent arrival of Excalibur facilitated by the necromancer.
If those two weren’t stopped, then this chaos wouldn’t stop either.
“Oh, give it up, Reiz,” the necromancer said as he stepped off the translocated section of the floor. He swept his hand to the side, and an asteroid field of large-grade gravel rose into the air. “The PTAD isn’t going to win this one.”
“The hell we aren’t,” Saul roared, “you disgusting piece of shit.”
The necromancer’s eyebrow twitched. “Instead of a rude epithet, how about you call me by an actual name? I go by ‘Slade’ most days.”
“And I go by ‘Agent.’” Saul brought both arms up with great force, funneling his life energy through the ground beneath Slade in a similar motion. The earth burst up, shearing away the area where Slade stood and pelting him with gravel and clumps of dirt.
The onslaught, unfortunately, didn’t collapse Slade’s own spell. On the cusp of a quick whistle, the floating gravel shot toward Saul like a volley of gunfire.
Saul dove to the side, hit the ground at an awkward angle, and skidded to a stop at the same moment the necromancer landed in a heap five feet away from him.
Both of them groaned from the hard impacts, and both of them rose again.
Slade pulled out a wickedly curved knife smeared with dried blood. “You’re a stubborn little bitch.”
Saul wiped his bleeding lip with his thumb and grinned. “I could say the same about you.”
“Don’t suppose we could call a truce?” he said snidely.
Saul flicked his gaze toward the magic circle. The sorceress had now raised a shield of her own, and she was back to chanting away the box’s paper-thin defenses. Jack was halfway to the circle, with Cassidy and crew a few steps behind him.
Bankroft and Frasier had been waylaid by the harpy that Lehigh hadn’t managed to disable before she met her end, so Jack alone would have to smash through the sorceress’s shield. If he failed to do that in the next few minutes, then the ritual would begin and the girls’ lives would be forfeit.
“No.” Saul spit a glob of blood on the gravel before Slade’s feet. “We really can’t.”
“Oh well.” Slade spun the knife around in his hand and pointed the tip at Saul’s face. “It was worth a shot.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Tanner
Tanner thought he’d witnessed absolute horror when the sable wight tore into those men at the river, and he’d never been more upset to be wrong in his life. He found it impossible to peel his gaze off the vicious battle taking place across the street. Yet at the same time, he yearned for a break in the bloodshed that was quickly filling his head with the stuff of nightmares even more potent than the dread instilled in his heart by the wight.
Manticores torn to pieces kept on trying to claw and sting and bite, their fleshy chunks rolling around on the ground. Harpies set ablaze by streams of magic fire shrieked at pitches that could shatter glass. As soon as one chimera fell, another rose from some hidden pit dug into the parking lot, or out in the cemetery. So the vampires kept on ripping the creatures limb from limb, while the PTAD agents shot their guns and used their magic charms to light up the night.
The cacophony of gunfire and spellcasting was both deafening and not loud enough—Tanner desperately wished he couldn’t hear the screams. And though the night was dark, the moon once again hidden behind storm clouds, the magic flares illuminated the gore so brightly that Tanner lost his stomach, twice, in the first five minutes.
Then a flurry of burning birds burst out of the church’s broken windows, and in their wake, the glow of a growing fire lapped at the jagged windowsills. The flickers of flame and shadow within the building shot a spike of terror through Tanner’s gut as he imagined Saul and the others burning—
With the sound of a cracking whip, the revenants of le Fay and Mordred suddenly appeared outside, accompanied by a third of the church’s nave. And before Tanner could even take a step, the huge section of flooring brutally crushed the PTAD combat witch named Lehigh.
What the hell just happened? Tanner shrieked internally.
Tanner swallowed. Thanks for the tip, but I wasn’t planning on challenging her at all. I’m honestly not even sure I can make myself move. My feet feel rooted to the ground.
But what could I possibly do to influence the outcome of…that?
He frantically gestured toward the battle, which had intensified yet again. Saul clashed one on one with the necromancer, and Montesano repeatedly slammed his bulky wolf body into a magic shield erected around the sorceress and the circle of sacrifice where the terrified girls awaited their gruesome fate.
