by Amie Gibbons
My eyes flew wide and my song faltered.
The ones on the other side coming back in hadn’t even occurred to me.
I felt dizzy and realized it’d been going for a while.
“Pyro, if enough of my residual energy goes, will I be able to get through the shield?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said slowly as the Fae picked up energy again at the pause in my song.
“Bomb,” I said. “Back to Carvi.”
And then picked up the song again as Pyro zoomed us over.
Fae had stopped pouring in.
Which either meant they’d wised up and were going to start throwing bombs of their own in here, or they’d run outta people.
Either way, our people could probably make do without me, especially as my voice got weaker.
And I was feelin’ a lot weaker now.
“Carvi, bomb,” Pyro said when we reached him.
“Plan?” Carvi asked without breaking stride, pulling arrows and shooting.
That had to be so much more difficult than he made it look.
There was no way bows and arrows could be that easy.
“Give it to AB, she tosses it through the portal, after making sure there’s no innocent people around,” Pyro said. “Looks like middle of nowhere in there, so probably aren’t.”
“Any Fae looking back in?”
“No,” Pyro said. “It seems like the portal is in the air and they’re probably getting away, just in case anything is going on.”
I was having a hard time keeping up my singing while they were talking, especially trying to maintain enough concentration to follow the conversation.
“Then why a bomb?”
“Clear the area so AB can get through to see if whatever is blocking the shield is out there.”
I flinched.
He shouldn’t have told Carvi that part.
“I’ll go with her,” I sang to the tune of Thomas Rhett’s ‘Crash and Burn.’ “I’m faded enough to get through the shield, and we’ll get over there and break the portal. Pyro can tell us when we make it, and y’all can come through.”
I should’ve thought of singing whatever I was saying earlier.
“Hannnnnd it over,” I sang.
Carvi growled, but handed me a small plastic box as I kept singing the original song.
“Push this,” he said, and I stopped singing long enough to listen to him as he pointed to the red button on the top. “Throw it through, and then get outside the shield so no blowback gets you.”
I nodded. “How long between button and detonation?”
“Three seconds. Press, throw, and hop out of the shield.”
“Got it.”
Thomas jumped on Pyro’s back. “Watching y’all’s backs,” he said as Carvi went back to shooting Fae like we’d never interrupted.
The chaos below was thinning.
Even with their magic, the Fae were no match for the cats, especially since one scratch took them down eventually.
We rushed over it all back to AB, and Pyro hit the shield, going too fast for my liking for such a short stop.
I flew forward, and instead of bumping a solid wall, my momentum carried me through a thick jelly.
I wiggled and pushed the rest of the way through, and fell the last few feet to the stone next to AB.
“Yes!” I screamed. “Pyro, will I be able to get out quicker than that?”
“Nope. Give her the bomb and get back out. She can throw and jump out without problems.”
I didn’t like leaving my friend to do the dirty work, but she scowled at whatever must’ve been on my face and yanked the bomb from my hands.
I hadn’t realized until now that her clothes were ripped and she had bloody scratches down her cheek.
The Fae had scratched her?
She had a blackeye barely starting to show, and I was willing to bet a lot more bruises besides that.
She’d probably have been a lot worse off if she hadn’t taken some of Carvi’s blood earlier, even with what he’d taken from her in here.
I quickly explained what Carvi had told me and ran at the shield, hitting the jelly again and forcing myself through.
It took more than a few seconds, so it was a good thing she was the one doing it.
She watched me push through, peeked her head through the portal, then hit the button, throwing the bomb through and running back toward us.
She hopped through the portal and Thomas caught her as she slammed into Pyro hard enough to make his front fold down.
The explosion a second later shook the room and made all of us two leggers fall over.
My head was spinning, and I knew I was draining fast now.
The spark Carvi had kept lit for a little bit was almost gone again.
Pyro pressed up against the air and shook his top. “Shouldn’t the bomb have taken whatever is holding the shield up out if it was nearby?”
“Yes,” AB said. “So it’s probably under a shield too. It can’t be far from this, the power has to be close physically, even in a different dimension.”
“A shield within a shield,” Thomas said. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Come on!” AB said, patting Thomas’s arm and giving it a squeeze before grabbing my arm and tugging me behind her.
I went through the shield easier now and followed her through the portal before I could let my brain talk me outta it.
Cuz who knew what was waitin’ on the other side?
Chapter NINETEEn
We fell straight down about five feet to hard, mulch littered ground.
The world topsy-turvy and turned on its side to my poor confused brain, since we’d just gone in going forward and were suddenly falling.
We hit the grass with thumps and groans.
Both of us pretty battered by now.
Poor AB probably more than me, since she’d had to fight with the stupid Fae in the first place.
There was no one in sight, and adrenaline surged through me, getting me back to my feet.
“How close would it have to be?” I asked.
