A second after that we were through the Rebels, and it looked like 5th Avenue was clear ahead, save for pedestrians fleeing from Central Park and into the side streets. I pushed the throttle open, riding down the street as fast as I dared, Nora keeping pace right behind me. Just a little further and we would get to Times Square.
And then what?
It occurred to me that both Arvalaeon and Morvilind would be with the High Queen. Arvalaeon was apparently one of her advisors. And while Morvilind disliked socializing with the other Elven nobles and only did it under duress, he would have to attend the final stop of a Royal Progress. Failure to do so would be an insult to the High Queen, and Tarlia was perhaps the one person on Earth who could command Morvilind. He would definitely be there.
And if I could get either Morvilind or Arvalaeon to listen to me, that would be that. There was no way Nicholas could get the Sky Hammer into Times Square if either Morvilind or Arvalaeon were watching for him. Come to think of it, I would really enjoy watching Morvilind pound Nicholas into paste. I doubted even Nicholas’s Dark One could recover from the kind of magic that Morvilind wielded.
Then several things happened at once.
We entered a part of 5th Avenue with a big gray apartment building rising on the left-hand side. On the right side, there was a small lake in that part of Central Park, and the city had built a retaining wall along the sidewalk to keep pedestrians from tripping, rolling down the slope, and landing in the lake.
Something blocked out the sun, and I looked up to see the outer edge of the Skythrone overhead.
We were now under the Skythrone. I had an uneasy feeling at the thought of all that stone floating overhead, waiting to fall and crush us. Of course, if it fell, it would be after Nicholas detonated the Sky Hammer, and we would already be dead in nuclear fire. Cheery thought.
As we shot under the outer edge of the Skythrone, I heard a roar, and I looked to the left to see two Homeland Security helicopters shoot out from a side street, turn south, and start flying down 5th Avenue. They were big choppers, and each one was large enough to carry thirty officers. Probably some Homeland Security colonel had the bright idea of rushing to join the defense around the High Queen herself or raining fire on a Rebel position from above.
Unfortunately, one of the Rebels happened to be smarter than whoever was commanding those choppers.
Just as the helicopters passed overhead, there was a flare of fire atop one of the apartment buildings.
Someone had fired a rocket.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The rocket slammed into the helicopter on the left and exploded in a ball of fire. The helicopter spun out of control and crashed into the chopper on the right, and both aircraft plummeted towards the street.
I was right underneath them, and I had a half-second to decide what to do.
I slammed the throttle open, and the motorcycle leaped forward as if it had been fired from a gun. At the same instant, both helicopters crashed into the side of the apartment building, and the choppers blew up. The helicopters must have been freshly fueled and had been carrying a lot of ammunition because they made one hell of an explosion. The entire front of the apartment building ripped apart in a jet of howling flame, and the blast hurled a lot of rubble and the smoking wreckage of the helicopters into the street.
I missed it all by maybe half a second, passing so close I felt the heat of the flames sting at the exposed skin of my arms and neck. I hit the brakes and brought the bike around, looking back for the SUV, my heart in my throat. The wreckage of the choppers and the rubble from the apartment building had created a burning wall that sealed off 5th Avenue. God, had the SUV been under all of that? Had I gone through so much just to lose Russell and Riordan both in a single second?
No. No, thank God. I saw the SUV on the other side of the burning barrier. Nora had taken the opposite approach. I had sped under the crashing helicopters. She had slammed on the brakes and come to a stop.
Which meant we were cut off from each other.
I looked at the nearest side street, saw another firefight underway between a group of orcish mercenaries and a troop of Homeland Security officers. There was no way I could navigate through the side streets and get back to Riordan and Russell and the others. Nora would have to circle around to get back to 5th Avenue or take another route to Times Square. Should I wait for them here?
I looked south, and then up at the stone bulk of the Skythrone, and then back to the wreckage choking the street and the burning apartment building.
How many people had just died in that crash? Dozens, at a minimum. Probably hundreds, depending on how many Homeland Security officers had been on those choppers and how many people had been hiding in the apartments.
