by N. M. Howell
Raina took in the disaster. Most of the ceiling had come down with the explosion. She saw a shaft rise from the center like an inverted funnel. If it had been here before, Raina believed she knew the Slayers’ escape route.
They crawled through the gap left by the fallen rock and into the ritual chamber. Most of the floor had fallen into the hole below. With the damaged bedrock feeling unstable, they quickly walked into the narrowing of the hall.
“There’s another tunnel out of here, if we want to avoid the nithedrakes,” Raina said.
Trini smirked. “Nithedrakes or tunnels—which am I more sick of? Why can’t we call an Uber like normal people?”
The lake stood still and silent, reflecting the fragmented view from the portal. Nothing stirred beyond in Oreálle—not even scorched branches in the breeze.
Belle, Trini and Melchior gaped at the wavering image of the other dimension, the frozen eclipse, the barren landscape.
“I never considered that Oreálle had taken as much damage as on this side of the portal,” Melchior said.
Belle scanned the distant, burned woods. “No way to tell if the Slayers went through or not.”
“We’ll take this to the Shadow Fae Council in the morning. For now, let’s just make sure the Slayers are outside the portal,” Melchior said. “And they stay there.”
“You want to pop in, scout around?” Trini asked Raina.
No, she wanted to pop in and stay. But she couldn’t. Not yet. Raina climbed up on the rim. She yearned for another charge, to feel the flow again. It was so close. On tiptoes, at the very inner rim, she reached out. Her hand met a strange, soft resistance. Light magic snapped through her palm, raised the hair on her arms. Even the trickle of it felt like—
“Down, down!” Trini grabbed Raina’s ankle and hauled her off the rim. An instant later, a Slayer swooped where she had stood, lance stabbing. The creature soared past the portal, and came around—still on the Earth side of the dimensions.
“It can’t get through!” Raina shouted. The portal was open, but the monsters couldn’t access it any more than the Dark Fae, or the humans. The extremists had failed.
Her triumphant feeling turned to fear as seven more Slayers descended from above on leathern wings. Eight of them, powerful physically, magically, against two Dark Fae, a half-fae, and Raina: two to one. The odds sucked.
After her battle with Jax, Raina knew she had to up her game—and cheat. With a gut-wrenching Impel Oblige, she flung a huge chunk of broken rock at the nearest Slayer, following up with an enormous, boosting Impel Acclension. The boulder slammed the Slayer out of the sky. He fell on the academy roof and did not rise.
The other three struck with standard Fray Spells, their Dark Fae magic unhindered by the nithedrake aspect. Raina waited for one to swoop close and puke fire. One did almost immediately. She used the same trick, but this time with keg-sized scoops of water from the lake. Not a lethal attack, but the monster veered away from the battle.
The attackers’ armor, Fray-scored and dented as it was, kept the more fatal spells from connecting. “Trini, toss me the slingshot,” Raina called.
She did, a quizzical look on her face, along with a bag of ball bearings. Raina loaded one up, taking aim. At the same time she toed a watermelon sized piece of scrap concrete. Seizing the cement in an Intent Transitive, she let the steel ball fly. To her relief, the chunk of concrete and rebar followed suit. The metal sphere pinged a dent in the Slayer’s helmet. The spinning chunk of debris broke his wing. Screaming, the Dark Fae fell to the ground in a spiral, thumping hard on the grass.
Trini sent a Slash Bellow into another’s wings, and he, too, fell to the ground.
“I’ll take offense,” Raina shouted. With the slingshot, she knocked a helmet off one Slayer. A Precipitation of Sand snuffed out another’s fire. Both led to successful counter attacks by the ground troops.
The Slayers rallied, with only one remaining airborne. Three others landed on the ground, Targes Viridescent aglow on their left arms, lances in their right hands. Immediately, the tide turned. Melchior met the closest, drawing the shield from his back, the sword from his scabbard. The Slayer hurled his lance like a javelin. Melchior caught it with the shield—but the lance bit through the wood, through his arm.
