* * *
“W hat’s that?” a private shouted, pointing up at a fireball that continued to increase in size. I stared at the conflagration and cursed.
“His name is Drake, and he wants to kill you. Blow him out of the air.”
Terrified though they might have been, the drills and training and repetition had paid off in spades. They raised their rifles nearly in unison, and the woman I suspected was the youngest of them gave the order to fire. I gritted my teeth against the explosion of sound around me. Half a dozen M16s firing at once were anything but quiet.
Electric yellow sparks flared and dissipated all around the whirling ball of fire. A stray thought flickered through my mind—would the Fae’s elemental fire spell be susceptible to a water incantation? Maybe some good did come out of Sam and I spending more than one summer with our asses stuck firmly in front of a million different role-playing games.
With every shot that deflected or vanished into that maelstrom, I figured more and more that I had nothing to lose. I held the soulsword out toward the swirling mass and shouted, “Minas Glaciatto! ” A shower of dagger-like ice condensed in front of me, rocketing toward that hellish flame. It hissed and popped, steam exploding all around it. Still, the fires closed on us.
The shouts of the soldiers grew more hysterical. I raised the sword again and screamed, “Magnus Glaciatto! ” The very air in my lungs turned frigid, and icy daggers the size of softballs rocketed toward the incoming mass. For a moment, as the steam grew thicker and the momentum of that nightmarish thing slowed, I thought I might have bought us some time.
The fire dissipated, and laughter rose in its place. Drake’s wings looked to be on fire, twice as large as they would have been without the flame, and the sight of that fairy having survived a magnus -level incantation sent a chill into my bones. “Fool,” was all he said before the fires swirled around him again. This time, however, he didn’t see the tiny winged form closing on him from behind.
Foster exploded into his full-size form and released a scream that could have pulled blood from the earth. Drake tried to spin to face the incoming fairy, but Foster’s iron sword found its mark, cutting into Drake’s shoulder, and extinguishing the fires on his wings.
Foster didn’t relent. Drake slammed a gauntleted fist down onto the sword, tearing it out of his own flesh. Foster spun, striking low with his dagger before bringing the sword to bear once more, aiming for Drake’s neck.
“You dare!” Foster screamed raising a knee into Drake’s groin. The dagger found its home in Drake’s side and Foster stabbed once, twice, before Drake could raise his guard. Drake dove toward the earth by the time I remembered to tell the soldiers not to shoot Foster.
Foster chased after the imposter Demon Sword. His body brightened until a sphere of fire erupted like the storm clouds of Jupiter. It made the magic Drake had summoned look like a distant star placed beside a sun.
The fairies vanished into the fires of the flaming tents.
“There,” I said, gesturing with a soulsword. A water witch had slithered into the clearing, and was only then beginning to solidify. “You see one of those, use either of those daggers. That’s the only thing you have that can take them down.
“Won’t the fires hurt them?” one of the privates asked.
I thought of the apprehension of the water witches around Mike the Demon. I knew they were susceptible to some fire magics. Natural fire was no threat. I didn’t think I needed to explain that to the soldiers, though.
Instead, I just said, “No.”
“How do they operate?” the woman asked.
I blinked.
“What’s their SOP?”
“Ambush tactics mostly. But they won’t hesitate to attack in a group either. Watch for water on the ground. It could be a witch.”
“Wait for them to get close enough, and then stab them?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Set a trap,” the soldier said, looking around the area. She slid a dagger into her belt. “I’m the bait.”
There was only one stone building, which looked like it might be cinder block, and I suspected it was either their command center, or a low-budget abandoned office building. “There,” I said, indicating the building. “Fall back to that. I’ll send my allies to meet you. If I can’t make it myself.”
“Don’t worry about us,” the soldier said. “We’ll take down as many as we can before you do.”
The fairies roared, and a water witch at the other end of the clearing dashed into the smoldering tent city. I followed.
* * *
Steel crashed on steel as the fires around me threatened to set my clothes alight. I followed the water witch’s path as she created a narrow trail of moisture. I suspected the narrow band of water kept her attached to the river in the distance. I winced and batted my head as a hot ember settled on my hair, the stench nauseating, but quickly overwhelmed by the burning reek of the tents.
I aimed my hand at the stretch of water on the ground and said, “Minas Ignatto .” The flame created a gap in the water, and that farthest from the river swelled up and stretched to find the end of the stream. So long as the water witch touched the river, she could send word to any other witch connected to the same body of water. There were distances they couldn’t cover, but for that, they had other means of communication.
Cutting the witch off completely might bring more. I didn’t want to do that while I was alone. An arm of fire reached out from a nearby tent, giving me a small heart attack before I realized it was just more shriveling, flaming vinyl.
Something ran past me, crashing through the flaming tents with no regard for its own well-being. At first, I thought it was my imagination, until it happened again. The glint of gray metal helmets and the flash of silver teeth revealed a sight I had not expected. At least two dark-touched vampires had streaked past me. The soldiers didn’t have a chance if we didn’t get back to them.