Tanner swallowed, his throat bone dry despite the damp air.
What sort of change?
When a few of these people had first appeared some minutes prior, Kim had explained to Tanner what they were: humans who’d been surgically and magically stripped of free will so they could be used for manual labor and cannon fodder.
Tanner had been appropriately disgusted by the concept.
There’s too many of them, he said, and too few of us. Our side won’t be able to overcome all the enemy combatants before the revenant of le Fay performs the ritual.
But how? Tanner scrutinized the magic shield around the circle. I don’t know how to break through that.
So, what? I go at it with brute force? Tanner asked.
Do I have enough power to do that?
She quickly taught him a more sophisticated version of the basic force spell she’d introduced on the drive over. In place of a small wall of force, this one created what was essentially a gauss round made of pure energy.
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br /> On impact, the bulk of the energy would discharge into a small area—in this case, the damaged part of the shield—creating a hole. Then the remaining energy would ripple outward through the rest of the shield’s structure, preventing it from stabilizing and causing it to collapse from the hole on out.
As long as Tanner’s aim was fair, he should be able to knock the shield down with one strike.
After tamping down his nerves with a painfully deep breath, Tanner took the stance described by Kim and dug around inside himself until he found all that life energy he hadn’t had access to until today. He shoved a substantial chunk of it into his fist, his fingers tingling from the dense concentration of raw magic power.
Tanner spoke the incantation Kim had taught him under his breath, and the energy felt like it solidified into a brick. Hefting up his heavy hand, he took aim at the shield, squinting to make out the center of the damaged section amid the disorienting bursts of magic all across the battlefield.
I’ve almost got it lined up. Just give me a few more…
He punched the air, shooting the round of unadulterated force toward the shield.
His aim was true.
The block of energy slammed into the cracked section, and as that section imploded like a shattering pane of glass, an undulating golden wave of force rode across the surface of the rest of the shield.
The shield flickered. Once. Twice. Three times. And then it fell to pieces, thousands of tiny red shards vanishing as they hit the ground.
Tanner had exactly two seconds to cheer—before the protective field around the box dissipated in the same way the shield had, and the metal lid flew open to reveal the honest-to-god Excalibur. An arming sword with a gilded hilt and a leather-wrapped grip that, despite the simplicity of its design, resonated with some innate power beyond mortal understanding.
It was a minute to midnight, and the sorceress had Excalibur.
Stricken, Tanner searched the parking lot for someone who could take down the revenant of le Fay before she started the ritual and killed the girls. But there was no one.
The drones had driven Montesano into the ditch beside the road. Saul was literally wrestling with the necromancer, a glowing knife perilously close to his eye. Ford was pinned to the ground under a harpy’s talons, desperately emptying her gun into its chest.
Bankroft’s arm was stuck in a manticore’s mouth. Frasier was rolling on the ground, holding his bleeding head, which had been cracked open by a whipping scorpion tail. And the list went on.
The only person who could reach the circle in time to stop the ritual was Tanner.
Oh fuck. What do I do now? he asked Kim.
It took her a short while to reply, and when she did, her voice was even more distant than before.
Are…Are you okay? You sound like you’re fading fast.
she admitted.
But I need you! I can’t do this by myself.
During their short chat, the sorceress had raised the sword from the box using some sort of telekinesis and brought it to hover over the center point of the circle. The formerly ambient glow of the blood-drawn circle flared bright crimson, casting a hellish glow across the holy property.
The three girls, who presumably couldn’t see much of what was happening without the Third Sight, nonetheless sensed that some terrible end was drawing near. They began to wail and sob, tears streaming down their young faces.
Fear for their well-being seized Tanner, drowning out his feelings of inadequacy. He dashed out of the woods at full speed, boots splashing through the overfilled ditch, and scrambled up onto the road.
Using the firm asphalt as a launching point, he spit out the incantation for the wind spell. The words chilled his tongue as a cold wind with no natural source swept up behind him.
The powerful current of air picked him up and shot him across the road at breakneck speed. As he sailed toward the magic circle, he struggled to orient himself, his directional control of the wind not quite perfect. But it was good enough.