“Close,” she said. “Like twenty feet at most.”
“And the bomb’s range?”
“How should I know? Ask Carvi.”
I rolled my eyes and we separated without having to talk.
We were in a clearing in the woods.
Probably the middle of nowhere Wyoming like Carvi had guessed it’d be.
The ground was dry and full of twigs and bugs, but not as many as there’d be in Tennessee, or somewhere closer to the South.
We searched the ground, keeping our eyes up and looking around.
AB had pulled out her push knife, and I grinned.
She may not have been magic, but she was more suited to this kinda work than some.
I mean, even my old friends at the SDF were still down and outta the game after the adventures last night.
And AB had taken a lickin’ and was still tickin’.
We searched around on the forest floor, smashing anything that didn’t look like woods stuff, and I even cracked and smashed a few of those.
And we still didn’t know where my powers were.
They could be back on the other side of the portal and inside the shield.
It’s not like I was able to sense them.
The trees were knocked down and bent over, some blown to bits outside our little circle.
And it finally clicked in my slow brain that this hadn’t been a clearing to begin with.
The bomb had made one, and the blown over trees were further out from the site so they hadn’t been completely decimated.
Good to know it had such range.
My hand hit something hard, and I yelped as my fingers stung.
Wait, what had I just hit?
My eyes said nothing was there, but I felt a ball on the ground.
I picked it up and threw it down as hard as I could.
Something popped.
And two sec
onds later, Pyro flew through the hole.
He shook his clenched tassels like they were fists and rushed me, giving me a squeeze.
“You did it!” AB squealed. “Pyro, can you sense her powers?”
He shook his top third.
“Is the battle up there under control?”
He shook his “head” again.
She paled, and I sank to the ground without Pyro to hold me up.
I was near empty again.
“Get people out,” AB said. “Just start grabbing them and throwing them through, then, bomb up in there. Can you do that?”
Pyro looked like he wanted to say something.
But here he couldn’t speak.
“What about the bomb blast coming through here?” I asked hoarsely. “No shield means no protection.”
“Shit,” she said. “Still, we need Ari’s powers. Can you get Carvi first, and we can take them as they come through? Kind of surprised no one else has yet.”
Pyro shot through the portal and appeared a few seconds later with Carvi.
“Get the others out,” Carvi snapped. “I’ll take out any Fae coming through here. Pyro, hurry.”
Pyro nodded and shot through.
“How many dead?” I asked.
Carvi shook his head and held up a hand.
Listening.
“The blast must’ve knocked the ones close to here out, or killed them,” he said. “But the live ones will be here soon. They must have heard it. Your power’s close.”
“Not close enough,” a voice said.
Emily popped outta thin air and giggled, high and sharp.
She looked like any other college coed, wearing jeans and a tank top, her fake blonde hair up in a ponytail.
But she was pure evil.
I was too tired to move.
Almost too tired to care.
But I was the only one.
AB tackled Emily from behind with a roar, moving fast enough to make me and Carvi make surprised noises.
AB pulled Emily’s head back and stabbed her little knife into the Fae’s neck.
Emily rolled over on her, holding her neck.
But Carvi was right there.
He kicked the Fae across the face with a giant hoof and grabbed her by the back of the neck, his other hand searching her with efficiency and roughness.
“That how Kari liked it?” she asked as he shoved a hand down her top.
Carvi didn’t even blink, just kept searching her body.
“It’s here,” he said, staring Emily in the eyes.
I was almost on empty.
And as soon as I hit it, I’d die.
I could feel it.
“AB,” I rasped.
Carvi was doing more than just holding Emily. He had to be holding down her magic too, to keep her from doing anything with it.
But the cats had said I could take blood from things other than vamps and get power.
“Blood?” I asked, head swimming.
“What?” she hissed.
“Cats said work.”
I couldn’t form full sentences.
“Please,” I said.
My friend’s forehead crinkled, but she swiped the push knife across her wrist and pushed it to my mouth.
I latched on as AB hissed in pain, and sucked on her wrist.
She tasted salty.
Like human blood.
But still good.
And I felt some of her life flow into me.
I let her go soon as the woods stopped spinning.
Couldn’t take too much.
Especially after all she’d been through tonight.
Small people could only donate so much.
“That shouldn’t have worked,” she said, sounding weak as me.
“Tell it to the cats,” I said, pulling myself up to hands and knees.
“I can’t find it!” Carvi snapped.
That was bad.
And Pyro hadn’t flow back with anyone yet.
That was worse.
AB looked down at her clotting wrist, then back up at Carvi and Emily.
She growled under her breath and lurched to her feet.
“You sure it’s there?” she asked.
“I can fucking sense it!” Carvi snapped.
AB looked between her wrist and Carvi, and I could see the lightbulb turn on.
“It’s inside her!” AB said, holding up her wrist like that explained everything. “She swallowed it.”
