Adrenaline pumped through Hannah and magic crackled at her fingertips.
Ceithlenn gave a wicked smile and her mouth moved, and in her gut, Hannah knew the goddess was chanting a powerful spell.
Air sizzled and snapped near the Drow warriors, and her attention was diverted toward the sight and sounds as something wavered in the rain.
The great red Fire Dragon Elemental appeared. Solid. Real. Not the size it had been at the top of Coit Tower or on the beach. No, this time it was massive. It grew until it towered above everyone on the battlefield. The Dragon reared back, roared, and blasted a stream of iridescent magic fire at the Dark Elves.
No, no, no!
Even though she knew the Fire Dragon had gone to Ceithlenn’s side, Hannah couldn’t accept that one of her Dragons, her totems, could destroy these people or beings.
Many of the Drow managed to save themselves by wrapping their bodies in swirling cloaks of dark magic. For others it was too late and they gave their final death cries before their bodies faded into obsidian sparkles.
Ceithlenn laughed behind her shield, the sound traveling through the night, above the wail of sirens and the roar of the battle.
Hannah’s entire body felt stretched, her skin tight. She couldn’t find Garran and she had to do something against the Dragon.
The answer came to her and all she could do was pray to the Ancestors and the goddess Anu that it would work.
Frantically, she looked around for something to stand on. One of the pier’s thick, wide sliced wooden pilings stood close to a sidewalk.
Rocks pierced her socks and dug into her wet feet as she ran the short distance and climbed onto it to get a better view of the melee and the Fire Dragon.
Her heart pounded as she focused on drawing the other three great Dragon Elementals to the battle. She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured the Dragons she was calling while she said a chant over and over and over in her mind.
With the same mental chant she called to the Ancestors and Anu, asking with urgency for their assistance.
Her eyelids jerked open.
Power rushed through her veins and tremendous magic burst within her like an explosion of fireworks. Her moon and crescent band burned her arm.
The magic was stronger than she’d ever felt before.
The Ancestors and Anu were answering her plea.
She held out her arms to embrace those she prayed would respond to her call. Whether or not the Water Dragon would switch to her side, or the Air Dragon would help her, she wasn’t certain. But with the aid of the Ancestors and Anu, a confidence rolled through her beyond what she’d ever felt.
Hannah tipped her face up to the rain and chanted a plea to the Dragon Elementals as she gathered strength.
When she finished the chant, Hannah held her breath, terrified that all three Dragons might not side against Ceithlenn.
Yet she knew they would answer her call. Scrying mirror or no scrying mirror, the dragons were hers.
Wind and rain and time seemed to slow. Even the Fire Dragon’s next burst of flames hung on the wind.
Shimmers like morning light refracting from a diamond appeared to the north of the Fire Dragon, a great shape coming forth.
A second gigantic glimmering form rose from the bay.
A third shimmered above the battle.
Enormous shapes that glistened as they appeared more clearly.
The Fire Dragon was still caught in the slow-motion spell, its fiery breath hanging in the air.
Hannah swallowed as the yellow Air Dragon flapped its expansive wings, causing great gusts of wind to join the strength of the storm. The gigantic green Earth Dragon materialized near the Fire Dragon and roared so loudly the ground trembled like a small earthquake and Hannah almost fell off her perch.
The blue Water Dragon rose from the bay. Fear yet confidence built within her as she watched it. That Elemental was the other Dragon that had stated it would join the Fire Dragon to fight on Ceithlenn’s side.
Let the Ancestors and Anu sway its decision.
So much fear pumped through Hannah’s body that she trembled with it. Would the Water Dragon now fight for Ceithlenn or against her? Would it see what was the right thing to do?
While everyone on the battlefield, including the Fire Dragon, continued to move in slow motion, the Air Dragon screeched. It flapped its wings so that tremendous gusts of air pushed the Fire Dragon’s flames away from the Drow.
The Air Dragon was helping.
