Magic Triumphs (Kate Daniels)

by Ilona Andrews

  Magic shifted. The line of students raised their arms. A transparent sphere formed above each of them, three feet wide and shimmering like hot air rising from the pavement, and spinning.

  The yeddimur loomed before us, screeching excited high-pitched shrieks as they ran.

  “Hold it steady,” Phillip said.

  Eight hundred yards to my boundary.

  Six hundred.

  I wanted to be down there, on the field, on the front line with the werewolves and Curran.

  Four hundred yards.

  Yu Fong came up and stood on my right without saying a word.

  Andrea’s battery fired a volley of sorcerous bolts. Bright green explosions punctured the yeddimur’s line, but there were too many. She didn’t follow it. The volley was just for show and she wanted to conserve the bolts.

  The swarm kept coming. Behind it, Neig’s soldiers marched like an unstoppable avalanche of steel.

  Three hundred.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Phillip said. “The bagpipes, please.”

  The shrill howl of bagpipes answered. I’d asked Phillip what they were going to play, and he’d told me “Bloody Fields of Flanders.” It was an old bagpipe march, composed in World War I. Later it became another song, “Freedom Come-All-Ye,” a story of a nation that loved freedom more than war.

  Erra winced next to me. Nick grimaced.

  Two hundred yards. The yeddimur were almost on us.

  “Engage,” Phillip screamed.

  The spheres became still. The bagpipes next to us suddenly went almost silent, as the amplification spheres sucked in their sound. A moment later a deafening blast of sound hit the yeddimur.

  The swarm halted, collapsing on itself.

  “Keep playing,” Phillip said, his voice upbeat. “Keep playing. Faculty, continue to project. Everyone is doing spectacularly. I’m truly privileged to be working with such a talented group.”

  The swarm shattered. Those in the front and middle ripped into each other; those in the back turned around and tore into the front line of Neig’s troops. Fighting broke out in the middle of Neig’s army.

  A ragged cheer came through our ranks.

  Neig’s troops split, flowing around the lines engaged with yeddimur like a stream split in half by a rock. They hugged the edges of the field and continued their advance, closer and closer to the druids’ stones.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  Almost there.

  They were a hundred yards from our line when the ground under both columns of soldiers gave. Hundreds of men collapsed into the twin trenches. We’d dug them with bulldozers and explosives over the last three days. They were ten feet deep and twenty-five yards wide, and they swallowed the advancing columns whole.

  Howls of pain went up, almost breaking through the bagpipes. Black shiny tentacles flailed, spilling out of the trenches, yanking the nearby soldiers into them.

  “What the hell are those?” Nick asked.

  “You don’t want to know.” Roman had been in charge of the trenches.

  Neig’s soldiers moved away from the trenches, edging farther to the sides of the field, almost to the tree line on both sides.

  The brush on the left burst. Huge shaggy bodies tore into armored men, pushing them toward the trench and the writhing death within. Clan Heavy had arrived. Neig’s warriors fought back, but the werebears had mass and momentum on their side.

  On the right, vampires dashed out of the woods, slicing at the other column. The tide of Neig’s soldiers slowed. We’d cut them in half and bled them. But there were too many. So many.

  Minutes crept by. The werebears and the vampires chewed the twin prongs of Neig’s vanguard. Blood drenched the grass.

  Neig stepped from his chariot. Shit.

  I reached out and grabbed Nick’s hand. “Look.”

  Neig strode forward, his furry mantle flowing behind him. His body split open, releasing the darkness within. It billowed, solidifying, growing, expanding, building on itself. A black dragon landed on the field, towering over the battle line, so huge my mind refused to believe it was real.

  Nick’s mouth hung open.

  Neig’s soldiers ran to the sides, scrambling away from the dragon, but the front lines, holding back the maddened yeddimur, had nowhere to go.

  The colossal reptile opened his mouth. A torrent of fire hit the knot of writhing yeddimur and his soldiers. They vanished in the blaze, dark shadows swallowed by the white inferno.

