by Harry Nix
He shifted, then sudden increased in size, tearing the vines, breaking their hold on him. Titus blurred towards him and Alex cast his final spell so fast and quick, the mage didn't see it. He was wearing thick combat boots and the laces knotted together. As he was running with haste he crashed face-first to the ground and then Alex was upon him, slashing wildly at his back, shredding his armored clothes. Titus managed to turn over and desperately cast shield spells and others as they grappled.
Something pierced through Alex from behind, a searing that went straight through his back and out the front of his stomach, but when he looked down there was nothing there but an open wound.
Between the blood loss and the exhaustion, Titus slowly got the upper hand. For every wound that Alex managed to land on him, he got two in return. It took but a moment for Alex to end up flipped on his back, crashing into the grass near the dead boy and his mother. Titus loomed up, his face a mask of blood, grinning like a madman, the spell screen above his head flashing as he cast something great and terrible.
Alex shouted Juno’s Cantrip, pushing it into Titus's code, flooding it in multiple times, and then there was a great pull as the magic surged and fed upon itself, Juno’s Cantrip interfering with his spell. Titus suddenly went to the ground, all of his magics vanishing except that one spell, clutching his stomach. Alex only had the barest threads of magic left and he was horribly wounded but he used them to cast healing flame, grabbing the boy's leg. For a moment there was nothing and then a jolt as it began to heal him.
Titus screamed, the agony inside his body flooding out, a sweet warm liquid, and Alex began to draw on it. He pulled it from Titus and fed it through the spell, the healing crackling around the boy's wound. Through their connection he felt him gasp for life. On a leg that was close to broken, Alex heaved himself across the yard and grabbed the mother.
The healing flame did nothing, but through touching her, Alex could feel that deep cold of the doorway to death. The thread that trailed off into the dark was still thick and strong like a rope. Alex reached into the black and heaved on it. Just like with Jacob, he saw a face shooting out of nothing, and then the woman was gasping, clawing at her wound.
Alex grabbed her again, using the healing flame to stitch up the worst of it. Then he let her go and pressed it against his own leg, the jolt zapping through to that hole in his side that Titus had put there.
The mage was now huddled in a ball and Alex could faintly feel the spell that was doing it: Juno’s Cantrip. Used for tying shoelaces into knots, it was twisting his intestine, in his guts, knotting and looping, pulling at the veins themselves.
Alex managed to get to his feet as Titus’s screaming reached a fever pitch and then cut off, a froth of blood spraying from his mouth. The head of the Corvus mages died.
Alex could still feel his pack fighting, feel the injured and wounded everywhere. He could also feel the Great Barrier. He was in hybrid form and the woman and her son were looking at him. It felt for a moment as though it was weaker, those fishhooks in his muscles not so strong.
“Fuck you, Great Barrier,” Alex said to the sky.
He took a step and then a blinding agony went through his body, as though by mocking the Great Barrier, he'd brought forth its wrath. The pain heightened to a crescendo, and then he became aware that he was moving, his body no longer under his control. The woman and her son had vanished, but the Great Barrier was still pulling at Alex. He found himself carrying Titus's body, walking alongside a mage who was carrying a werewolf head. Alex couldn't move his head an inch, although it seemed he could still move his eyes. He saw the great battlefield was now full of marionettes—witches, werewolves, mages and vampires gathering the dead, piling them into the trucks the mages had come in.
Alex saw April cleansing away blood. Juno was doing the same as well as some of the other witches. All of them were blank-faced and serene. There were gaps then, Alex suddenly flashing from one point to the other—at the truck by the factory, back to the truck again—and at one point he found himself carrying a dead werewolf by the feet. A mage had it by the arms, and together they hurled it into a truck along with the rest of the dead. Upon turning around, Alex saw police cars in the distance and he saw Monroe, jerking his way across the street as if he was on strings. There was another gap and the trucks were gone. The street was still bloody. There were witches casting spells, pulling rain from the clouds, the blood golem was gone and sitting on the sidewalk was a metal and wood core that had been the heart of it.
As the rain came pouring down, washing away the last of the blood, a wave swept over them. It was like April’s flee spell but far stronger, and Alex found himself sprinting, gulping air in terror, leaping over fences. He was with his pack but the power that had connected them, the one that he could draw on, had been shattered.
As he leaped a fence he felt a throb of pain in his head and his spell screen opened, flipping to the black runes.
Alex managed to stand and hold still against the terror. He could sense the spell throbbing, wanting to be cast. It wanted to fling itself against the Great Barrier, but Alex knew it would be useless, like throwing a hand grenade at the Great Wall of China, expecting the whole thing to come down, and Alex would die in the attempt.
When he'd opened the Great Barrier spell, back at the territory, seeing it working on him, it had seemed like libraries atop libraries, endless pages and a deep and eternal chill.
But it was really a ward and the black rune spell devoured them.
As he swayed on his feet, Alex understood its purpose. It had been made to destroy the Great Barrier.
But it was incomplete. The deadly machinery of it backlashed against him, and if he cast it now, it would fail to destroy the Great Barrier and he’d die too.
There was a thud beside him as Nia landed and then streaked past him. The compulsion to follow his mate overwhelmed everything else. His spell screen collapsed, and Alex let his body go, running after her, fleeing with the rest of them in the face of the Great Barrier.
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Harry
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