Hurricanes are amazing things. Hurricanes can be killers, as can earthquakes. Neither is a joke, that’s for sure.
And suddenly the San Francisco Bay Area was getting hit with both at once. Because as incredible as it may seem, the power of the Magnificent Eleven, armed with the words of Vargran and the enlightened puissance, could bring on a hurricane. And at the same time the terrible evil power of the Pale Queen, causing solid rock to heave itself up out of the sea to form a bridge, was making the earth shift and groan and shudder and shake.
People were hurt that day.
People were hurt. And that is a terrible, terrible thing. If you feel like crying for the people who were hurt, well, good. Because we should cry for people who are hurt.
But Mack couldn’t stop the earthquake, and the hurricane was the only way he could think of to stop the attack of creatures who would have rampaged unchecked through the city and then the state and country and finally the world.
It was a necessary evil. But a necessary evil is still an evil.
The storm came on in a gray wall a thousand feet high. It made everything else seem small and weak and insignificant. It came on at 110 miles an hour.
“Hold on!” Mack cried.
“Grab the railing, get your heads down, and hold on!” Stefan cried, adding useful detail.
The storm did not touch the mile-long parade of fell creatures. They were protected by the Pale Queen’s invisible force field. But the storm had an odd effect anyway, because the vacuum created by the onrushing wind sucked hundreds of them out of the open end of the barrier, like sucking them through a straw.
Lepercons, Tong Elves, Skirrit, Bowands, and even mighty Gudridan were sucked out and thrown up into the air, and flew like flailing, bellowing cannonballs at the Golden Gate Bridge.
A Bowand hit the vertical cable directly above Mack’s head with such force that the creature was cut in two and both halves flew on.
Mack had a grip on the railing but the wind was so strong he felt his fingers slipping. Sylvie lost her grip and was rescued by a lightning-quick grab from Jarrah.
“This is insane!” José cried, and Mack only heard him because José was gripping the same two feet of railing.
Ilya’s wheelchair brake was no match for the storm and his chair began to slide. Stefan, leaning hard into the wind, practically horizontal, with his shoes slipping, grabbed the wheelchair and kept it from getting away.
All the while the Pale Queen’s creatures were battered against the support towers, the roadway, the railings, the cables. Many more were simply blown beneath the bridge to hit the water on the far side.
Then, in the midst of mayhem, the earth rolled. It was more than an earthquake. It was the earth as a heaving, bucking bull in a rodeo. The bridge shuddered and whipped. The entire roadway was like a writhing snake. Pieces of pavement broke loose, were snatched by the wind and hurled away. A car rolled over and slammed into the far side rail.
It was madness. It was death and destruction.
Mack raised his head and squeezed an eye open and saw that now even the Pale Queen’s magic had weakened. The barrier that had protected her creatures was broken in places, and the monster army was sucked out of numerous holes, landing in the churning sea and drowning.
But the storm hurt good as well as evil. The police SWAT team was nowhere to be seen. The helicopters were crumpled wrecks. The Coast Guard ship was crunched against the northern bridge pier.
The wind began to die down. The earthquake’s force lessened. Mack shot a frightened look toward the city. Most of the wind had blown straight through the Golden Gate but had only struck a sideways blow at the city. Still, Mack could see broken windows in the tall buildings of downtown—broken windows and dead monsters sliding down the slanted face of the Transamerica Pyramid. Like bugs that had hit a car windshield, they had left smeary trails of guts.
The bridge still stood, but snapped cables hung down, and the road surface was a cracked, pitted mess. Dead or dying creatures stuck in the cables like grotesque parodies of birds sitting on power lines.
The Magnificent Eleven pulled themselves together. They twisted their windblown clothing back into place. They patted their hair down. They squished the flesh of their faces back into shape.
Down below, Mack saw that the Coast Guard ship had survived. It was bent in the middle, but it had survived. And the SWAT team and marines had managed to climb onto the vertical face of the stone pier before the winds hit. The wind had pinned them against it, and that had saved their lives.
But they looked shaken up. Well, everyone was shaken up.
“I think we did it,” Rodrigo said.
“We shall see,” Sylvie said doubtfully.
“O.M. GEEE!” Hillary said. “Is this what it’s like hanging around with you people?”
Dietmar and Xiao were closest to Mack. They exchanged skeptical glances.
It was Stefan who said, “Better look at that.”
They all followed the direction of Stefan’s gaze. And they saw then that they had not won a victory, just a temporary reprieve.
The volcano had ceased to belch smoke and ash and lava. Now it was splitting open at the top, like a flower opening to the sun. It split in vast sections, like the sections of an orange.44 The newly calmed sea rippled like someone shaking out a sheet to put on a bed. The sound of rock splitting and boulders rolling and dirt cascading came to their ears.
And from that volcano, from the underground world where she had been imprisoned for three thousand years, she rose.
The Pale Queen was come at last.
And all hope died.