  Neig doused the field like a colossal flamethrower, burning everything in his path. He’d cleared the blockage. It cost him his yeddimur and a good chunk of his soldiers, but now the field was clear and we were screwed.

  Nick clicked his mouth shut. “He’s going to break through. I’ve got to get down there.”

  He took off at a run.

  Neig’s massive wings opened.

  “Retreat!” I yelled at Phillip.

  The bagpipes blew a single clear note. Clan Heavy disengaged and broke into a run, galloping toward us. On the other side, the undead streamed for the boundary.

  I raised my arms to the sides, gathering the magic to me, molding it into a shield. I had done this before. I held off my father when he tried to rain fire and rocks on the Keep. I couldn’t do anything about Neig’s soldiers—too few and too insignificant magically on their own—but he was huge and brimming with magic. He presented a very defined target. If Neig thought he was about to fry us, he would be in for a surprise.

  Neig’s wings beat once, twice, and he took to the air, shooting straight up.

  Clan Heavy was running for its life. Faster, I willed. Faster.

  Neig dove from the sky, torching the woods to the left, circled, and set the woods to the right on fire.

  The undead were all in, but Clan Heavy was slow. Two werebears lagged behind. The fire caught them twenty yards from the boundary. Their shaggy bodies vanished, instantly burned to a crisp. Neig shot upward, picking up speed.

  Here’s hoping my magic would be enough.

  The dragon swooped down, like a striking hawk, and spat fire. I jerked the shield of magic up. The fire splashed against it. Pressure ground on me. I clenched my teeth and held.

  There. How do you like that, you asshole?

  Neig climbed higher, turned in midair, and threw himself at my barrier.

  Around me people ducked on instinct.

  The dragon smashed into my shield. The impact reverberated through my bones. It felt like my whole skeleton snapped. I snarled and held the shield in place. He bounced off it back into the sky, spun around, and hit it again. The shield held.

  “Brace yourselves,” my aunt roared.

  The field was clear. All of the yeddimur were dead. There was nothing between us and Neig’s warriors except for smoking corpses.

  Neig’s army charged.

  * * *

  • • •

  FIRE.

  Claws.

  Fire.

  Fire.

  Ramming at full speed.

  Fire.

  My nose was bleeding. My breath came in ragged gasps, as if I had run a marathon with a hundred-pound weight on my shoulders.

  Below me fighting raged. The trenches funneled Neig’s army into a five-hundred-yard killing field, and going around the trenches from the outside wasn’t an option. Neig had set the woods on fire. The trees burned like torches. Soot and smoke filled the air, mixing with blood and heat. The sorcerous ballistae whined, sending charged bolts into the mass of troops, followed by the steady booms of explosions. Andrea had tried to hit Neig, but he was too fast.

  Neig’s troops brought up the engines of war and hurled fiery boulders at us. I held off the first three barrages, so they switched targets and aimed at the front of their own line, just outside my protective boundary. Th
e rocks rolled at our people, and I couldn’t stop them and hold off Neig at the same time.

  We were trapped together in five hundred yards of hell on earth, and Neig’s war machine ground us into mush. Mages hurled their spells and Neig’s soldiers spat fire back. Witches summoned horrors, pagans evoked their gods, the military pounded the warriors with advanced magic weaponry, and still Neig’s troops kept coming, unstoppable, unending. There were always more.

  The bloodbath raged. Screams, howls, and snarls filled the air. The bagpipers had long ago stopped playing. Now only the voice of the battle could be heard. It hung above us like an oppressive din, the song of dying, pain, and fury.

  Where the hell was my father?

  I didn’t know how much time had passed, but it had to have been hours. The sun had reached its apex. My world had shrunk to Neig and magic. I wanted to be down there, in the slaughter, but Neig saw me and Yu Fong next to me, and we were too tempting a target. All I could do was contain him.

  He was tiring. So was I. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

  A werewolf swung into my view, covered in blood and someone’s guts. She grabbed a bucket of water from next to me and drank, spilling it over her monstrous face. “We can’t take much more,” she snarled in Desandra’s voice.

