“She isn’t here,” the undead said in unison in Ghastek’s voice, his words sharp enough to cut.
“What’s Rowena’s effective range?”
“Four point six seven miles.”
I pushed through the vegetation to the other side.
“Kate!” he snapped.
The underbrush ended. We stood on the apex of a low hill, fields and woods rolling to the horizon. A column of black smoke stabbed at the sky due southeast.
“Kings Row,” I told Ghastek.
The distant roar of water engines came from the northwest—Curran and the mercs were catching up.
Ghastek’s bloodsuckers streaked down the hill. Christopher took a running start, swept me up, and flew into the sky.
* * *
• • •
KING’S ROW, POPULATION around a thousand, was born from the remnants of a fracturing Decatur. Most of the people gave up trying to fight nature fueled by magic steroids and pulled into the city proper, but a few neighborhoods remained, turning into small towns: Chapel Hill, Sterling Forest, and Kings Row. They set up their own post offices and water and guard towers and held on to their land.
Christopher circled the settlement. Kings Row was no more. Nothing remained except for a charred ruin. Black ash hid the ground. Smoke billowed from half a dozen places, greasy and acrid, joining together into a single massive cloud above. Here and there remnants of the fire smoldered, red veins in the black crust. With a fire, some structures would’ve been left standing: fireplaces, brick walls, ruined appliances, burned-out cars . . . There was nothing. Not even the outline of the streets. Only black ash.
He’d taken a thousand people. I didn’t know if they’d died in the fire or if he’d kidnapped them, but they were gone and Neig was to blame.
No more. I needed to get my hands on him now.
And what would I do when I did? I didn’t even know if a blood ward would hold against that.
Christopher took another turn. Something shone through the smoke, a smudged orange glow.
“There!” I pointed, but he had already seen it. We dropped through the smoke and landed on the ash. Heat scoured my face.
A twelve-foot-tall pillar rose in the middle of the ravaged field, a translucent column dusted with ash. Within it, an orange glowing liquid flowed. Glass, I realized. The pillar was glass, its outer crust solid, but inside it was molten.
Christopher made a choking sound.
I looked up.
There was a human being in the pillar.
Oh dear God.
The body was encased in glass up to the shoulders. The head and neck were free, smudged with soot, all the hair burned off, but the body itself floated, submerged in the molten glass. It wasn’t burned. The molten glass should’ve boiled the flesh off the bones, but I could see pale legs dangling in the glowing liquid.
What the bloody fuck?
The head opened its eyes.
Still alive. How?
The dry cracked lips moved. “He . . .”
Ghastek’s vampires slid to a stop next to me and froze.
“He . . .” the person in the glass said. “Help.”
Rowena.
Every hair on my arms stood on end.
I concentrated on the pillar, pulling magic inside me to shine at it like a light. I couldn’t see it the way Julie did, but I felt the veins of glowing power twisting into the pillar in a complicated web. Inside, Rowena was coated in it as if she wore a skintight bodysuit. The web cradled her, winding through every inch of the pillar. The whole thing was bound together. Shit.
Ghastek’s left vamp charged to the glass column.
“No!” I yelled.
It turned to me.
“If you break the glass, she’ll burn to death.”
“Are you sure?” Ghastek asked, his voice clipped.
“Yes.”
A Jeep rounded the bend of the road. Julie and Derek jumped out and ran toward us.
“Can we drain it from the bottom?” Christopher asked.
“She’s wrapped in a spell. It’s clinging to her like a second skin. The skin is connected to the pillar. We break any part of it, she’ll die instantly.”
The vampire spun around. “Get her out of there.” Ghastek’s voice vibrated with steel. “Kate!”
“Quiet.”
If we broke the pillar, she died. If we tried to lift her out of it, she died. If tech hit, she died.
Vampires dashed out of the woods on the northern edge of the town. The People catching up with Ghastek.
Julie reached me, looked up at the pillar, and clamped her hand over her mouth.
What do I do?
The awful sound of groaning wood rolled through the air. I turned. On the south side, the trees shuddered. Green branches twisted and dropped. Something had snapped the decades-old pines like toothpicks.
Something huge. The druid carving flashed before me. I pulled Sarrat from its sheath.
“Form on In-Shinar!” Ghastek snapped.
The undead lined up into a wedge behind me.
An oak split, spun on its trunk, and plummeted down. A massive snout emerged into the light, six feet across. An enormous head followed, shaggy with brown fur. Two curved tusks big enough to skewer a car flanked the snout, followed by three pairs of shorter tusks. Short spiked horns protruded from the beast’s skull.
Well, of course. That’s what this party was missing. An enormous, pissed-off pig. Fuck me.
Behind me the Guild Jeeps tore around the bend of the road and sped across the burned ground, raising a cloud of ash.
The colossal boar took a step forward. Ragged gashes crossed its hide, cutting through a network of faded scars. Here and there, spiked balls punctured its hide, half-sunken into its flesh. Someone had tortured this boar.
The beast swung its head toward me. A broken chain dangled around its neck, as thick as a lighting pole. At its end hung a huge metal symbol, Neig’s shackles.