Blue scales glittering, the Water Dragon rose from the bay and Hannah held her breath.
The Elemental paused and swept its gaze over the scene. It turned its head and spewed a torrent of water from its great mouth at the barely moving Fire Dragon, dousing the flames.
Relief weakened Hannah’s knees, but she stood straighter.
The Water Dragon had switched its allegiance.
The green Earth Dragon slammed its massive body into the Fire Dragon, knocking the Elemental backward and into a tall building on the other side of the battle.
Bricks, wood, glass, and metal exploded with the strength of the Dragons plowing into the building.
The Fire Dragon roared as it snapped out of the spell, no longer held in slow motion, unlike those on the battlefield.
Fighting with its tremendous might, the Fire Dragon tried to push itself up and out of the rubble.
The other three Dragon Elementals converged on it at once. Their great bodies shielded the Fire Dragon from Hannah’s eyes.
Three of the Dragons vanished.
Only the Earth Dragon remained. It spread its expansive wings, its huge green eyes met Hannah’s, and she knew it was waiting for her command.
Her body sagged in relief, but only for a moment.
Ceithlenn still hovered above the battle, growing more and more powerful.
In a snap, the battle no longer moved in slow motion. Everything continued as before.
Blood splattered and bricks from the smashed building crumbled onto the crowd.
Screams and sirens. The rotten-fish stench of the Fomorii.
Hannah looked up at Ceithlenn, who flapped her wings and screeched in fury as she looked to where the Fire Dragon had been attacking the Drow.
Take that, bitch!
Hannah didn’t have a second to feel any satisfaction.
Ceithlenn turned her hateful gaze on Hannah. The goddess wrapped her wings around her body, spun like a top, and dropped her glittering red shield.
The force of her spin combined with the magic shooting from her body slammed into the three flying D’Danann guarding her.
Hannah’s heart climbed into her throat as the warriors were blasted away from Ceithlenn. The force threw the D’Danann so far back the goddess was free from immediate assault.
One of the warriors had been hit so badly by her magic that he dropped into the middle of the battle.
Eavan. Dear Anu, it was Eavan.
The iridescent sparkles that rose from where he’d fallen signified his death.
Rage and pain from Eavan’s murder strengthened Hannah’s magic.
She barely had a moment to register the warrior’s death as she glanced up at Ceithlenn.
The goddess shot a fireball straight at Hannah.
Hannah threw up a shield, instinctively combining her magic with the dark power Garran had given her.
The strength of the goddess’s fireball was so great when it slammed into the shield that it threw Hannah backward. She fell off her perch and landed on the concrete. Pain shot up her tailbone.
She scrambled to her feet as another fireball hit the shield and sizzled over its surface.
“Help me, O Ancient One,” Hannah called to the Earth Dragon.
It lumbered through the battle so that it stood behind Ceithlenn, tall enough that its head was level with the goddess’s back. She didn’t seem to notice the Dragon as she released her next fireball.
Grinding her teeth, Hannah gathered her own spellfire,
again blending Garran’s magic with her own.
After a third hit to her shield, Hannah dropped the protection and released her ball of spellfire, the greatest magic she had ever used.
The spellfire shot through the air. Ceithlenn moved to dodge the ball of magic, but backed into the Earth Dragon and she couldn’t avoid it. The spellfire slammed into her midsection and she shrieked.
A hole burned into the goddess’s belly. Before she had the chance to regenerate or throw up a shield, Hannah shot two of her magic ropes into the air and wrapped them around the goddess’s legs.
Rhiannon set her Shadows on Ceithlenn, causing her to scream and writhe against their hold.
Janis Arrowsmith’s magically enhanced voice cut over the power of the noise. “No! You cannot kill Sara.”
Hannah’s gaze landed on Janis and her heart lunged into her throat.
Holding her arms wide, her face tilted up, Janis stood directly beneath Ceithlenn. From her hands, Janis shot her magical vines of the earth around Hannah’s ropes and pulled at them, trying to free Ceithlenn.