  Neig dove at me, unleashing a torrent of fire. I held it back.

  “You have to hold,” I told her.

  “If you have an ace up your sleeve, now’s the time.”

  An undead ran up to me. “We’re taking heavy casualties,” it said in Javier’s voice. “Lt. General Myers is dead. Ghastek states that in another half hour, we will run out of vampires.”

  Neig screamed and smashed into my shield. I took a step back, snarled, and shoved the magic back at him.

  My father wasn’t coming.

  We had to retreat. If there was any hope for anyone surviving, we had to retreat.

  Another blast of fire. Damn it, didn’t that fucking dragon ever get tired?

  A clump of Neig’s soldiers broke apart below. Curran emerged, bloody, huge in his warrior form, looking like a demon. The shapeshifters rallied around him, but even he was getting worn out.

  Roland wasn’t coming. He had betrayed us once again.

  “Kate,” Desandra snarled. “I need a decision.”

  The vampire hovered by my feet.

  To the left, Julie and Derek, both covered in blood, waited.

  We’d lost. If we turned back now, at least some people would survive.

  I opened my mouth to tell them to retreat.

  Magic burst at the far end of the field. The sky above us darkened. Huge rocks plummeted down from the clouds, burning as they fell, and crushed the troops on the field before us.

  Oh my God.

  The rocks smashed into the ground, cracked open, and glowing swarms of brilliant green bees spilled out, stinging Neig’s warriors. The rocks melted, boiling into a glowing slime. The slime snapped out, grabbing at the remaining troops, and they screamed as their bodies melted. A huge hole opened up in the center of Neig’s forces, and through it, I saw my father.

  I forgot to breathe.

  He rode a glowing chariot, drawn by mechanical horses. He was young and beautiful, and full of magic so powerful it hurt to look at him. He shone, brilliant and sharp, like a second sunrise. Behind him, an army rose.

  My aunt appeared by my side. “Look! This is your real father! This is the brother I haven’t seen for eons. Look, child!”

  My father raised his hand. A serpent of pure glowing magic tore out of it, snaking its way through the battlefield, devouring all in its path.

  He came. He hadn’t abandoned me. My father had come to fight.

  Neig spun in the air. A terrible screech tore out of the dragon’s jaws.

  “Your dad is hot!” Desandra said, surprised.

  I snapped out of it.

  Neig dove at my father.

  I spun to Yu Fong. “Do it now.”

  Yu Fong pulled the shard of a tooth out of his clothes and carved a vertical line, from as high as he could reach down to the ground. A glowing hole opened in the fabric of the world. Derek grinned, a feral baring of teeth. Julie ducked into the gap and he followed. The glow vanished.

  Yu Fong tossed the tooth aside. An overpowering heat emanated from his skin, the air streaming from him in transparent currents.

  I backed away.

  Yu Fong’s body burst. A creature spilled out, twenty-five feet long, a muscular leonine body covered in scales. A huge head crowned with a red mane sat on a thick but agile scaled neck, its face a meld of dragon and lion. A serpentine tail snapped.

  The beast that used to be Yu Fong charged onto the field. His body burst into flames, red fire coating him like a mantle. Neig’s warriors parted like water, letting him pass.

  On the other end of the field, Neig spun away from my father.

  “I am the Lord of Fire!” the Suanni roared, tearing through the warriors like he was a comet. “Face me, coward!”

  I grabbed my swords and dashed onto the field, through the gap Yu Fong had made. I had to find Curran.

  The ranks of warriors were closing ahead. A moment, and they surrounded me. I spat the power word “osanda.” They went down to their knees and I cut my way through them, pushing my way forward, to the center of the battlefield. Blood sprayed. Bodies fell amid hoarse screams. I cut, severing limbs and carving bodies with blades and magic. Fire and lightning streaked above my head, ripped through by a stream of glowing green bullets from a machine gun. Fighters tore at each other, shapeshifters disemboweled their opponents, vampires ripped into bodies. Carnage reigned, the roar, bellows, and moans of the dying blending into a terrible din.

