I took stock of our situation. The entire eastern side of the town had caught fire from the insects’ slow and steady crawl. Thick black smoke blew over us, but our people had managed to build barriers from mounds of dirt, redirecting the mindless bugs away from the Town Hall.
People around me coughed and covered their faces. The Rakken howled again. I shuddered, too tired to see what destruction they were causing on the streets below. The firebirds above the shield cast a red pall over everything as they absorbed magic out of our dimming shield. Our situation couldn’t get much worse.
The shield flashed and disappeared.
The firebirds swooped down and sprayed flames from their beaks. Their entire path lit with flames, creating a monster-sized runway of destruction across the town. A row of fire flamed down the length of the rooftop as they dove toward us, their strong wings beating down powerful blasts of air. I scrambled to my feet and threw myself out of the path of destruction.
People raced to put out the flames, pounding them out with magic and clothing. If our building caught fire, it would go up just as fast as all the other wood-framed structures. Then we would be forced down to the ground with the Rakken.
The church bell rang out twice, and every head snapped to the eastern horizon. Figures appeared one by one at the town’s perimeter, surrounded by dark, tainted magic. I stared at them in numbed disbelief. The shield was down, and the Brotherhood had shown up to finish the job.
The pressure shifted on the roof. I froze at the familiar sensation, unable to react fast enough as two dozen unknown men dressed in leather armor skimmed among us.
One of the men grabbed the shoulders of the woman I had just saved from the other rooftop. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth popped open in silent surprise before they both disappeared.
“No!” I lunged but grabbed only air.
Yells of dismay rang around us as twenty-four of our friends and loved ones disappeared with the attackers.
“Get the shield back up!” I screamed.
Thomas’s group formed a conjuring circle and began chanting. Deanna swiped her palm in an arc through the air. The pattern of her magic faded into a soft, opaque shimmer, and I peered into a magnified view of the land in front of us. My heart skipped a beat when I saw a familiar head of blond hair. Titus stood on the horizon, clothed in leather armor, blood dripping from his clawed left hand. He was enveloped by the threads of a Transference spell. On the ground at his feet lay a twisted heap of bodies. The horror dawned on me slowly—they were all dead, drained of magic.
Hatred flared white-hot inside me. I would kill Titus. I would do it with my bare hands if I had to, but he was not going to leave there alive.
“That’s Titus,” I said to Deanna.
Her lip curled in anger. “They’re too far. We can’t pull his magic.”
“Time for offensive measures,” Casius said.
“Focus on that man!” she ordered, pointing with her finger.
Rage filled us for our murdered people and for the decade of terror caused by the Brotherhood. Working in teams, we barreled magic at our enemies.
A domed shield materialized above the Brotherhood, blocking our assault. The energy kept flying at them as if our rage were a physical, tangible thing pummeling their defenses.
Dark magic swirled around them as they stayed safe inside their bubble while our barrage whaled uselessly against their defenses. Whatever they’d built was larger than any conjuring I had seen before. Finally, I recognized the hatched, short waves of the energy. But the spell was so large, I almost didn’t believe what my eyes were seeing.
“It’s a Transference!” I yelled. A spell that large could suck the magic out of us as a group, and if they managed to get enough of our magic, they would have access to Earth’s Source just as Titus had planned.
“Gods save us,” Casius whispered. “That’s a super conjuring. The power needed to fuel that...” His voice trailed off in terrified awe. In addition to the Blood Moon, we all knew where that power had come from—stolen lives.
“Get that shield up now!” Deanna commanded. The Transference continued building, even though it was already massive.
“We have to pull the energy away from them.” I couldn’t absorb that much tainted magic. Just thinking about it made me feel sick.
“Can you redirect it?” Deanna asked.
“It’s too much,” I said. Even if I could manage a conjuring big enough to redirect that much power, the size of their spell would leave me incapacitated afterward. “I need the full Circle.”
She put a hand on my shoulder, and we shared a moment of silent understanding. “We have to run.”
