The Power (The Magnificent 12 4)

“What? What do you mean?”

“There may be something I can do,” she said. “It is time for all the forces of good to fight, whatever the risks.”

She squeezed his arm and began the swift transition to her true shape. In seconds she was a dragon once more, a turquoise serpent with a fierce face, who slithered away into the sky, heading toward the city.

“Okay, what next?” Captain O’Neill demanded. Somehow a dragon had barely fazed her. It was that kind of day.

“Get hold of the Coast Guard and all the other forces, as well as your own people; tell them to focus on the front edge of the column—that’s where the hole is. Take over the speargun. We need to get to the bridge.”

“You’re running out?”

Dietmar spoke up. “Don’t be a fool! This is Mack of the Magnifica. He does not run!”

Mack was a bit taken aback by that. Even more when Valin said, “He does not run. Nor do we.”

“We have one chance, Captain,” Mack explained. “We get to the bridge and find the other four waiting for us. Or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Or the world is enslaved and all freedom dies.”

Twenty-two

Mack led his tired, frightened forces down the causeway. It looked like retreat. It felt like retreat. The stone causeway was still growing ahead of them, rising from the sea.

An

earthquake rattled them so badly it knocked them all to their knees. Mack could see the tall buildings of the city sway just ever so slightly. He saw the bridge sway even more.

Behind them the roar of gunfire and the furious cries of the Pale Queen’s troops faded slowly. Mack felt terrible guilt at that. Had he just left innocent people to die?

Three heavy military helicopters swooped overhead and circled to land just behind where the SWAT team was still firing the speargun. The Coast Guard cutter was also firing steadily until a bolt of fire hit its deck gun.

The bridge loomed huge now, almost overhead. Mack saw people lining the railing, pointing, aiming cameras at the incredible battle, at the causeway, and down at his little band of Magnifica.

They had reached the just-emerging tip of the stone causeway. Any farther and they’d be walking in water. But now the causeway was doing something strange. Okay, its very existence was strange, but up until now it had just been a sort of stone roadway. Now the tip, the end of it, was piling higher and higher. The earth groaned as the stone grew.

“It’s making a ramp up to the bridge!” Rodrigo said, pointing.

“It’s not for us,” Mack said. “We need to get up there now, ahead of that mob back there.”

“Vargran?” Valin suggested, frowning.

“If we do, we’re powerless again,” Sylvie said. “It is the dilemma of our power: to use it is to lose it. To fail to use it is to die.”

Mack usually appreciated Sylvie’s philosophical musings, but in this case it was just a bit depressing.

“Look!” Jarrah cried. “It’s Xiao!”

Mack squinted and looked close, thinking, I wonder if that’s her? And then realized it was pretty unlikely to be some other turquoise dragon.

She came slithering beneath the bridge and landed beside them.

“Where did you get to?” Charlie asked her.

“Visiting friends and relatives,” Xiao said. Had it been Jarrah, Mack would have thought it was a sarcastic answer. But Xiao wasn’t really the sarcastic sort. Occasionally, but not often.

“We need to get off this causeway and onto the bridge,” Mack said. “Can you help us?”