  I cleaved a body in two, opened my mouth, and screamed. The word of power burst from me, straight as an arrow, searing Neig’s fighters, mangling their bodies. I tore into the gap, cutting like a dervish in a familiar lightning-fast pattern, severing limbs and spraying blood, unstoppable, without mercy.

  A yeddimur popped up in front of me, the lone survivor of the fire and bagpipes. I carved him from shoulder to waist and kept going, reaping a harvest of lives, spitting magic and bringing death. On the left a clump of bodies exploded, and Hugh roared, covered in blood, a bloody axe in his hand. We connected, back to back. For a brief moment we stood alone in the carnage, and then we broke apart and charged back into battle.

  Suddenly the clump of warriors around me split. They fled, panicked. Wind hit me, nearly taking me off my feet. A huge black lion landed next to me, his wings wide, glowing with silver. Curran had assumed his god form.

  I jumped and climbed black fur onto Curran’s back. He sprinted and then we were airborne. The battle yawned below us. Ahead, Neig spat fire at Yu Fong in a steady torrent, circling him, great wings beating. Yu Fong limped along the ground, his side torn, sending a torrent of white flames back. My father stood, caught in the middle of it all, a protective bubble of magic glowing around him, reflecting the dueling fires. He held a spear in his hands.

  Curran dived at Neig. I jumped, aiming for the dragon’s neck, and missed. Damn it.

  There was nothing under my feet. I plunged. There was no time to be scared. No time for anything. I was about to die.

  The air caught me. I was no longer falling, I was floating down gently. I glanced down. My father shook his head in reproach, as if I’d broken an expensive vase. Above me Curran barreled into the dragon, locking his jaws on Neig’s neck. Next to Neig, Curran looked small. The dragon kicked at Curran. His huge claws caught the lion, ripping a gash in Curran’s side. Curran snarled and tore a chunk out of Neig’s neck. They spun together, clawing and biting.

  Hold on, honey. I’m coming.

  Fatigue fled. Only fury remained, a hot ravenous beast inside me that had to be fed. I attacked. They fell before me like blades of gras
s. I cut a clear path around my father’s chariot. Blood rained on us, Neig and Curran tearing at each other. Yu Fong sprayed the field with fire so hot it melted the armor of the warriors around us.

  My father dropped his protective spell. Neig’s warriors tried to rush him from the side. He moved his hand as if swatting a fly and they flew, falling at my feet. I cut them down, still spitting magic and death.

  Yu Fong had fallen on his side, a pike glowing with magic thrust between his ribs. Adora burst out of the crowd and stood over him with her katana, holding the soldiers back.

  My father raised his spear, a long glowing rope attached to one end.

  Curran plummeted to the ground. Neig followed, jaws opened wide, ready for the kill.

  My father hurled his spear. It streaked through the air, glowing with violent red, and caught Neig in the throat. The other end of the rope plunged into the ground. My father screamed a command. The rope went taut. Neig flailed on the end of it, like a harpooned fish. Roland gripped the rope. It was absurd, he was so small and Neig was gargantuan, yet my father held him.

  “Kate!”

  I spun around. Julie limped toward me, her hair caked with blood. Behind her, Derek in warrior form snarled, his left arm hanging from his body at an awkward angle.

  “Kate!” Julie reached me and thrust a glowing ruby into my hands. I grabbed it. Magic bit at me with hot jaws. An anchor was right. The damn thing weighed fifty pounds. The weight of it threatened to yank me off my feet. The ruby pulled on me as if it were trying to suck out my soul. It wanted to go back to its realm. It required it, and if I let it, it would pull me right into it.

  I thrust it into my armor, over my right hip, where I’d made an enclosure just for it.

  “I have it!” I screamed. “Now! We have to do it now!”

  Above me Neig let out a horrible screech.

  Curran ran up next to me. Half of his body smoked, the fur gone, his skin bubbling from the heat. He rolled and launched himself at Neig. I took a running start, caught his wing, and let it carry me up with him. Neig’s scaled back loomed before me.

  Second time had to be the charm, because I wouldn’t get a shot for a third.