Wow. I had no idea Mona felt so strongly.
“I can’t let you do this,” I told her. “There’s more at stake than you realize.”
Dashiell stepped forward and blocked my path. “I think you’ll find there’s more at stake than you realize.”
He didn’t fire a warning shot. The druid simply raised his hands and the earth trembled beneath our feet. Trees tore themselves from the ground by their roots and marched toward us.
“Imagine what I can do once the ritual is complete.”
The other knights and Callan fanned out behind me and took on the trees while I tried to persuade the druid to stop the madness.
“This isn’t the way,” I insisted. As much as I understood the desire to overthrow the vampires, this wasn’t the right path. This druid craved power the way vampires craved blood.
I had to get that stone no matter what it took.
A bleating sound reached my ears and I froze. I turned to the side to see my pygmy goat tethered to a tree.
“Herman?” The flare of fear mixed with anger quickly morphed into a burning rage. “You kidnapped my goat?”
“Goats make excellent sacrifices,” Dashiell said matter-of-factly.
I ignored him and pinned Mona with a death stare. “You went into my home without permission and took my goat?”
Sacrificing herself was one thing. Sacrificing my goat crossed a line.
“You can thank your big-eared cat for these marks.” Mona held up an arm with bright red streaks. “He didn’t appreciate my unannounced entrance.”
Sandy had tried to defend the fort. Bless that temperamental fennec fox.
“A family could live for a week on that goat,” Mona said. “You’ve been selfish to keep it as a pet.”
“So it’s okay to serve up a goat in the name of survival, but you hate vampires for surviving on human blood. Anybody else see the hypocrisy there?” I looked left to right. “No? Just me?”
Mona lifted her chin. “Do what you must, Dashiell.”
“Mona, it won’t do any good to hurt yourself. The ritual isn’t effective unless they kill you. Suicide doesn’t count.”
“Why not? Isn’t that even more of a sacrifice?”
“I hate to tell you this but I’m not even sure a human sacrifice will do anything. He’s experimenting and he’s using you to do it. Your death could be for naught.”
“I don’t care.” Mona jerked her head to the side. “Why are you helping them? You’re not a vampire.”
I wanted so badly to explain my intentions to her, but I couldn’t. She just had to trust me.
Kami stormed past me, moving too swiftly for Dashiell to stop her. She ripped the ropes from Mona and set her free.
Mona spat. “Stupid woman.” She folded her arms. “I’m not leaving.”
Kami threw the stout woman over her shoulder and started walking. Mona pounded on her back, demanding to be set free.
The ground shook again and a blast of air knocked Kami to the side. Mona fell to the ground and crawled out of reach. Dashiell hit her again with another gust of wind. She blew across the clearing and slammed into the trunk of a walking tree.
Dashiell turned and launched a ball of fire at the pyre setting it aflame. Everything happened so fast, I barely had time to register it, let alone react. As the flames licked the stalks of wood, Mona leaped onto the pyre. Her screams pierced my ears as well as my heart. I wanted to cry, to scream and wail, but no sound came to my throat. No tears filled my eyes. Mona had made her choice and it had been the wrong one.
A delayed scream tore from my throat. “No!”
“A noble sacrifice.”
I whirled around to face Dashiell. “I think you mean stupid.”
Dashiell extended a hand. “You’re a smart and talented witch. Join me. There’s still time to see sense.”
“Sense boarded the station to LocoLand when you murdered your colleague and stole the stone.”
Dashiell peered at me. “Surely you understand why that was necessary. You see what’s at stake.”
“I do understand,” I said quietly. “Which is why I can’t let you have the stone.” I gathered my magic and compressed a piece of it into a small but lethal ball and let it go.
Dashiell disappeared and the magic smashed into the pyre instead, sending the flames even higher. The druid was wrapping himself in a blanket of air again and hiding from view the way he’d done on the rooftop.
I spun around and concentrated to see whether I could identify him by the intensity of the magic, but my detector was being thrown off by the stone.
“Where is he?” Callan demanded, swiveling left to right.
“Hiding, like a coward,” Kami said.
I observed Briar as she untethered Herman and smacked his bottom to send him to safety. I hoped someone survived this to drive him home. Hell, I hoped I survived so he had a home to go to. If not, he’d end up in someone’s stew.
I couldn’t die.
Briar stilled. “What’s that sound?”
Kami strained to listen. “I don’t hear it.”
“You will.”
My veins turned to ice as I heard it. This time I knew what it reminded me of—the bending of metal. Instinctively I glanced at the horizon.
A creak and a groan reverberated. This time the sound was so loud that it shook the ground. Kami’s eyes widened as she felt the shockwaves.
The ground trembled again and my heart skipped a beat.
“A horde of dragons?” Briar whispered.
“No.”
Her brow furrowed. “Then why do you look like you need to change your underpants?”
“Because this is going to be worse.” Much worse.
“Maybe you should reconsider that army,” Kami told Callan.
A flash of metal appeared on the horizon. This metal wasn’t melting.
It was walking.
Towering limbs—limbs made of towers rather than simply being tall—pounded the ground. At first I thought Dashiell had created metal monsters from Damascus steel, but it seemed he hadn’t had time to master that particular skill. He was pulling metal from nearby buildings and reassembling them as monsters to do his bidding.
“If we knock them down, they’re going to do damage,” Kami said.