Hundreds of people gone in an instant…and that would be a drop in the ocean of the dead if Nicholas detonated the Sky Hammer.
If we were separated, Riordan had said we would have to make our way to Times Square separately.
And Nicholas might arrive from Venomhold with the Sky Hammer at any moment.
I didn’t dare wait.
With a snarl on my lips, I turned the motorcycle around, hit the throttle, and screamed south down 5th Avenue.
Chapter 9: Shatter Stone
I came across four more firefights as I hurtled south.
One of them was between a group of frost giants and three times as many orcish mercenaries. The frost giants were winning decisively, so I raised a Shield to protect myself from gunfire, rode past them, and let the frost giants continue gunning down the orcs. The second fight was a trio of Archons and their pet wraithwolves fighting dwarven warriors. That one was a tie, with the Archons using their powerful magic to attack the dwarves as they struggled against the wraithwolves.
Unfortunately for the Archons, the dumbasses were standing in a little clump. They had covered themselves with overlapping Shield spells, but the Shields had been tuned to deflect kinetic force, not elemental fire. They looked surprised when my fireball detonated at their feet, at least until the flames consumed them.
I rode past, figuring that the dwarves would deal with them.
The third fight was a group of Homeland Security officers pinned behind a pair of overturned SUVs, exchanging gunfire with a group of Rebels taking cover behind bushes in Central Park. I threw a fireball into the bushes, then shot onto the sidewalk behind the Homeland Security officers. They gaped at me, and I think a few of the idiots might have tried to take a shot at me. But I was going too fast, and whoever commanded them had the wit to seize the opening to charge the Rebels as they dealt with the fact that I had set several of them on fire.
I accelerated and left them behind, the bike roaring beneath me.
The fourth firefight was a full-scale battle.
It was just past the intersection of 65th Street and 5th Avenue, between various expensive-looking condo buildings and this old castle-like building that I think was part of the Central Park Zoo. Homeland Security officers, Rebel soldiers, orcish mercenaries, and a mob of anthrophages were attacking each other in a furious melee, fighting hand-to-hand and discharging their firearms at point-blank range. I saw a Homeland Security officer go down, his skull split by an orcish battle axe. Another officer parried the sweep of an orcish axe on the stock of his M-99 carbine, stepped back, and ventilated the orc’s skull with a burst of automatic gunfire. Some idiot tried to throw a grenade. I don’t know which side it was, but a bunch of orcs and Homeland Security officers both got killed in the blast.
There was no way I could resolve the battle, and I didn’t dare stop to fight.
I accelerated and cast the Splinter Mask spell.
Silver light shivered around my hand, and seven duplicates of me and the NX-100 motorcycle appeared, and I sent all seven of the illusionary images into the melee. I just had time to note that I looked like hell – bleeding from some shrapnel-induced nicks, covered in sweat, my face pale and my eyes glittering – and then the illusionary motorcycles rolled
through the melee. That caused a lot of confusion. The Rebels started shooting at the motorcycles, and so did some of the Homeland Security officers. I think that just made the battle even more confused, which worked for me because I punched through the fight.
Once I was clear, I dropped the Splinter Mask spell and rode on. I was almost past Central Park. Once I was past the park, I would have to decide on a path to Times Square. I had a decent mental map of Manhattan from previous visits, so I wasn’t worried about getting lost. Should I turn on 59th Street? Or keep going south on 5th Avenue and then take one of the side streets to Times Square? I supposed it would depend on whether or not the street was blocked.
Then I ran into a big problem.
The intersection of 5th Avenue and 59th Street was this square called Grand Army Plaza, with this big golden statue of some dead general named William Tecumseh Sherman. I couldn’t remember what he had done – either he had defeated the Native American chief Tecumseh, or maybe he had set fire to Georgia to end the Civil War. (My grasp of pre-Conquest history isn’t all that good, because, you know, I don’t care.) But it was a nice little park with a big hotel on one side, and I had hoped it would be clear and I could ride right through it.
