Lily called the heat of the desert to her. There was a lifting, like gravity had given up, and for a moment the cars, the police who were running toward them, and even the rocks and dust on the ground, let go of the earth and swam up for the sky. A boom sounded across the barren land and Lily’s witch wind spiraled up in a column as it threw her into the suddenly freezing-cold air. The helicopter gyrated drunkenly to the side in the updraft, and as it listed off, Lily saw the passengers inside as if in tableau.
The pilot wrestled desperately with the stick and didn’t even see Lily floating level with the helicopter. Simms stared at her in a mixture of horror and triumph. Lily recognized Miller, who was utterly terrified, and couldn’t imagine how he’d ended up in the mix. And behind them all was Carrick. The look of hunger he gave Lily stole the breath from her body. She watched him move easily through the cabin, never taking his eyes off her, open the door, and throw himself out of the falling aircraft with the slithering grace of a snake.
The helicopter careened to the ground, narrowly missing the gas station, while Carrick dropped lightly to his knees and rolled smoothly over a shoulder, hitching his stride and flapping the dust off his jacket as he strode forward toward the small army of police that were streaming toward Rowan.
Alone, in the middle of the road, Rowan stood waiting for them. He looked to make sure Tristan had joined the rest of the coven on the dunes, and then looked up at Lily before launching himself at the oncoming tide.
She Gifted him as he leapt into the fray, throwing back her head and shouting with mad joy. Magelight pulsed out of Rowan’s willstone, phosphorus bright. It stunned the officers closest to him and dropped them to their knees as they clutched at their faces to shield their eyes. He hit the second line before they could draw their weapons and wove through their ranks so quickly his progress was only made visible by the trail of unconscious bodies left to slide to the ground behind him.
The third line had their weapons ready by the time he faced them, standing knee deep in a swath of immobile bodies. They fired as one.
The crack of gunfire halted before it could resound across the sand. Lily took the thousands of little explosions into her as jubilantly as the night sky receives fireworks. She Gifted the rest of her coven with the fresh burst of power, and they streamed down the now-frosty dunes like falling stars.
Police cars continued to arrive at both ends of the street until the road looked like a garish river of flashing lights. The gunfire came randomly now, and although Lily was stealing momentum from the bullets as fast as she could, there were some that were starting to slip past her. She couldn’t risk losing any of her claimed. She needed to make them impervious as she had done against the Hive. It was a little thing. One small difference that wasn’t so bad, after all—at least, not compared to death.
Rowan was the only one who felt the difference when Lily invaded his stone and took it over.
No, Lily. What are you doing?
Making you stronger by making myself stronger, she replied. He balked for just one moment more, and then relented.
Lily used their willstones to transmute energy, and with five more loci of power to add to her three, Lily drank a bigger measure of energy than she ever had before. She flooded the bodies of her claimed with so much power even Rowan forgot anything was wrong.
She became They.
They bellowed and screeched with bloodlust, vaulting over the cars in their way to get at the fresh foes behind. It didn’t matter how many They faced. As one, They were unbeatable. Every line but the last fell before Them. They looked down from their throne of air, purring with pleasure, and saw one among themselves who did not belong. He was a sour note that jangled out of tune in Their symphony.
The bubble of ecstasy that surrounded her shattered, and Lily was just herself again.
Carrick was not sparing his opponents. Each officer he faced he killed. Ice flaked in Lily’s blood.
Lillian, you must rein in Carrick. He is killing innocents.
He feels he must kill to protect you, Lillian answered.
He’s lying. He’s only doing it because he likes it.
Lily watched the back ranks of officer as they set up stronger machines of war—rocket, tanks, and high-caliber assault weapons. Carrick would kill them all, and if Lily didn’t stop her coven, they would have no choice but to kill as well.
The officers were signaling to one another. They planned on unleashing all their hardware at the same time, but coordinating their attack would only make Lily stronger. The more power she gathered, the more berserk it made her and her coven.
Rowan saw the firepower arrayed against them and knew what was coming.
Lily, we have to get out of here, he said. Hundreds will die if we don’t. Worldjump us. We can’t make the crossing east in this world with so much against us.
If we go back to your world it will take us months to travel and gather my army, and in that time Lillian’s army will be wiped out by the Hive. Hundreds of thousands will die, Lily argued.
They needed to get east, and they needed to be there now. She had to at least try to jump them. She sent her spirit out to look.
High in the air, Lily could see the face of the land. She saw the sand on top of the bedrock, like wrinkled skin over bones. She sent her spirit out, and let it sink a little deeper to touch the mind behind the face. The land had a pulse—a unique identity that resolved into a low thumping vibration. There was no other place on earth with this exact rhythm, and Lily knew that if she ever wanted to return here all she had to do was replay that rhythm in her willstone to unlock the path. She called her spirit back into her body again.
Lily looked down to see Simms glaring up at her. Blood streaked down her face from a ghastly head wound, but she had not given up. Simms would never give up, no more than Lily would. Simms had said once that she had been raised just a few miles away from Lily in the town of Beverly. Maybe it was something in the land that made them as pigheaded as they were. Maybe that something was a vibration she could key into.
Lily saw the commanding officer raise an arm and scream the word fire. Desperate, she sent her spirit out, grateful now that the burning desert had left her so dangerously dehydrated. She quickly found the Mist, passed through it rather than coasted along it on the raft, and soared into the overworld.
She looked around at what seemed to be a slippery facsimile of the world, more spirit than location. Lily knew she could travel vast distances in a moment, or it could take an infinity for her to take one step. It was a shadowy landscape with an ever-changing map and, like the worldfoam, it was impossible to traverse without some kind of beacon to guide her spirit through it. She thought of her home. She thought of how the cantankerous water pounded ceaselessly at the stubborn rocks of the shore. She thought of the low whistle of the wind and the quiet thrum of the rocky soil. Her spirit arrived there in a single step.
In spirit, Lily could easily feel the vibration of the land. She wasn’t surprised to learn that she had known it all along. It was in her blood, more than skin deep. She called her spirit back and it rejoined her suspended form in an instant.