Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

He nodded. “Us first, but more are arriving soon.” He nudged one thumb over his elbow, then lifted a massive piece of rubble into the air, launching it like a cannonball. The shrikes screeched.

I followed where he pointed, not at all sure how to react to the sight of Royce hurrying to join the fight. A Scion of the Lorica, Royce possessed a curious mix of arcane gifts, including an acceptable talent for throwing fireballs. Okay, maybe he was better than me at it, I’m willing to admit that much.

But a huge fireball, bigger than a beachball, hotter than anything I could muster, soared over our heads, striking the shrikes in their midst and sending them scattering like so many flaming bowling pins.

“Romira,” I breathed as she calmly strode up to us. “Good to see you.”

“Happy to see you too, Dusty,” she said, in a voice that belied the urgency of the situation. She turned to Asher, giving him a sly wink. I definitely caught how it made him miss just a single beat in his spellcasting, the walls and spires of bone he summoned suddenly dissipating into dust.

“Focus,” Carver hissed.

“Sorry,” Asher mumbled. His fists glowed green, and he redoubled his efforts, raising a barrier of bone big enough, certainly sharp enough to utterly crush another dozen of the shrikes.

Yet they wouldn’t stop coming.

Chapter 9

“How long do we have to keep this up?” I shouted at Carver.

He bared his teeth as he threw another disintegration spell. “We’ve been at it too long already.” His eyes cast over us quickly, and within seconds, he’d made his decision. “Asher and Bastion, help me hold off these creatures.” He nodded at each of us as he spoke our names. “Romira. Dustin. Royce. All at once, on my word, focus your minds on fire, and burn the ground these abominations are standing on.”

Royce curled his fingers, both of his hands blooming with pillars of young fire. “Scorch the earth?”

Carver nodded. “Scorch the earth.”

And as my mentor and master commanded, so we followed. I watched as Romira held her arms apart, gathering her power, marveling at the gargantuan orb of fire she was creating. Fucking hell, I couldn’t compete with that. Royce was building two smaller ones that were still far huger than average. Okay, I thought. Okay, Dustin. Just make sure yours is bigger than his.

“Size matters,” I muttered under my breath.

Royce looked over at me. “What?”

“Nothing.”

I could feel my veins fill with liquid fire as I strained harder than ever to call on the flames. The spaces between my fingers, between my toes, even, sizzled with unseen heat, and it felt as though the tips of my hair were sparking with power.

“Now,” Carver shouted.

As one the three of us pushed our magic forth, hurling everything we had, not at the shrikes, but at the ground itself. The forces of all our fireballs met, clashing, at first, then swirling into a vortex of crazed air and angry flame. They struck the earth, roaring, climbing into an inferno large enough to – holy shit, to take out all the shrikes. Like we’d just bombed them. Scorched the earth.

The flames crackled, burning what was left of the shrikes in a pyre that reached to the sky, their remains like kindling. Grimly I thought of the dead motorists, how our fires were surely burning away their bodies as well, a cremation of sorts.

But this was how the Lorica did things. One way or another, they would have to find some way to cover this up, to make the normals think that it was just an accident. A gas explosion, perhaps – one that, against all logic, burned an entire pileup of almost perfectly flattened cars.

Bastion gave a belated whoop of victory. “It’s over,” he said, pointing at where the shrikes’ sacs had initially taken root. “There. Look.”

The membranes and polyps, even the ones that hadn’t birthed shrikes yet, had been burned away completely. Whatever profane magics the Eldest used to seed the ground itself with their slavering minions, arcane fire had been enough to stop them.

“We’ve stopped one assault,” Carver said, his voice deathly cold. “But we do not know how many more are coming.”

Asher sighed, his eyes limned in green flame once more. “All dead. So many of them.”

Bastion deflated, sticking his hands into his coat pockets, saying nothing. A hand found its way to my shoulder, squeezing.

“We couldn’t have stopped this,” Romira said. “We can’t hold anyone responsible for what happened here, Dusty. This is all on the Eldest.”

I resisted the urge to shrug Romira off just then. Who said that I felt any guilt in the matter? Who said that I felt responsible? I said nothing, chewing my lip, my cheeks burning with anger, at her, at myself.

Romira got it completely right, though. Something in me still believed it was my fault. But what Carver said must have been true. The Eldest had found ways to infiltrate our reality without using me as their beacon, and there was no telling where or when they would strike again.