Cloak of Shards, page 23
RALLY!
The spell thundered out of me and swept through the warehouse.
I wasn’t entirely sure what it would do. There had been another Great Elder Word I had learned from Maestro, DESPAIR, and I had seen what it did at Red River. It had overwhelmed Sheriff Byrd and his deputies with despair, paralyzing them, and even Neil had barely fought it off.
As it turns out, RALLY did the opposite.
The magic swept through the warehouse, and I saw the defenders’ fear vanish.
Everyone’s afraid when they go into battle. That’s just normal. The Great Elder Word ripped the fear from the minds of my allies and replaced it with ferocity. The Elves shouted and flung themselves into the fray with renewed vigor, swords flashing and spells blazing. The workers began firing with greater accuracy, pouring bullets into the anthrophages. The impending rout reversed itself, and suddenly the Elves were killing anthrophages faster than even Cortez could summon them.
And I had a moment to reach Russell.
I sprinted through the fight, heedless of everything else. I supposed I could catch a random spell or a stray bullet in the head, but I didn’t care. I vaulted over the conveyor belt and landed next to Russell. Robert Ross was kneeling over him, looking at the wound. Jake Bowyer stood next to us, an M-99 carbine in his hand, a look of intense, almost rapturous focus on his face as he shot down anthrophage after anthrophage. Hell, he was almost as good of a shot as Neil.
I took one look at Russell, and flames filled my mind.
He was going to die.
His face had turned gray, his lips blue. The crystal shard had been at the right angle to pierce his heart. He hadn’t yet died – I could still see blood pumping from the wound – but he had only seconds left.
It had all been for nothing.
Everything I had ever done had been for nothing.
“Nadia, I’m sorry,” said Robert, shouting over the roar of gunfire and the crackle of spells. “He’s…”
I had promised. My mother, as she lay dying in her hospital bed, my father already dead. I had promised to take care of Russell.
No.
He wasn’t dead yet.
There wasn’t time to get him to a hospital or a doctor.
But there was one thing I could do.
Arvalaeon had taught me the regeneration spell, which could heal nearly anything at the cost of a weeks-long coma and hideous nightmares. But it only worked on me. I had never tried to cast it on anyone else. The way the flows of power worked…if I tried to cast it on someone else, it might or might not work, and it might also inflict permanent mental damage on me. Like, homicidal insanity.
I might make Sergio Cortez look sane by comparison.
I didn’t care.
I flexed my fingers as I summoned power, golden fire shining around my hands. The fire coiled up my arms, spreading through my veins like a map of light.
“What are you doing?” said Robert.
Jake kept firing, the expended brass clinking against the floor next to me.
I drew on every bit of strength I had left and cast the regeneration spell.
But instead of directing the power into my own flesh, I grabbed Russell’s shoulders and poured the regenerative force into him.
That…hurt.
That hurt a lot.
I heard someone screaming over the battle.
It was probably me. Wasn’t sure just then.
The spell felt wrong, like I was trying to get a square peg into a round hole with brute force. I felt every muscle in my body clenching, sweat pouring down my face, my fingers digging into Russell’s shoulders. On and on it went, and the shouts and screams of the battle faded from my consciousness, and there was nothing but pain, pain, pain as I forced the spell into Russell.
All at once, I felt something snap.
Like something had torn inside my head.
The spell ended, and I reeled back, blinking.
It had worked. The wound had healed.
But there was something wrong. Russell was still unconscious, his eyes closed, but a red light shone from behind his eyelids, a red glow beneath the skin of his face and neck.
Had I healed him?
Or done something worse?
I tried to stand up, but all the strength drained out of me, and I fell over onto my side and knew nothing more.
###
The crystals unfolded in Sergio Cortez’s mind.
Part of him focused on the battle, on calling up more minions and keeping the Shadow Hunters and the Elven nobles at bay, but the bulk of his attention focused on the unfolding crystals.
In them, he saw…
Infinity.
His mind and his powers expanded in the growth of the crystals, and fresh strength surged through him. The crystals drew the aetheric power from the Shadowlands, fueling their growth, which allowed Cortez to summon even more magical power.
Yes. The time had come. He was ready to draw on the power of two worlds, Earth and Kalvarion both, and save mankind and the Elves.
By coming here, Cortez had thought to dominate Russell Moran and recruit the Worldburner to his side. But now he saw that was unnecessary. Or maybe the crystals showed him a better way. He had probably killed Moran, and Nadia MacCormac had collapsed next to her brother, dead or exhausted.
Either way, she could not stop him from what he was about to do.
No one could stop him.