“It’s a god.” Julie took a step back. “Its magic is silver.”
I hold gods prisoner, tormenting them for my pleasure.
Neig had captured a god, kept him prisoner for a thousand years, tortured him, and now he’d loosed him on us. There would have been only one boar god on the British Isles for Neig to capture.
“It’s Moccus,” I said. The Celtic Boar, guardian of hunters and warriors, the Caledonian Monster. A god, or rather its manifestation. Killing it wouldn’t kill the deity, but it would banish it from our reality. A tech shift would rip him out of existence instantly. It would also kill Rowena.
“Does it have any weaknesses?” Ghastek asked.
“No.”
The boar opened its mouth and roared. The bellow slapped my eardrums, a mad blast of rage. It reverberated through the burned-out town. Ash trembled.
Just what we needed.
Moccus pawed the ground. Another bellow smashed into us.
The bloodsuckers waited, unmoving.
Nothing I had would deliver a punch strong enough to one-shot him. We’d have to bleed Moccus. It would take hours. We didn’t have time to fight him.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw three Guild Jeeps barreling down the road toward us. They went off the pavement and tore through the scarred town, raising clouds of ash.
“We have to kill it fast,” I said.
“Fast isn’t an option,” Christopher answered, his voice detached. “He’s too large and he’s a god. He will regenerate.”
“We have to try. Rowena doesn’t have time.”
Moccus sighted us. His deep-set eyes ignited with fury. The boar was finally free from confinement. Free to punish. Neig had driven him mad.
“Protocol Giant,” Ghastek said, his voice calm. “Prioritize damage over undead casualties.”
&nbs
p; “You don’t owe me anything,” Rowena whispered from the pillar. “Go. Leave.”
Moccus started forward.
Here we go. I pulled magic to myself.
The leading Jeep slid to a halt. A single man jumped out and sprinted to the boar. I would know that sprint anywhere.
Hi, honey, we’re over here, but please ignore us and run at the magic boar all by yourself. It’s only a giant enraged animal god. No need to worry. Nothing bad ever happens in situations like this.
“Curran!”
He ran past us at breakneck speed. As if we weren’t even there.
“Damn it.” I unsheathed Sarrat.
“Idiot,” Ghastek volunteered.
Moccus bellowed, giving voice to pain and insane anger, and broke into a full charge. The ground punched my feet and I stumbled to keep my balance.
The boar charged toward Curran like a runaway train.
I broke into a sprint. He’d need backup. The undead followed me.
My husband jumped. His human skin tore. Magic punched me, like the first ray of sunrise coming over the horizon. Fur spilled out, a whole cloud of it, black and huge. A colossal lion smashed into the boar.
I blinked. No, the giant lion was still there.
What the hell? What in the bloody . . . How?
He was as big as Moccus, solid black, a majestic mane floating in the wind, sparking with streaks of magic.
What . . .
The lion opened his jaws, fangs glinting in the sun, and plunged them into Moccus’s neck. The boar and the lion rolled. The ground trembled.
“Kate!”
The two colossal creatures snarled and roared, trying to bite and gore each other.
How was this possible?
“Kate!”
I realized I was standing still. My vampire army had come to a halt.
“Rowena!” Ghastek’s vamps screamed in my face.
Rowena was my friend. Rowena had held Conlan just yesterday, and today she could burn to death. I couldn’t let her die. I knew exactly what I had to do. I just had to do it. It was that or she would be boiled alive.
A clump of dirt the size of a truck flew past me. I ducked and spun back to the pillar. “Get wood. As much as you can. We need a fire. A huge fire.”
The vampires spun around. There was nothing to burn except for the distant trees. They would take too long.
“Does it have to be wood?” Ghastek asked through his twin vamps.
“No. As long as it burns. We need a big flame.”
The mercs had piled out of the Jeeps and stared at the battle raging only a few feet away. Barabas was on the front line. I caught a glimpse of his face, touched with awe.
I couldn’t think about it. I couldn’t afford to process it now. There was no time. I turned to Rowena. She stared at me.
“Leave me,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Not going to happen.”
“You have Conlan . . .”
“Conlan will be fine. I will be fine. You will be fine. Everything will be fine.”
I would go to hell for making promises like this.
An armored bus emerged from behind the curve of the road and headed for us. The People’s mobile HQ.
It sped to us and came to a stop. The doors swung open and Ghastek stepped out, followed by two Masters of the Dead and a dozen journeymen. I recognized familiar faces: Kim, Sean, Javier . . .
“We’ll burn the bus,” Ghastek said over the snarls.
The undead attacked the bus, pulling the reserve gasoline containers out of the back and dousing the vehicle with it.
The two giant animals were still fighting. It took everything I had to not run over there and help.
One of Ghastek’s undead grabbed him, wrapping its arms around his legs. The second picked up the first and raised Ghastek to the pillar. He raised his hand to her cheek. His fingers stopped just short of touching.
“Let me go,” Rowena told him.
“Never,” he said.
“Ready,” Javier told me.
“Carlos!” I called.