I ground my teeth. Titus was right there, and this was the best chance I’d had at stopping him. But I couldn’t do it alone. I itched to skim down there and bury my knife in his heart. But if I did that, the Brotherhood would most likely capture me, drain my magic, and further fuel their own power. If they absorbed the power I had locked inside of me, it might just give them enough to access Earth’s Source. Our entire cause would be lost.
The firebirds flew over us again, and fifty desperate people threw magic at them before they had a second chance to crisp us. Two of the prehistoric birds fell out of the sky with roars of death. The other three banked abruptly and veered off.
“We’ll get our people in the tunnel,” Deanna said. “Some of us will stay behind and provide cover from the roof.”
I stared at her. Anyone staying behind would be sacrificing themselves. It couldn’t end like that. We had fought too damn hard and lost too much.
“Maeve can’t be captured, or they’ll have enough power to finish us all,” she continued. “Get her to the tunnels at all costs. Casius and I—”
“Look!” I yelled, pointing farther out to the east.
Beyond the Brotherhood, more men appeared in a flare of multi-hued magic—shades of red, yellow, and blue. They stood two and three deep, spanning an entire field of grain.
Deanna adjust the magnified view and swore. “The gods-damned Guardians found us.” Her voice lowered to a hoarse whisper. “We’re all dead.”
A wall of magic pulsed from their front ranks, and two-thirds of them transformed into snarling beasts. The front lines were comprised entirely of Shifters.
Like the Rakken, they had some resemblance to Earthen animals, but each beast was more foreign than familiar. A cross between a bison and a bear—but twice the size of either—anchored the center of their front line. Wolflike creatures with elongated front legs and pointed tusks lined up on either side of him. Flanking them, catlike Shifters with too-long snouts—no doubt full of teeth—coiled on lean muscles, ready to chase down anything that escaped. Every single one of them was a dangerous predator.
A chorus of shiver-inducing howls went up from the Guardians. I took it all in, slack-jawed with awe.
Behind the Shifters, the ones still in human form glowed with shades of blue and yellow power, adding their magic to the mix. I swiped my hand across the magnifier, searching the ranks of the Guardians. There had to be at least two hundred of them. But I found what I was looking for, right in the center rear. My heart skipped a beat. Silas. He was alive, leading the rescue with his sword at his hip.
I laughed with utter relief. He really was too damn stubborn to die.
His magic flared a pale yellow around him, but he was otherwise unharmed. Next to him stood a group of Commanders, including Tessa. I nearly skipped with joy at the familiar faces coming to our rescue.
With the arrival of the Guardians, the Brotherhood hadn’t moved, and their Transference spell hadn’t grown either. They stayed behind their shield, waiting. Titus’s blond head wasn’t visible because he was surrounded by his men, but I bared my teeth in feral joy as I imagined his reaction at that moment. They wouldn’t be crushing us just yet.
The Guardians’ lines of men and beasts merged into three distinct wedge shapes. The bison-bear was at the center of the middle group, and the wolve
s and feline creatures created the flanking formations. Those still in human shape stood nearest Silas while magic formed around them. I had no idea what they were preparing to do, but I knew their attack would include brute force and magic.
Silas raised his hand, and the Guardians surged forward, completely silent and in formation. A blast of magic slammed forward from the group, sending the hair on my arms straight up. The Guardians’ energy wave crackled across the surface of the Brotherhood’s shield, shuddering the entire dome. A moment later, the front lines of the Guardians’ Shifters slammed into the shield, ripping and tearing at it.
“Why aren’t they fighting back?” I wasn’t an expert by any means, but the Brotherhood should have been putting their efforts into a counteroffensive. They couldn’t have just been waiting out the larger and more powerful force. They had to be up to something.
“Time to go!” Deanna yelled. “Let them fight it out. We’re not sticking around to see who gets to us first.”
“Wait! The Guardians are here to help us. That’s Silas leading them!”