It wasn’t, and an intense fight was underway.
The Rebels had dug into the square, and somehow they had raised a ramshackle barrier of overturned buses, food trucks, and taxis. I wondered how they had done that so quickly, and then I saw a group of anthrophages drag another taxi into the barrier. They sent a steady stream of fire over the barricade, pinning their foes in place.
And their foes…
I had expected Homeland Security officers, but instead, the men taking shelter behind the trees and bushes and concrete benches wore black uniforms. Over the uniforms, they wore black body armor that was a mixture of ballistic plates and chain mail designed to deflect both bullets and the claws of the various creatures of the Shadowlands. They were the men-at-arms of an Elven noble, and men-at-arms were usually better fighters than the Homeland Security officers because incompetent fighters did not last long in the Shadowlands. Likely all the nobles who had come to New York to greet the High Queen had brought escorts of their men-at-arms. Come to think of it, I think the Royal Progress had a parade or something like that while the High Queen reviewed the troops and looked approving.
I saw an Elven noble crouching behind a tree, clad in a suit of golden armor, a crimson cloak thrown back from his shoulders. There were three other Elven nobles near him and a half-dozen men-at-arms. The men-at-arms sent fire at the barrier, and the Elven noble in golden armor had an Israeli submachine gun in his right hand, adding chattering bursts of fire to the barrage. With his other hand, he was holding a Shield spell in place in front of the tree, which didn’t make sense because bullets wouldn’t work on him or the other Elves.
Huh. He was Shielding his men-at-arms from fire. Hadn’t expected that.
With a sudden burst of memory, I remembered the Elven noble. Duke Carothrace of Madison, that was it. I had seen him when Rimethur had come to Madison all those years ago. And I had known one of his men-at-arms…
“Move!”
I turned my head and saw three men-at-arms running towards me, M-99 carbines in hand. The one in the center had a captain’s golden bars on his shoulder. Behind his helmet and goggles he had a handsome face that looked vaguely Hispanic, and…
I blinked in recognition.
“Miss, get off the street!” snapped Captain Robert Ross, who I had last seen on the day after Russell had killed Victor Lorenz. “Get inside and stay off the street…”
“Captain Ross?” I said.
Robert skidded to a stop and blinked at me in astonishment. “Miss Moran?”
“Hey, Robert,” I said. “Bad day, huh?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” said Robert.
“Long story short,” I said. “The Rebels have a nuclear weapon, and they’re going to detonate it under the Skythrone. All this is just a distraction. They’re going to open a rift way from Venomhold, push the bomb into Times Square, and then set it off.”
The three men-at-arms stared at me.
“Well,” said Robert at last. “Shit.”
“Sir,” said one of the men-at-arms. “Who the hell is this woman?”
“She’s on our side,” said Robert. “Miss Moran, you’ve got to talk to Duke Carothrace. He needs to know about this.” He hesitated. “I know you need to keep things quiet…”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “If we don’t get to Times Square before that bomb, we’re all dead.”
“I don’t think you can get that bike any closer,” said Robert. “The Rebels will see you and shoot you down…”
“Yeah, let’s move,” I said, scrambling off the bike. A wave of dizziness rolled through my head, and a veil of gray haze went over my vision. I forced it aside through sheer stubbornness. I couldn’t afford to collapse now.
“We’ll need to take cover,” said Robert.
“I’ve got something better,” I said. I cast the Shield spell, calling a dome of kinetic energy between us and the Rebels’ barrier. “Let’s move.”
We hurried into the plaza, the roar of gunfire a constant snarl in my ears. A couple of bullets cracked towards us, but I kept the Shield angled between us and the barrier. Robert and the other men clustered around me, relying on the Shield to deflect bullets. As we drew closer, Carothrace and the other three nobles frowned at me. Likely they sensed the magical power I was using the maintain the Shield.
“My lord!” said one of the nobles to Carothrace. “The woman is casting a spell.”
“The bullets in one of her weapons have a magical resonance,” said another noble, narrowing his eyes as he looked at me. Huh. He must have sensed the frost giant gun slung across my back. Guess that meant voidslayer bullets would work on an Elf.