This was no longer a matter of not alerting the other water witches, this was a matter of regrouping, or they were going to pick us off one by one. I lit a soulsword as I rounded the corner of the last tent and found the water witch with her back toward me. The field in front of her was lit by the fiery glow of Foster and Drake hammering away at each other. I kept one eye on the water witch, and another on Foster.
“It was never your mantle to bear,” Drake snarled, pushing Foster’s sword aside.
“It passed on when the Mad King died,” Foster snarled. “A fate you will soon join.”
Drake laughed and danced away from Foster.
The water witch raised her arm as if to summon an attack, and I had little doubt of who that attack would be focused on. I sliced through her back with the soulsword, sending a gout of steam out through her neck. She writhed on the blade before collapsing onto the ground in front of me. The soulsword wouldn’t be enough to kill her, but it would incapacitate her.
“Foster!” I shouted. “Dark-touched, here!”
Foster almost growled, his eyes glancing to me for a split second before he placed a boot firmly in Drake’s midsection.
“You’re already too late,” Drake said through a labored breath. He used the momentum of his fall to open a portal and escape with a grunt.
Foster’s body still glowed with the power he had summoned as the Demon Sword. “Get Sam,” I said. “You’re hurt, and we’re going to need her help with the dark-touched.”
Foster didn’t say anything. He looked down at his bloodied forearm and frowned. “Take this,” he said, holding out his sword. “I got lucky, Damian. I thought he had me.”
“I’m glad he didn’t,” I said. “Now go.”
Foster snapped into his smaller form and launched himself into the air. He tilted to one side for a moment before a strong stroke of his wings leveled him out. He glided over the rising heat of the fires and vanished into the darkness.
I pulled the sword out of the earth. I was under no illusions about my skills with a blade. The Old Man had taught me a few things, a few essential things, and the rest of the time I relied on the soulsword.
I walked back to the crumbled water witch at the edge of the clearing and rammed the sword through her chest. I’d seen what the stone daggers could do, turning a water witch into stone in a matter of seconds. The blades Mike had forged weren’t so merciful.
Fire blossomed inside her translucent form, lancing out like a poison, creating a webwork of veins, like stone. The witch tried to scream, but her throat was compromised by the pulsing magic. I ripped the sword out of her, and stared in horror as the magic ceased working, and instead left her in a paralyzed agony.
“Fucking hell, Mike.”
I raised the soulsword and cut through her neck. The stone shattered, and her translucent head rolled free. Slowly, the parts of the witch that hadn’t been turned to stone spread. The liquid hissed as it bled into the fires.
The awful weapon in my hand drew my gaze for a moment before I jogged back to the burning tents. Rain fell in earnest, the sky opening up as the tornado sirens echoed around us once more.
A swell of magic tugged at my aura, and I glanced over my shoulder to find a hellish sight. The tornado siren was no longer merely a warning of the attack on the city, but a warning of the enormous water spout that had formed over the Missouri River.
I didn’t think I could focus well enough to summon Happy without coming to a complete stop to send my aura out to find the bear, but I knew someone nearby who might hear me. “Aeros!” I shouted. “God dammit rock, if ever you’re going to listen to me, let it be now.”
Every glance over my shoulder showed me an ever-widening funnel cloud, saturated with water and debris. I had no illusions about the power of the creatures controlling it.
The earth beside me rumbled, throwing my sprint off balance as Aeros’s face rose from the grass and mud. “Oh, dear,” the Titan said.
“Get Graybeard,” I said. “If anyone can fight that thing, it’s him.”
Aeros hesitated, looking like he might say more, but instead he vanished into the earth.
Shadows moved in the field. I couldn’t tell if they were friend or foe, and the incantation fell from my lips without a second thought. “Modus Illuminadda .” A ball of light surged forward, revealing three dark-touched stalking the perimeter of the cinder block building. In the distance, more Fae clashed with gunfire and our other allies that I couldn’t clearly identify. More heads were hunkered down by the cinder block wall than when I’d left. I saw two faces appear in the doorway, and then vanish back inside. I hoped like all hell they’d come up with a plan.
Exhaustion crept into my bones. I’d used too many incantations too fast, and it was beginning to take a toll. I reached down for the arts that had become little more effort than a reflex, and called the dead to my side. I curled my hand into a fist, feeling my aura intertwined with an ocean of the dead. The Hand of Anubis rose before the farthest dark-touched, causing it to run into the wall of dead flesh. All three of the vampires froze and looked around, likely trying to identify the source of the distraction, as the Hand of Anubis snatched up the nearest of them, and dragged it screeching into the ground.
What appeared on the other side of the stone building worried me most—two water witches I didn’t recognize, with no trail behind them feeding to the river. These weren’t scouts. These were members of a raiding party.
The light of the illuminadda spell faded, and I sprinted forward, the roar of the water spout a harrowing thunder behind me.