“Silas?” Her face drained of color as she peered into the viewer. “As in Commander Silas Valeron?”
I didn’t correct the title. It wouldn’t have helped to tell her that Silas had been upgraded to Lord Commander and now sat on the Aeternal Council. “He’s here to help us,” I insisted.
Deanna’s brow furrowed.
“He took me in as his Aegis when the Brotherhood found me in Boston. He saved my life more than once! He’s here to help us.”
Deanna looked horrified at that news. Every member of the Circle stared at me with an open mouth or furrowed brows. With my memories now recovered, it wasn’t hard to understand their shock. I’d grown up on stories of the Guardians’ raids and even a few about Death’s Fury. Before the Brotherhood, the Guardians and the Aeternal Council were the stuff of our nightmares.
“Deanna, you have to trust me.”
“We still have time to run,” Thomas said.
The sounds of battle raged around us. The town was in flames. Death was at our doorstep, but hope still grew inside me. “If we run now, the Brotherhood will never stop chasing us.” I tried to infuse confidence into my voice. “We have a chance to end this for good.”
Everyone looked to Deanna. She considered each of them in turn, and I waited, surprised at my own confidence.
“What’s the plan?” Deanna asked me.
Every gaze locked on my face. They were putting their lives in my hands. The pressure of leading these people threatened to overwhelm me. I pushed down my fear and hardened it into resolve. We were done running, done being hunted and killed off one by one. We would never run again. We would fight or die.
Chapter Thirty-Four
With each minute, the Guardians weakened the shield and pushed the Brotherhood toward the town. But Titus still wasn’t fighting back. It didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t figure out what Titus was planning as he let them slowly chip away at their shield and their resources.
If they got too close to us, my people could drain their powers. Or if the dome fell first, the Guardians would crush them. No matter how much magic Titus had stolen, the Brotherhood couldn’t compete with the Guardians in direct combat. They were outnumbered and out-trained.
Either way, the Guardians’ assault gave us the time we needed to get our own shield back up. The reassuring glow of energy cascaded around our building, and I exhaled in relief. Everyone still alive had been collected and brought to our rooftop, and we were as secure as we could be.
On the field, Titus’s shield flickered violently. I bit my lip, waiting for it to fall. After several minutes, I swore under my breath. With the aid of the Blood Moon and the stolen lives of our people, the Brotherhood had magic resources out of proportion to their small numbers. But it was only a matter of time until the Guardians broke them. They couldn’t hold out forever.
A slow fog rolled along the ground toward the town, and I caught my breath. Within it, the layers of a conjuring built. The Transference was back. Shit. It suddenly made sense to me why Titus hadn’t fought back. They’d been focused on building the Transference. Titus must have realized, as I did, that they would never beat back the Guardians without more power. He was simply holding off the attack long enough to steal our magic and gain access to Earth’s Source.
The Guardians had bought us the time we needed to regroup, but the Brotherhood still stood between us and our rescue. Our shield wasn’t as strong as the one they’d already destroyed, and they still had a pretty good chance of smoking us out if the fire made it to our building. We were running out of time.
“We can’t wait any longer, Mae,” Deanna said, eyeing the same fog. “Are you ready?”
I took a deep breath. “We have to take down their shield.”
I scanned the battlefield as Deanna and Thomas organized the Circle. Accessing my power, I built a tiny flare in my palm, and the members of the Circle took their places around me.
The flare flew from my hand to Leah. Her power pulled toward Deanna and then Jason and onward through every person in the Circle until it returned to me and we each held a thread connecting us to the group. Just like I had done when we’d broken the last of my binding, I opened myself to the energy. The magic spun and grew. The patterns floated in the air, layer upon layer, building into a prism of refracted color inside the white glow of our magic. Every nerve in my body pulsed with energy. The combined power lifted over our heads and completed the Circle.
