I slam into Felicity. My full body weight. She sprawls. The lion doesn’t hesitate for a moment.
Time grinds then. As if the tall Russian hit me with one of his gelatinous balls of messed up space. I can see the bronze muscles rippling in the lion’s back as it closes on me. I can see its metal skin stretching as its jaws open. The rain spattering against its back. I can hear Shaw cursing as her shot goes wide again. I can hear Tabitha still shouting, “Sinsdale! Sinsdale!” over and over again. I even have time to wonder if the stress has finally gotten to her.
And Clyde too. I can hear him, something barely audible under the crackle of lightning, the bark of the gun, the shattering echo of the roar. Nonsense words. Syllabic salad. The language of magic.
“Mel forum kel ashtium fer fillum.”
There is a horrendous scraping noise. A screech. A scream from the lion. Its jaws widen further, further. They do not stop. The seam of its mouth goes back, back, back, stretches down the length of its body. A great gash from mouth to tail. Like a blade slicing the thing in two. Like it collided with an enormous, invisible knife.
Sinsdale.
That’s what… Tabitha… Clyde… Sinsdale. That trio just saved my life.
Except while Sinsdale chops, he still can’t stop several tons of bronze from careening on through the sky.
Two inert slabs of metal fly at my head. One falls, one rises. There is no time to crawl away but I try it anyway. All I have time for is falling backwards, toppling. As the top half of the dead lion skims over my head. The world rings from the collision. A hot line of blood and grazed skin across my scalp.
The bottom slab hits the ground, the edge driving into the paving slabs in a great spray of rainwater and stone chips. The slab tilts up, a great black monolith teetering before me. I stare at it bewildered, dumbfounded.
Gravity does its thing. It starts to fall.
Something hits me from the side. Felicity. She kicks me. Both feet. Right in the side. And I’m winded, and I’m falling, skidding through puddles, and I’m still a little bit wounded she called me an imbecile when all I was doing was trying to save her life. And then I’m hitting the floor, my cheek and nose mashing against the rocks, as the second half of the lion slams to earth.
Two tons of bronze lies between Felicity and me. Cold, dead, rain strafing its length.
And I am alive, to stare at it. And Felicity is alive, on the other side of it, staring back at me.
And then behind her…
“Duck!” I yell.
And she does. The ball of warped space, and time, and whatever rolls over her head. Behind her, I see the tall Russian, hands outstretched.
Missed again, you fuck.
Not that that really matters. As the ball collides with the slab of metal.
Metal. What did metal used to be? Ore?
The slab ripples, cracks. Enormous waves of heat suddenly coming off it. A red glow emanating from the widening cracks, spreading, infusing the whole thing. Steam boils off it. And still it ripples, wobbles, like jello.
A blob of steaming red metal falls to the earth with a hiss and a splat. A paw oozes toward me.
After it was ore. Before it was a statue. Molten metal. Solid metal was molten metal.
I scramble away, crab-crawling backwards. Through the steam and the heat I see Felicity rolling away from the spitting red mess, toward the Russians, away from me.
Lightning flares again. Again. I hear another roar. Another.
Four lions, one at each corner of the column. We’ve only taken one of them down.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but I bloody hate magic.