Eduardo dropped his burden on the ground. The canvas fell open. Inside, thick tangles of leather belts and chains connected a mess of spiked armor plates and chain mail. “Get your glass slippers and fairy wings, ladies.”
Members of Clan Heavy began pulling the tangles apart. Mahon gripped a mess of belts, arranged it on the ground, and stripped. He took a deep breath, and a giant Kodiak bear boiled forth, filling out the belts with his shaggy body. The harness caught him, stretching and sliding into place. A row of armored plates sheathed the bear’s back and hindquarters, flaring down on the sides to guard the vulnerable flanks. Mahon stretched his front limbs and rose up, testing the armor, and dropped back down. On all fours, he was at least a foot taller than me.
All around us werebears, some gray, some brown, and one white, rose up. A wereboar snorted next to a huge moose.
The beasts of Clan Heavy formed an armored line around us, with Mahon in the lead. Eduardo stomped over to his right, a colossal buffalo, almost eight feet tall at the shoulder.
Curran kissed me. “See you there, baby.”
“Try to keep up,” I told him.
His body twisted, sprouting fur. The gray lion shook his mane, winked at me, and took his spot on Mahon’s right.
To the left, the mercs finished hammering long wooden platforms, brought together board by board through the tunnels. They’d had the same idea I did—touching that strip of plowed ground wasn’t a good idea. It just didn’t look right. There was no reason for it to encircle the base, unless something nasty hid in it.
The mages formed into a semicircle near the ward, right between the two closest bunkers. Behind them the witches formed their own line, and then the druids and the volhvs. Three vampires crouched on the ground across each bunker, hugging the dirt.
The mages raised their hands.
“On three,” one of them called. “Remember, low spectrum. And three. Two. Go.”
Power burst from the ten mages, flowing into a single bright current, threaded with flashes of green and yellow. The current smashed into the ward, dancing on its surface.
The druids and the volhvs raised theirs staves. Between the two lines the witches snapped into a rigid pose, their arms outstretched. Magic poured from the volhvs into the witches and out into the mages.
So much magic. The current shook, sliding back and forth against the ward, like caged lightning.
On the left one of the druids went down. Then another. A volhv fell.
Hairline cracks formed in the ward.
The witch on the left screamed.
With the sound of a collapsing building, the ward fractured and broke. Chunks of it floated to the ground, like weightless shards of foot-thick ice, melting into nothing as they fell.
The vampires charged, clearing the fence with laughable ease.
The three lines of magic users collapsed onto the ground.
The bloodsuckers swarmed the bunkers.
Before the first mage rolled to his feet, the vamps emerged, their claws bloody.
On the left a shapeshifter tossed a rock at the strip of plowed ground. A green fiery glow shot from the ground, licking the stone. The rock sparked with white. The glow vanished, leaving the stone, smoking on the ground. Trapped. That was what I thought.
Behind us, the shamans conferred and began to chant in unison, their voices like a beat of a human heart, rhythmic but overlapping. Magic flowed from the shamans and condensed directly in front of us.
The mercs heaved the platforms forward. The boards slid over the plowed ground and froze, suspended three inches above the dirt by the shamans’ magic.
The wereboar on my left roared, snorting and pawing the ground.
The four boars in our view raised their heads at the challenge.
The wereboar lowered his massive head and charged across the makeshift bridge with a fierce screech, hurtling like a cannon ball.
For a split second the Calydonian boars stared in shock, and then as one they gave chase. The group galloped behind the buildings, out of sight.
Mahon started forward. We followed. The bear picked up speed, at first moving slowly, then faster and faster, until I was running full speed in the middle of a stampede.
A boar shot out from behind the concourse. The bear on the left peeled off to intercept. Another boar came from the right, a grizzled scarred male. Eduardo sped into a charge and rammed him head on. The boar and buffalo went down in a tangle of tusks and hooves.
I could barely see. The huge furry backs blocked my view. A snort, and another shapeshifter went down. Again. Again. And again. Mahon and Curran made a sharp left and suddenly I saw the tower, a hundred yards in front of us, and three giant pigs rocketing toward us like shots from a sling.
“Get her to the tower,” Curran roared, and charged toward the pigs. Mahon followed. Our armored barrier was gone. It was just me, Bob, the alphas, and a handful of renders.
We ran. The air turned to fire in my lungs. Blood pounded through my temples.
Eighty yards.
Sixty.
Forty. I pulled Slayer from its sheath.
Above us, within the ward, magic streamed from the tower, unfolding in iridescent feathery smudges.
The plume. We had twenty minutes before the device went active.
To the left, a squat building flew by, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a huge boar rushing at us, mouth open, tusks ready to gore. He looked as big as a house. Vicious eyes glared at me.
I sprinted, squeezing every last drop out of my muscles.
The boar loomed, closer and closer.
Twenty-five yards. The boar was on top of us. We wouldn’t make it.
Jennifer spun toward the pig, baring her teeth. Daniel’s clawed hand closed on her shoulder. He shoved her aside and flung himself at the boar. The werewolf’s claws raked across the pig’s head, gouging the left eye. The boar squealed in mad fury. His tusk caught Daniel in the stomach. The boar shot forward, half-blind, and smashed into the ward. Daniel’s blond head hit the pale glow. The back of his skull exploded, his face still intact, his blue eyes staring straight at us, and then both the werewolf and the boar disintegrated in a flash of blinding white.
Ten yards.
Jennifer screamed a single hoarse howl of pain, ripped straight from her heart.
I sliced Slayer across my forearm, coating the blade with my blood, and rammed the ward, sinking all of my magic into the power word. “Hesaad.” Mine.
Agony ripped through me in a fiery cascade.
The ward shuddered. Veins of pure, intense red shot through the magic barrier. It shattered and the shapeshifters burst through it, smashing into the tower.
I stumbled forward, trying to hold on to reality. Don’t pass out, don’t pass out . . .
Derek ripped the tower’s door off its hinges. A man raised a crossbow, blocking our way. Jennifer lunged at him. The bolt took her in the thigh. She ripped the man’s head off, pulled the bolt out, and bounded inside, where more shooters waited on the stairway.
We climbed the tower, step by step. For the first couple of minutes Jennifer was in front venting her fury, and then she took off into the side corridor raging, and someone else took point. We killed and killed and climbed, and the stairs behind us ran red with blood.