Cortez concentrated, and the crystalline wings formed behind him. Magic pulsed through them, and he shot upward, rising through the hole he had made in the ceiling. Soon he was flying over the Moran Imports warehouses, and he turned to the northwest. The anthrophages and wraithwolves he had left behind in the warehouse would either slaughter the Elven nobles or the Shadow Hunters, or they wouldn’t.
It was immaterial.
Nothing could stop the crystals now.
Cortez flew towards the Great Gate complex.
The time had come to summon the first tower.
***
Chapter 15: A Royal Command
My mind reeled and jerked, jumping from memory to memory.
In one, I stood by my mother’s hospital bed as she died, promising to take care of Russell.
Then I was sitting naked in a metal chair on the day the Inquisition had caught me, my hands cuffed behind my back, my ankles bound to the chair’s legs. The Lord Inquisitor Arvalaeon walked into the room, the silver fire of the Well of Truth burning in his eyes.
Then I was in New York, battling Rebels and orcish mercenaries on the day of the Sky Hammer Battle. A second after that, I was on Kalvarion, the haunted eyes of the Elven commoners staring at me as they realized that the Archons were dead. Red River burned around me as the Rampton clones charged forward, and Delaxsicoria took her true form, and Riordan, Owen Quell, and I fought the Fusion wraithwolves, and a thousand other dangerous days jumbled through my mind…
A memory snapped into focus, the day I had met Lady Kathromane, and she had told me to trust the knight. I walked next to her on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan behind Morvilind’s mansion. She was tall and wore a simple sleeveless white dress belted around the waist, her black hair streaked with gray, her eyes hidden behind a white blindfold.
“I think Tarlia was right,” said Kathromane. “I think you might have been the one she has been looking for. Which, by definition, means you are the one who can help me.” A faint frown creased her face. “But first, you need to survive. We all need to survive what is about to happen.”
“Nadia.”
It wasn’t Kathromane’s voice. It was far deeper, with a faint Texas twang.
Riordan, that was it. But he was in the UK hunting a Dark Ones cult.
“Nadia.”
My eyes popped open, and I sucked in a breath and sat up so fast my abdominal muscles cramped.
The main warehouse. I was in the main warehouse. The air smelled of blood, cordite, and an odd ozone smell that came when a lot of magic was used in a confined space. I heard men arguing. Riordan knelt over me, concern on his face. I was relieved that he was still alive.
Russell lay next to me, still motionless.
His wound was gone, though his shirt was still wet with blood, and he looked too pale. The pallor intensified the red glow that came through his closed eyes and the veins beneath his skin. I felt a strange arcane aura around him, similar to the one I had sensed around Cortez’s crystal-infested animals.
The regeneration spell had cured his wound, but I don’t know what else it had done to him.
“Nadia,” said Riordan again.
I made myself focus on him. “Where’s Cortez?”
Riordan helped me to stand. I was pleased that I didn’t fall over. Duke Tamirlas and Duke Vashtyr stood in a clump with their knights and entourages, and I got the impression that Tamirlas and Vashtyr were arguing. The warehouse workers stood in another clump, weapons in hand. They were watching me, and I saw the relief go over Jake Bowyer’s face when I got up.
“He grew wings and took off after you passed out,” said Riordan. “We think he’s going to the Great Gate. Lord Tamirlas is taking command. He’s called out all his knights and nobles and the MSPD, and their men-at-arms are converging on the Gate complex.” He drew in a deep breath, fatigue flickering over his expression. “I think we had better help them.”
I knew it was important, but I couldn’t bring myself to care just then.
“Russell?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Riordan.
“We all have some experience with battlefield medicine.” I turned my head and saw Simone with the other Shadow Hunters, Neil waiting with them. “Russell’s pulse and blood pressure are good, and there is no sign of physical trauma. But the glow…”
“It’s the crystals,” I said. “Cortez…infected him somehow, I don’t know. He’s got the same aura as the infested animals now. I’ve got to get him to a doctor, I…”
But what could a doctor do for him? Medical professionals were not trained on removing weird glowing crystals from the bloodstream. I need a wizard more powerful than me or someone with the talent to heal, like Mr. Vander.
Another thought occurred to my tired, reeling mind.
Was Cortez trying to turn Russell into a crystal-infested puppet like the dogs and cats from the shelter? His summoned anthrophages and wraithwolves had been covered with those crystals. If Cortez was turning things into his puppets, then maybe the only way to save Russell was to kill the puppet master.
Well, I was going to do that anyway.