Screaming, the Dark Fae fell to his knees. The Slayer blasted the sword to fragments with a Bludgeon Typhotic, shredded Melchior’s breastplate with an Impale Strident. Belle threw herself between the combatants, her Targe Viridescent absorbing a lethal Slash Bellow. But the impact destroyed the shield. She raised an Adargo Dire in time to ward off a second Impale Strident. But the next Slayer dispatched her with a Bludgeon from behind.
Above, fire rained down on Trini. Raina was barely able to snuff it in time. The third ground Slayer attacked, slamming his Targe Viridescent against Trini’s, bringing his lance up for a stab. Trini twisted away, the lance cutting into her shoulder. She was bowled over by the impact, but managed to set off a Pelt Sonorous in the Slayer’s face. The Slayer backed away, hands over his eyes. But the helmet had done just enough work. He spun with a vicious kick to her face.
The flying Slayer swooped down at Raina as the others rushed her. Her Panoply Rubicund fended them off. But the force of the flying attack, magic shield against magic armor, forced her back hard into the stone of the portal rim.
Both Fray spells broke at the same time. Raina expected a quick stab to end her life. Instead, the four Slayers physically lifted her onto the rim. She fought, kicking, screaming, spelling. Still, they pressed on, dragging her against the resistance of the portal. Her Slash Bellow split the helmet off the one on her left. Still, they pressed, shoving her mightily into the portal.
Raina saw the eclipsed sun of Oreálle, the low moon of Earth at the same time. Light magic flowed into her. She was partway through. Shockingly, three of the Slayers leaped over her.
And into the other realm.
She screamed, and grabbed the winged one by the throat. Anger filled her vision with red. Light magic flowed into her, residual magic as well. With no spell, no gesticulation, nothing but raging, seething power flowed through her.
The winged Slayer howled. His armor exploded, his skin tightened, mummy-dry. Raina poured her frustration, anger, failure, into his struggling body. Slayer became a blackened skeleton before degenerating into a fine ashy powder.
Raina gained her feet. The others.
But as she ran for the portal, the vision of Oreálle blinked out. She fell to her knees on the muddy shore of the lake. The Lake in Central Park.
The lake in Oreálle had vanished.
31
The thread, she had to find the thread. Mom. Dad. Kraevek. She reached out with her gift, searching for a remnant, a tiny sign of the portal, of Oreálle. Raina was the strongest Fae alive. She had to end this, had to put things right.
“Raina.” A hand fell on her shoulder. She noticed the sun had risen in the east. Trini stood at her side. “Raina, we need to get to the ER.”
“They used me to open the portal.”
“Gods beyond, Raina, snap out of it. We’ve got people bleeding to death.”
Raina saw Melchior lying in pool of mud. No, not mud. A bone lance jutted from his shield, his arm. Belle lay face down, her arm at a weird angle. Trini had a bruise covering half her face. Blood soaked her right sleeve, the arm hanging, useless.
Trini shoved her phone at Raina with her good hand. “Here. Dial 911. My fingers keep pushing the wrong buttons. My brain’s scrambled.”
Raina did, and handed the phone back.
“Great. Now I have to explain why people dressed in armor—Hi! We need an ambulance behind the University and Museum of Fae Metaphysics. Yeah, the academy in Central Park. Hold on, I think I need to pass out now.” Trini beeped off the phone and sat on the grass, her back against the rim.
Distantly, Raina heard a sound. She thought it might be her people screaming. She listened harder, but heard only the call of early morning bir
ds.
“They’re in there. The Slayers. In Oreálle. And I let them in.”
Trini looked up. “You didn’t let them in. They dragged you in. For a minute there, I thought you were going to kick their collective ass.”
Raina sank down beside her. “I failed them.”
“Try to count your blessings, Raina. They could’ve gotten through by killing Kraevek down in the hole. Or both of you. But you’re both still alive, right?”
Raina wasn’t exactly sure.
“And hey, the portal was broken for five years. Nobody thought about fixing it. You’ve been back in town for, what, a couple weeks, and you got it open. You can do it again.”