“You cannot murder my apprentice, Sara,” Janis repeated, her features twisted in horror and anger.
A sick weight bottomed out Hannah’s belly as she struggled against Janis’s powerful magic.
Not again. No, not again.
“Sara doesn’t exist anymore,” Hannah screamed, amplifying her own voice with magic. “Ceithlenn killed Sara and just uses her body. Don’t you understand?”
Ceithlenn screeched and started to free herself from Hannah’s magic ropes.
Janis attempted to throw up a magical shield to encompass Ceithlenn and herself. “I will not allow—”
Drow arrows sailed into the sky and began piercing Ceithlenn’s wings, arms, legs.
Through icy wind and rain, D’Danann flew, charging the goddess with their swords.
The Earth Dragon roared as it clasped Ceithlenn in its enormous claws.
Janis screamed and dropped to her knees.
The terror in Ceithlenn’s next shriek cut through the wind and rain. It was in her eyes and on her face as Hannah’s powerful ropes, Rhiannon’s Shadows, and the Earth Dragon’s hold kept her completely immobile.
Janis’s magical vines fell away as she shouted again, a moan and a cry all in one. “Noooo. Not Sara.”
A D’Danann—Keir—reached Ceithlenn. With his jaw set and his sword firm in his grip, his blade arced through the air.
And severed Ceithlenn’s head from her neck.
Blood splattered across the battlefield and rained down on Janis, who screamed.
A steel gray-cloud exploded and mushroomed where the goddess had been.
The cloud slammed into everyone surrounding it, flinging each being aside. The blackness rose and slipped through the Earth Dragon’s claws.
“Aren’t paybacks a bitch?” Hannah said, relief flooding her veins like spellfire as she smelled the burnt sugar stench of the goddess fading.
The cloud, though—did Ceithlenn’s magic survive in that mass that seemed to solidify as it drifted over the head of the Earth Dragon?
With its great claws, the Elemental tried again to snatch it, but its claws swept through the mass as if it were mere fog.
Hannah knew it wasn’t and a new burst of fear nearly choked her.
The Earth Dragon met her gaze, and from the look in its great eyes, she knew it was leaving. “Thank you!” Hannah cried.
After an acknowledgment with a slight nod of its great head, the Elemental vanished. It had accomplished what she had needed of it.
Ceithlenn was gone, and the Elemental had returned to its own realm—until Hannah’s need ever rose to such a level again.
But the battle raged on.
And where is Garran? The Fomorii are still here. He must still be alive.
More and more Fomorii poured from the bay, as if driven by the goddess even after her death.
Fear for Janis caused Hannah to look back to where the High Priestess had been standing. Ironically, Silver Ashcroft had herself and Janis encased in a bubble of magic, protecting them both in the middle of the battle. Ironic because Janis had been the one to banish Silver from the white magic D’Anu Coven.
Covered in Ceithlenn’s blood, Janis was on her knees, her face buried in her hands.
No regrets.
If Ceithlenn hadn’t been killed, thousands more lives would have been lost. The Sara that Janis had known was long gone.
Quickly, as she also searched for Garran with her gaze, Hannah counted her sister witches to make sure they all were alive.
Rhiannon drew her Shadows back inside her as she stood below the place Ceithlenn had been.
Silver still crouched in the bubble beside Janis.
Alyssa and Mackenzie fought on the far side from where Hannah stood.
Copper and Sydney battled side by side with the D’Danann warriors Tiernan and Conlan.
And Cassia—the intensity with which she fought the Fomorii sent a strange tickling feeling through Hannah’s belly.
She paused only a moment more to study the fierce expression Cassia wore as she battled, and the strength of her spellfire.
Hannah forced her attention away.
Now to find Garran.
Ceithlenn had been killed. He didn’t have to sacrifice himself.
Yet with all the Fomorii still fighting, overpowering the Alliance and other human law enforcement, she had no doubt he planned to carry through with his third attempt to rid this world of the demons.