Though my last two fights with Cortez hadn’t gone that well. And this many Elven nobles throwing that much magic at Cortez should have finished him. I don’t even think Cortez had been trying all that hard. He hadn’t been fighting for his life the way I had. I had been fighting to save my husband and my brother, who were my life, and I could have lost them both in the same hour…
My entire mind seemed to shiver like a rope under too much strain, one that was a hair’s breadth from snapping.
No. Pull it together, Nadia.
I could fall apart once Cortez was dead and Russell was safe. Which meant I needed to think this through logically.
“I have to contact the High Queen,” I said. “I’m not sure Duke Tamirlas can take Cortez with the men he has. We need the Wizard’s Legion, maybe some soldiers from the Elven free cities.”
“I already contacted the High Queen,” said Neil.
“I think you are right,” said Simone. “Cortez…all his talk about awakening. Those crystals within him, whatever they are, I believe they are becoming more powerful the more he uses them. I think he gained the ability to fly when we confronted him at the animal shelter. His summoning abilities seemed to grow stronger as he used them more.”
“But if he’s getting stronger and we don’t take him right now,” said Nora, “then he might become too strong for even the High Queen to fight.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my face. Goddamn it, but I was tired. Too much had happened, and I didn’t have time to deal with it or process it. “Let’s talk to Duke Tamirlas. I think he’ll want our help.”
I took one last look at Russell, but there was nothing I could do for him right now except kill Cortez. And if I looked at him for too long, that shivering sensation of something about to break returned to the inside of my head. I drew in a deep breath and headed for the two Dukes.
“Boss.”
I looked to the side and saw Jake Bowyer and a score of warehouse workers approaching. I knew most of their names. Jake had his M-99 cradled in his arms, ready to fire.
This is kind of mean, but I had always thought Jake looked a little pathetic. A wiry, leathery man approaching middle age, a divorced alcoholic who had ended up working at Moran Imports because he had nowhere else to go.
But with that weapon in his hand, he didn’t look pathetic.
He looked…kind of like he had become who he was supposed to be.
And even in the chaos of the battle, his shooting had been exceptional.
“How’s Mr. Moran?” said Jake.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I healed the wound, but I think those glowing crystals got into his blood. I think I’m gonna have to kill that asshole Cortez to help him.”
“You’ve got our help if you want it, boss,” said Jake. “You saved our lives.” The other men murmured agreement. So did the Shadow Hunters.
“I did?” I said, baffled. “How?”
“Well…we were losing, yeah?” Jake shrugged. “I’ve been in a lot of battles, and I can tell when one is going bad. Then you shouted that word, and it was like I heard it inside my head. Suddenly everything just changed. Like everybody had gotten a second wind and wanted to kick some ass.”
I frowned and activated the aurasight spell.
What I saw in their emotional auras disturbed me.
I had used the aurasight spell often enough by now to recognize what a normal human emotional aura should look like. The auras around Jake and the other men had a lot less fear in them than I would have expected.
The Great Elder Word had ripped the fear out of their minds and replaced it with eagerness for the fight.
Was it permanent? Had I forever damaged their minds?
I was a little horrified to realize that I didn’t care, that if it meant saving Russell’s life, I was perfectly willing to do permanent damage to their emotional states.
And I was perfectly willing and capable of doing much, much worse if it meant saving my brother.
Once again, I remembered Riordan’s church. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, that was how the line from the prayer went.
Maybe this was what it really meant. Because I would be willing to do a whole lot of evil if it would help save Russell.
I got my seething thoughts under control. The DESPAIR Great Elder Word wasn’t permanent, and RALLY probably wasn’t either. And from the way that Cortez had been talking about elevating mankind, a whole lot of people other than Russell were going to die if we didn’t stop.
“Okay,” I said. “Most of you guys were former men-at-arms anyway. If Lord Tamirlas is going after Cortez, then we’re all getting called out anyway. Get your weapons and get as much ammo as you can carry, and then we’re going.”
“You heard the boss,” said Jake. “Let’s move, people.”
They hurried to the far wall where the weapons lockers awaited.
“There is a man who was born to be a sergeant,” murmured Simone.
I walked to the Elven nobles, Riordan and the others following me. Duke Tamirlas and Duke Vashtyr were still arguing about something. Victoria waited next to Vashtyr. She had come through the fight intact, though she had lost her jacket, and her white blouse was smudged with soot and a few dark stains that I thought had come from the blood of an anthrophage.
“The matter is immaterial,” said Tamirlas. “We need to deal with the immediate problem.”
“It is hardly immaterial,” said Vashtyr with cold disdain. “A human should not have been able to…”
Both Dukes turned at my approach.
“How did you do that?” demanded Vashtyr.