“How, Trini? The fragment’s gone, Kraevek’s gone, the Slayers have crossed over. Let’s face it. I failed. I’m alone in the world. Again.”
“You’re not alone. Friend. Derek will be chasing your tail as soon as he gets out of the hospital, especially now that you’re all Fae looking again.” Trini leaned over, studying Raina. “Please, gods, tell me I have an eyebrow pencil on me. We really need to fix that.”
Sirens wailed over the eternal river of traffic roar.
“You got me, too. If that counts for anything.”
Raina almost smiled. “You count. Friend. You count.”
“No. Friend is my thing. You need to come up with something else.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the rim. “I just want to go home. I miss my people, my family.”
“You’ll get there. I’ll help you. Derek will help you. Maybe my husband will help you, if he ever comes home again. I’m sure other misguided idiots will join us.”
Raina opened her eyes and let them wander over the academy. “I’ll make them pay for this.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“For the portal, for that disgusting building, for hurting my friends, I’m going to find out who’s responsible and make them pay.”
“Well, my candidate blew himself up with a diamond full of snow and an egg full of fire. I’ll keep looking.” Trini blinked a few times. “Am I babbling? I got kicked in the head, and I lost a lot of blood.”
EMTs in blue uniforms stormed through the back door of the academy. They shouted to each other, and to people in the building.
“Gonna be tough to explain how a lance made from the bone of a mythical creature nearly killed a guy with a shield in Central Park.”
Raina nodded. “About as hard as it will be to explain a dead guy with wings on the academy roof.”
“One in the shrubs, too.”
“What happened to the other two?” Raina looked around.
Trini pointed to her temple. “Kicked in the head, remember? I’m sure we’ll run into them soon enough.
Them, and Jax, Raina thought. Poor, poor Jax. That idiotic jerk.
Men now rushed across the campus with stretchers. Raina watched disinterestedly.
“Sharp said something about other portals. Little ones. Maybe we should start looking for those,” Trini said. “First, I could really go for a ham on rye.”
“You’re babbling.”
An EMT squatted down, explaining that they would take care of the other two first, since they looked the worst off. When he asked what had happened, Trini only theorized that some cosplay had gone bad. She couldn’t be sure because she’d been kicked in the head.
“Man, I’m glad I’m not wearing armor.” Trini watched the medic retreat, smirking. “EMTs sure are cute.”
Raina stared at the academy, anger growing. Trini rattled on, but Raina ignored her. She thought about Kraevek’s words about the portal. And about Sharp’s. Both thought of it as a negative. She wondered if they were both right, or both wrong. Perhaps a little of both. It was something Raina would have to figure out for herself.
As Melchior and Belle were carried off, Raina came to a decision.
She would reopen that portal, free her realm and save her people. No matter the cost.
About Eric Turowski
Eric Turowski is a mysterious bipedal primate who haunts the Pacific Northwest with his mate, Mimi. He is most often spotted near the Columbia River.
About N.M. Howell
N.M. Howell is an author, publisher, and all-around nerd from the West Coast of Canada. She has an obsession with coffee, spicy food, and the rain, and she absolutely hates sleeves. (Seriously, they’re like little fabric prisons!) When not locked away in her writing cave, she mostly spends her time wandering the world or fighting with her micro-wolf pup over who gets the best spot on the couch. Hint: the dog wins.
Find N.M. Howell online:
www.nmhowell.com
Also By N.M. Howell
Return of the Dragonborn Trilogy:
Marked by Dragon’s Blood
Fueled by Dragon’s Fire
Called by Dragon’s Song
Return of the Dragonborn Trilogy Boxed Set
Brimstone Bay Mysteries:
Murder Any Witch Way
Witch Way to Hallows’ Bay
Bewitch You a Merry Christmas
Witch Souls to Save
Cats, Ghosts, and Avocado Toast:
A Thrift Shop Murder
A Vet Vanishes
A Devilish Disappearance
Dawn of the Gods
Amethyst of Destiny
The Shadow Portal
Fractured Magic
Find the full list of N.M. Howell’s books on Amazon HERE.
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