The magic was pure ecstasy, and I lost awareness of everything else. I closed my eyes and shivered with pleasure. Deanna said I would feel when it was time to stop absorbing the massive power of the Earthen Source, that the pressure would be too much. But with my connection to the Circle, I barely noticed any pressure. They were an extension of my magic, making my boundaries feel nonexistent.
Power radiated out of me in white streaks of energy. With the binding gone and my own memories restored, all fear of losing control slipped away. I was one with the magic inside me. It was time to do what I’d been born for.
I acted as the Focus again, reaching for the Brotherhood’s shield. Their magic was dark, its energy pulsing like an oozing sore. With the power of the Circle behind me, and the Guardians pushing them closer every minute, the Brotherhood’s magic was finally accessible, even at a distance. Just as I had with Atticus’s compulsion spell, I grabbed threads of magic from the Brotherhood’s shield and unraveled it layer by layer. The increased energy hit me in a rush of nausea. I gasped as it flowed over me, but the Circle flexed, absorbing the tainted death magic. Groans of revulsion echoed through each of us until the stolen life energy was absorbed into the source, cleansing the magic.
I bared my teeth in grim determination and growled, “I’m coming for you, Titus.”
The weight of unclean magic filled me with a steady ache. The discomfort grew again to pain. There was too much bad magic for even the Circle to absorb. The Brotherhood’s shield had dimmed but wasn’t completely gone. The Guardians continued to assault it from the opposite side, but the steady growth of the Transference hadn’t slowed.
A heavy knot settled in my gut. Beside me, Deanna swayed on her feet. She reached out and grasped my hand. I grunted with the strain. Sweat coated my forehead. Across from me, Tamara passed out, her aura cutting off as she fell to the floor. The pressure increased on each of us. Thomas swayed and fell to her left. Others rushed to help them.
I took more energy into myself and tried to bear the additional burden. We were in a fight against every single person channeling power into the Brotherhood’s shield. The weight of it crushed me, but I couldn’t give in. I wouldn’t let Titus win.
I gritted my teeth and raised my hands, visualizing my fingers ripping into their shield and tearing apart the threads of magic. Sweat formed on my skin as I pulled as hard as I could. Their shield shimmered like a bubble of magic. It flexed and stretched until the threads of power twisted so far apart, it
popped. The shield came crashing down.
An enormous wave of tainted magic crashed into us—the backlash from the Brotherhood’s shield. The Circle helped spread out the poisonous black magic, but Leah and Jason passed out. Deanna curled over and vomited on the spot. I barely managed to hang on to the contents in my own stomach.
“It’s down!” Casius panted.
I dropped the connection to the Circle. Cheers erupted from the rooftop. The enormous pressure in my mind receded, and Deanna and I leaned against each other in relief.
On the field below, the Guardians rushed the now-defenseless Brotherhood. With a roar, the front lines collided in a mess of magic, steel, and claws. The bison-bear plowed through men and Rakken, sending bodies flying around him. With a second toss of his head, the bison-bear’s giant horns speared a Rakken through the chest, lifted him off the ground, and threw him into the air. Titus and his men scattered, completely unable to form a unified defense.
“Mae?” Casius laid a hand on my shoulder. His shirt was soaked with sweat.
“I’m okay,” I gasped. I felt as if I’d run a marathon then crawled through a desert for funsies. But I would be fine.
The noise of the battle rang in my ears, a cacophony of violence. The lines of the two groups folded and blurred until I couldn’t tell friend from enemy. I also couldn’t tell who was winning. I scanned for Silas, worried about him fighting with drained magic. The battle below was chaos, but I spotted him thick in the fray, sword in hand, before I lost sight of him again.
As we watched, a group splintered from the rear ranks of the Brotherhood and hid amid the tall stalks of grain. After a few minutes, the threads of another conjuring started to take shape. Another Transference.
You’ve got to be kidding me. I swore under my breath. Every part of me was exhausted, mentally and physically. The heat from the burning buildings drenched me in sweat and smoke. I was sore and tired, but it still wasn’t over. We weren’t safe yet.
Fate Forged Page 34