Carvi’s grin as he turned his head back toward Emily made me feel sick again.
“Well then,” Carvi said, pulling an arrow from the sheath on his back.
He was almost outta them.
He threw Emily to the ground, shaking with effort.
Probably from holding down whatever powers she had going.
And he gutted her with the sharp end of the arrow like it was a knife.
The outhouse smell of spilled bowels hit the air, and my stomach rebelled.
I hit my hands and knees and puked.
When I looked up, AB was pulling out intestines, squeezing her way through them with an efficiency that made me want to puke again, even though I was all outta everything in my stomach.
How could she do that?
Oh, right, doctor.
She’d probably played with intestines in med school.
Nope, it was still gross.
And she looked like she was enjoying it a little too much.
She paused and grinned, taking her knife and digging into the intestines, popping out a marble of light.
Carvi took it and ran it to me.
And shoved it in my mouth like a gumball before I could object.
It tasted almost as bad as the Fae smelled.
Ewwwwwwwww!
“Swallow!” he commanded.
I did, in one hard gulp.
“I don’t think this’ll work,” I said. “Emily swallowed it and didn’t get my powers.”
“Because they weren’t hers. You have to do a lot more than that to absorb the powers of another person.”
Warmth spread through me as the lump in my throat dissolved.
And life rushed down my limbs, making me scream with the sudden energy.
And a leg cramp.
“Ow, ow!” I yelled as I fell to my butt, rubbing my cramping calf.
AB ran to my side, and I shook my head as she fell to her knees.
“Just a leg cramp. Magic rushing back,” I said. “Guys, Pyro isn’t back.”
The sickness settled into my stomach as I stared up through the hole.
“Then we go get him,” Carvi said. “You ready?”
I nodded as Carvi grabbed me and threw me straight up.
The world turned on its side in a way that broke my brain as I was suddenly sailing across the floor instead of up.
I skipped on the stone, scraping the shit outta my arms and knees as I skidded to a stop.
More Fae had shown while we were down there.
The cats were down to maybe ten, and there were only like three of Carvi’s people I could see standing. Two guys I hadn’t gotten the names of, and Feather.
Thomas stood next to the portal with Pyro, taking on any Fae that got too close.
So that’s why Pyro hadn’t come back. Guarding the portal was more important.
The guys were doing a good job.
But the Fae were closing in.
I opened my mouth and sang at the top of my lungs again as Carvi leaped through the portal with AB on his back.
He handed her a magazine and she reloaded her gun and took up next to the portal as Carvi rushed back into the fray.
I focused on my singing and felt the Fae near me out.
And boiled the water in their veins, using my voice to help focus my mind.
The lyrics to Carrie Underwood’s ‘Cry Pretty’ got changed into ones about boiling blood.
The Fae fell and slowed with my voice.
And our remaining people started gatheri
ng up the injured or dead, I couldn’t tell which, and rushed to the portal.
They jumped through, and the cats followed once it was clear we had this well in hand.
AB looked around, then followed, flopping through the hole more than jumping.
Probably to make sure there was at least one gun with bullets left down there, since everyone had probably gone through theirs.
I hadn’t even realized till now that I hadn’t been hearing the shots during the fight.
Magically suppressed?
Carvi backed up, killing with arrows and magic, switching to a sword when his arrows ran out.
“I’m setting off the big bomb to take out the palace,” he said. “You can close this portal, right?”
My breath caught, but I nodded.
It was made from my magic.
I could feel it.
So I could close it.
And we could leave them with one hell of a message.
“Get going, you three,” Carvi said. “If I’m not out in ten seconds, you close it behind me.”
I knew better than to argue.
Also, it was Carvi, he’d get through.
I was still singing as I ran out, Pyro and Thomas right behind me.
I could tell the second the song stopped affecting the Fae, because a cry rose up in them.
Apparently song didn’t stretch across dimensions.
I counted under my breath, and Carvi didn’t disappoint, jumping through when I was at six.
“Fucking close it!” he screamed as a Fae followed him out.
I focused on the hole in the world and slammed it shut, my heart racing.
Just this side of terrified that I wouldn’t be able to close it.
The Fae hit the ground and rolled to his feet.
The remaining cats jumped on him almost all at once.
He never stood a chance.
And the world was suddenly very, very quiet.
“When is it supposed to go off?” I whispered to Carvi after a few moments.
I don’t know why I was whispering.
“Ten seconds after I went through,” Carvi said in a normal voice.
“How do we know it did?”
“You want to go in there to check, be my guest,” he said with a smirk, waving his hand in front of him as he bowed.
Thomas lay on his back, and the little white kitten who’d somehow survived curled up next to him, purring even as his almost transparent hand went right through her as he tried to pet her.
Her white fur was nearly solid red with blood, and she started licking it off her.