Prickles of cold raised hair on her arms and at the nape of her neck as she searched the rainy night for Garran with her gaze.
She tried to blink water from her eyes and see through the red and blue flashing lights.
The rain was so fierce now it was harder to see and there were so many creatures, magical beings, and humans that it was difficult to make out one individual.
While she searched for him, she noticed the huge black cloud slowly drifting northwest of the battle. Could the power in the cloud, the remnant essence of Ceithlenn, be what still drove the Fomorii to battle?
Was that a huge man standing where the cloud appeared to be heading?
Not Balor, no. Balor is dead. We know that for certain from Silver’s scrying. My mind has to be playing tricks.
Right now she couldn’t think about it. Her frantic heart beat faster and faster when she didn’t find Garran, and knots twisted her belly.
The knots doubled and tripled when she finally spotted him.
He stood on the highest point of the rooftop of the tourist shops at Pier 39, one hand gripping a flagpole. The American flag flapped over his head in the wind and rain as he turned his head, surveying the battlefield. Red and blue emergency lights flashed over his skin.
Ice-cold terror washed over Hannah along with the downpour.
Garran was going to do it. Use the power a third time to send the demons to Underworld.
And die.
“No!” Rocks and small pieces of broken glass bit into Hannah’s sock-covered feet, but she barely noticed it as she bolted toward him.
She screamed as she ran, “Garran, no!”
Wind and rain shoved at Garran, but he maintained his stance on the peak of a building with the light-footed ease of the Elves. The location allowed him to see almost everything happening on what had become a bloody battlefield.
Rage tightened his muscles as he viewed the carnage below. The throb in his chest expanded until he felt it through his entire body.
A part of him had rejoiced that Hannah had brought about the demise of Ceithlenn. The bitch was gone, only a cloud of her essence remaining.
Yet the battle continued.
If he did not stop it now, too many of his people, as well as the rest of the Alliance would die, along with more humans in this world. Only he could save them and stop the massacre.
Part of what the Great Guardian had made clear knocked at the back of his mind, too.
“The humans are
not to kill too many of the Fomorii. It is another act that would upset the balance in Otherworld and Underworld.”
Without another moment’s hesitation, Garran closed his eyes and reached out with his mind using the power the Great Guardian had bestowed upon him.
Rain and wind continued to buffet his body, but it did not interfere with his mental search.
In a flash, images appeared behind his eyelids, red forms that indicated every Fomorii on the battlefield and those still rising from the sea.
Garran’s eyelids snapped open as he did his best to force away thoughts of the impact of his decision.
He was leaving behind his people.
He was leaving behind his daughter.
He was leaving behind Hannah. His love.
But the sacrifice would save countless lives and end the war in this San Francisco Otherworld.
Ignoring the pain and heaviness in his chest, Garran concentrated on all of the beings he needed to vanquish.
Thanks to the Guardian’s gift, he had isolated the Fomorii from those they battled and the demon’s forms had been branded into his mind.
He gathered his strength, the power building within him like a tremendous storm, greater than the one that raged outside.
Silver magic encased his body until he glowed and he mixed the power with his own dark magic. The power thrummed through him until he felt as if he had grown as tall as the Fire Dragon had been.
With one final, determined mental command, the magic burst from him and through the night in a rush of silver.
Triumph surged through him as the silver magic wrapped itself around every Fomorii on the battlefield.
It took only a thought, just a thought.
The demons vanished.
Returned to Underworld.
The battlefield went almost completely silent. The only sounds to be heard were the constant screams of sirens, the pounding rain, and one old witch’s wailings.
Garran had no more time for thoughts or regrets. Pain from the use of the Guardian’s magic lanced through him like a thousand spears.
Every muscle in his body failed him. As he dropped to his knees he knew death came for him, to sweep him away and on to Summerland.
The only peace in Garran’s heart came from the knowledge that the Fomorii were in this world no more and that Ceithlenn had been destroyed.
The Shadows Page 33