He rocketed overtop the circle and grabbed hold of Excalibur’s hilt at the same moment the masterful sorceress finished casting the first part of the ritual spell meant to sacrifice three innocent lives. Her crimson energy arced up from the center of the circle, into the blade of the sword, and then across to one of the girls.
The girl screamed at the top of her lungs and writhed as the red energy pulsed through her—and then she went still. Deathly still.
The crimson energy rebounded into the sword, taking the girl’s life energy with it.
All of that happened in the fraction of a second where Tanner passed over the circle.
That was how fast magic could work. That was how fast magic could kill.
Tanner dragged the sword out of the circle, but his momentum slowed considerably due to some magnetic attachment between the sword and the active spell. Even as he flew onward, over the iron fence and into the cemetery, the blade remained attached to the circle by one red thread of power.
That thread was apparently all the sorceress needed to complete another part of the spell. The part that sent out a psychic shockwave to every revenant whose soul had ever been marked by Excalibur.
A mighty wave of energy burst out of the blade. It burned through Tanner, battering his mind and soul, the touch of harsh acid in places he couldn’t wash clean.
He shrieked in pain and lost his hold on the wind spell, causing his body to tumble wildly through the air until he slammed into a tall headstone and rebounded, landing roughly on the muddy ground. Excalibur slipped out of his hand and kept on going for another thirty feet. It came to rest standing straight up, the tip buried in the soft soil, at the foot of a grave whose headstone was topped with a mossy angel statue.
Tanner, shaking and crying, doubled over and threw up again. But only bile emerged from his throat, hot and bitter. Oh god, it hurts! Make it stop.
Back in the parking lot, the fast-moving psychic wave slammed into Saul, the sorceress, and the necromancer, rattling all three of them just as severely as it had rattled Tanner. But the latter two had been prepared for the agony—they were thrown off their feet for only a moment before they clawed their way back up.
Saul, who hadn’t seen it coming, spun around as if he’d been punched in the face. Then he dropped like a sack of bricks, clutching his head and wailing.
The wave, unburdened by all the suffering it inflicted, kept on charging outward in all directions from its epicenter.
However, the sorceress hadn’t managed to power the spell with all three girls—the two who hadn’t been struck by the arc of red energy were still very much alive, crying out in anguish at the sight of their dead friend. That meant, Tanner assumed, that the wave would only traverse a third of the planet.
Tanner had been unable to save one of the hostages, a failure that would haunt him forever, just like the death of his student, Marlene. But at the very least, he’d managed to sabotage the plans of these criminal revenants and their unknown master.
Oh hell. It never ends!
Tanner, using the headstone as leverage, hauled himself to his feet. Vertigo nearly decked him, and he had to stand still for almost half a minute before he could walk in a straight line. The rough impact had bruised him all over, and several of his ribs were cracked, every breath like fire in his chest.
Yet he rounded the headstone and shambled toward Excalibur anyway. Because he was the only person who could.
Even in the cemetery, the fight was in full swing.
Agent Napier was using her necromancy powers to bring down dozens of those creepy dead birds that kept dive-bombing people using the cover of darkness. Nearby, two of the vampires were busy tearing into a manticore.
Cassidy’s team, all except the deceased Lehigh, had at some point been forced to retreat into the cemetery after they exited the burning church. They were now being pursued by two harpies, the three of them bleeding from numerous deep wounds rent by sharp talons.
Only Tanner was free to move. Only Tanner could save the day.
God, now there’s some irony…
Wrapping his unsteady hand around Excalibur’s hilt, Tanner tugged the sword out of the soil. Then, using the headstones to pull himself along, he made his way toward the back end of the cemetery. It was fenced in all the way around, but after his first attempt at the wind spell, he was sure he could muster a simple upward draft to carry him over the fence and deposit him safely on the other side.
Unless I use up all my life energy healing my injuries, he thought, wincing as a dislodged piece of rib popped back into its proper place. Is there any way I can slow my healing back down to normal speed?
A Knight of Cold Graves (The Revenant Reign Book 1) Page 33