A short merc turned toward me. I pointed to the gutted bus. “Torch it.”
Carlos leaned back and flexed, bringing his arms together as if he were squeezing an invisible basketball. A spark burst into existence between his spread fingers and spun, growing, twisting, turning into a flame, first reddish, then orange, then white. His hands shuddered. He grunted and launched the fireball at the bus.
The more of yourself you give to the fire, the louder the call will be.
The armored vehicle exploded.
I reopened the cut on my arm and thrust it into the fire. Heat cooked my skin. My blood boiled into the flames, turning them red. Pain hit me, and I sent it into the blaze with my magic, opening a pathway across thousands of miles. The fire roared, bloody, and I screamed into its depths.
“FATHER!”
The blaze snapped, a glowing silk curtain pulled suddenly taut, and my father appeared within the flames, eyes blazing with power.
“WHAT?”
I pulled my arm out of the fire and cradled it. It hurt. God, it hurt. “Help me.”
He stared at me. He chose his own age, sometimes young, sometimes older. Today he wore the face I knew, a man in his late fifties, full head of hair, wise handsome face that could’ve belonged to a teacher, a prophet, or a king. He’d let himself age like this because he wanted to look like a man who could’ve fathered me. He had still kept it, even two years later.
“Please help me.”
“YOU ARE ASKING ME FOR HELP? WHY SHOULD I HELP YOU, SHARRIM?”
My father was proudest of me when I managed to beat him. Weakness and begging wouldn’t work. I had to be smart about this.
“Do you remember the ashes of Tyre?”
He looked behind me. His gaze swept over the grave of Kings Row and halted on Rowena inside the pillar. A muscle in his face jerked. Something sparked within his gaze. He buried it before I could pin it down. What I said next would determine if Rowena lived or died.
“He says you killed his brother,” I said. “This is a demonstration of his power. He doesn’t think our family can match it.”
The flames went out. The bus lay before me, suddenly cold. My arm hurt.
It hadn’t worked. He’d abandoned me. I’d banked on his pride and lost. I turned away.
A draft touched my cheek. Next to me Roland lowered the hood of his plain brown robe and looked at the pillar. The undead scattered. Ghastek stood alone by the pillar, his chin raised, his eyes defiant. The rest of the People huddled in a clump to my right, putting me between themselves and my father.
“Have you thought of a solution?” he asked, as if he’d just given me a complex mathematical problem and was curious if I could solve it.
“I can take control of the pillar, but that will require breaching it, and any breach will break the protective envelope around her. If I attempt to claim the protective envelope around her as my own, it may disintegrate and she’ll die.”
He nodded, his handsome profile slightly curious. “Continue.”
“My best option is to freeze her into stasis with the spell of Kair, while I claim the land. The spell of Kair would hold her separate from our reality.”
I wouldn’t be able to hold it for longer than an instant either. I didn’t have enough practice.
“Claiming would allow me to instantly disintegrate the pillar before it burns her, but claiming is a two-step process: the initial pulse that disperses from me to the boundary and the return pulse that travels from the boundary back to me. In the space between the two pulses, I’m powerless. The spell of Kair requires a constant flow of magic from the mage. It will collapse. The first pulse of claiming will disrupt the magic net that’s keeping her alive right now. If she’s ou
t of stasis between the two pulses, she’ll burn to death.”
And I had just told him that Erra was teaching me. I would worry about it later.
My father crouched and picked up a handful of ash. “When their kind scorch the land, they wound it. Are you prepared for what will follow if you claim it?”
I had no idea what would follow. “Yes.”
My father nodded. “Three seconds. That is all you have.”
Three seconds was an eternity longer than I would’ve lasted. It had to be enough.
I had only generated a powerful claiming pulse once, and I’d required a tower to do it. Erra had been having me practice claiming small chunks of land, a couple of feet here and there, and then letting them go, and it required a lot of preparation.
All I needed was a twenty-yard circle around the pillar. That would contain any veins of magic stretching from the pillar. I could do this. I just needed an anchor. Claiming required an anchor, whether it was a tower or a nail thrust into the ground. I needed a conduit for my power.
I didn’t have anything.
Wait. I had my sword. I grasped Sarrat with my left hand and knelt, holding it straight up.
Slowly, deliberately putting one foot in front of the other, Ghastek walked away from the pillar to the group of People waiting on the side.
My father raised his hands. Light stabbed from them. Words, ancient and beautiful, poured out of his mouth, moving the magic itself. It was beautiful. It was poetry and music wrapped into a song of pure power.
I stabbed Sarrat into the ground and fed every drop of me into it.
A pulse tore out of me, a crimson wave of light rolling through the land. There was a pause, a single heartbeat that lasted for an eternity. Silence met me, and then, in the distance, I heard a noise, like a tornado coming from far away. It grew, deafening, overpowering, and slammed into me, jerking me off my feet. I hovered three feet above Kings Row. My skin turned to ash. Flames burst inside me, incinerating me. My body burned.
Neig had drained the land of its magic to make the pillar. It needed magic to survive and it was taking mine. It was pulling the magic out of my veins.
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