Part of the hillside was on fire by then. Nearby rock faces began to split and topple to the ground―Jackson's contribution, no doubt―uprooting burning trees. Stars and fuzzy darkness bloomed at the perimeter of my vision while I watched and listened, getting good and high on blood loss, shock, and smoke inhalation. I fully expected another explosion at any moment. The bridge maybe. With any luck, I thought, the biggest part of it would fall directly onto me. But I could no longer see the bridge. I couldn't see what was happening on the bank. I couldn't stand. I sure as hell tried, but my best effort was more diagonal than vertical.
Shots sang and spat into the water. Something―part of an arm or a leg―bounced off my rock and then disappeared into the rapid currents. A masked figure went sprinting by, never breaking stride when a tree came down at his heels.
Someone lifted me.
The thick smoke was suddenly backlit in irregular white flashes, revealing everything within it. The vehicles, the baffled Vessel, the eerily silent war raging on the bank―all lit up as if under a powerful but offbeat strobe light. And somewhere, someone was screaming in broken English for people to get out of the way.
Someone was half-dragging, half-carrying me to the bank.
"It'll be fine," I said serenely, clutching my arm to my chest. "There's Neosporin on the bus."
I saw Ghi knee-deep in the water, his whole body tremoring, his eyes nothing but discs of light. Blinding ropes of lightning arched wildly away from him like the arms of an octopus, lancing out across the bank and through the water, turning the smoke as white as steam.
I saw Hollows blacken and fry and fizz before my eyes, all around him. Wherever the scorching light grazed them, they dropped into twitching, howling heaps.
I saw Corin drive a second, more impressive wall of water forward. It crashed over the nearest grouping of Hollows, forcing them into Ghi's path of involuntary destruction. The result was a fantastic barbecue.
I saw the smug look that Corin gave Jackson.
I saw the Hollows begin to back away or turn and run. I saw Jackson's sly, knowing grin as another ledge high above gave way under burning trees, creating an avalanche of fire and stone and smoke and ash. I saw all those cables of light whip back into Ghi's own body, saw him drop out of sight in the streaked darkness that followed.
And I heard all about what happened next, but I didn't see it. I was suddenly somewhere flat and dry, a place that reeked of blood and gas exhaust. A door rolled shut, and, lucky for me, it was too dark to see anything after that.
C H A P T E R 1 6
Vessel, Book I: The Advent Page 46