“Captain Ross, what is this?” said Carothrace. “Is…”
His head snapped around as a flare of light blazed atop the barrier. I saw an Archon stand, casting a spell, fire burning around his fingers. Carothrace grimaced and gestured, and a Shield of hazy orange-yellow light appeared before the tree. The Archon was casting a fireball, and Carothrace had worked a Shield to deflect elemental fire. Yet I didn’t think the Duke’s Shield would be strong enough to absorb the entirety of the attack.
I reacted on instinct, throwing up a Shield of my own and overlapping it with Carothrace’s spell. The Duke just had time to blink in surprise, and then the Archon’s fireball slammed into our overlapping Shields. My mind shuddered and wavered under the force of the blast, but I held the Shield in place.
“Good timing, woman,” said Carothrace, eyes narrowed. “Now, just who the devil are you?”
“My lord, I think she’s one of the Graysworn,” said Robert, which was sort of technically true. The Knight of Grayhold had sent me to Manhattan, after all. “I’ve encountered her before. We can trust her.”
Carothrace nodded. “Very well.”
“Lord Duke, I know the reason for this attack,” I said.
“About bloody time someone does,” said Carothrace.
“This attack is a distraction,” I said. “The Rebels are sneaking a nuclear bomb into Times Square, and they’ll detonate it to kill the High Queen and knock the Skythrone out of the air. They’ll do it at any minute.”
The Elves blinked at me.
“This perfidious treachery sounds like the scheming of the vile Archons!” said Carothrace. “Men, we must break free of this encirclement and fight our way to the side of our sovereign!”
Yeah. He actually talked that way.
“They’ve got us pinned down and outnumbered, my lord,” said Robert. “We break cover they’ll cut us down in five seconds.”
“Suggestions?” said Carothrace.
I took a deep breath. “My lord, I can help.” The Elves looked at me. Years of old habit screamed at me to keep my mouth shut, but we were way past secrecy now. “I can cast t
he Cloak spell, and I can move around while Cloaked.”
“Indeed?” said Carothrace.
“I’ve seen her do it, my lord,” said Robert. “It’s…uh, rather terrifying, really.”
“Gosh, that’s so sweet,” I said.
One of Carothrace’s attendants scowled. “Humans are not supposed to know illusion magic.”
“We have larger problems just now,” said Carothrace, his eyes fixed on me. “Woman, can you Cloak long enough to get behind the barricade?”
“Yeah,” I said. It would be tough to bring the motorcycle, but I would manage it.
“Can you operate a firearm while Cloaked?” said Carothrace.
“Oh, yeah.”
Carothrace smiled. “How about a grenade launcher?”
I blinked, and then I grinned back. “My lord, it would be my very great honor.”
“Captain Ross,” said Carothrace. Robert barked an order, and one of the men-at-arms produced a grenade launcher. It was a long, shotgun-like weapon, with the grenades stored in a drum. I couldn’t remember the name of the manufacturer off the top of my head, but it would operate like a pump-action shotgun. “Do you know how to use one of those?”
“Yep,” I said, taking the weapon. “Er…yes, my lord.”
“Excellent,” said Carothrace. “Please Cloak and proceed behind the enemy at once. Captain Ross, prepare to charge as soon as our unexpected Graysworn starts blowing up the foe.” He pointed at me. “Woman, if we live through all this, you are welcome to present yourself at my headquarters in Madison. I am always looking for new talent.”
“Uh,” I said. “Thanks. My lord.” Hell, with my luck I would wind up working as a shadow agent for both Carothrace and Morvilind at the same time.
“Good luck,” said Robert, and he began bellowing orders to the men-at-arms.
I got to my feet and slung the grenade launcher over my shoulder, the heavy weapon bouncing against the frost giant gun. I caught my balance, took a deep breath, and sprinted towards my motorcycle, casting the Shield spell as I did. Again, bullets bounced off the pavement around me, and the Shield intercepted four or five of them.
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