Momentarily free of backlash, Vai slipped an ice lens out of the neck of his jacket. In the Antilles the ice lens had allowed him to focus and amplify his weakened magic. His magic was not weak here. Its hammer slammed down so hard that my chin hit the dirt even though I was ready for it. The eru was flung to earth and the coach creaked, groaning. Even the coachman ducked his head.
Everyone was down, flattened, stunned. Everyone except Andevai. He was still standing. Even in torn, dirty, rumpled clothes, he looked magnificent.
The mansa was unconscious, scarcely breathing, a smoky odor swirling around his body. He could not help us. Still staggered by the sledgehammer blow, I pushed up, stumbled sideways, then forward, supporting myself on the tip of my sword.
“Catherine! Strike now!” I heard how weak Vai was by the hoarseness that burred his voice. He collapsed to one knee and barely caught himself on a hand. As Drake pushed himself up Vai lunged, grabbed Drake’s ankle, and jerked the fire mage to a halt.
Drake laughed as he tugged his leg out of Vai’s weakened grip. “I have played you all very well, have I not? For I have absorbed your strongest attack and still stand. You have nothing left.”
Every cold mage lit with the backlash of Drake’s fire magic. Horribly, so did the eru, for her magic, too, was caught in the funnel. She, too, became a conduit for his power. Only the coach and four remained impervious, and I breathed a prayer of thanks to the Blessed Tanit that I had insisted Bee remain inside.
Wild, bright fire flashed up from the wings and front of the House. The heat built like a furnace. So had Bee dreamed: Sheets of fire from which rose screams of fear and pain.
“Look for the glimmer of a blade, as I taught you,” Drake shouted to his fire mages.
Fire magic spilled down the length of my sword, seeking a path into the spirit world that the cold steel could not give it, seeking me. I tossed it away before the sparks burned me. The moment it left my hand, it became visible to the soldiers.
A rifle went off, and a bullet ricocheted off the drive next to my feet. Another shot spat on the ground by my heels. A third shot sprayed gravel onto the sword. I jumped away from the sword, still in my shadows. Sheets of fire crackled up the walls of the House. One catch-fire, then another, and a third and a fourth and a fifth cried in agony as the backlash overwhelmed them. Vai and the eru had become rivers of light, shedding backlash in flood tides into the spirit world.
Drake soaked up the power and let it roar. Walls crashed in along the back of the House.
Another bullet hit close to my feet, the gravel it kicked up stinging my ankle. If I picked up my sword, Drake would have me. If I waited, all the cold mages and those trapped in the interior courtyard would die. The soldiers began to march toward the coach, firing at will. The coachman looked at me, for although he could not be hurt, there was likewise nothing he could do.
I raced back, flung open the door, and leaped into the interior of the coach.
Bee said, “Blessed Tanit, Cat! What terrible thing is happening?”
“Close your eyes!”
I opened the door into the spirit world and jumped out.
Night shrouded the world, the air as frozen as the icy water in which my sire had tried to drown me. But I was not daunted.
Holding on to the latch so I did not flounder away from the coach, I called. “Sire! Father! You are bound to me as kin. Come to my aid!”
A breath as of wings fluttered so close by my face that I flinched, but I did not retreat. Fingers of ice tightened over my arm, their touch engulfing me under the weight of an ice sheet. His three eyes gleamed in the darkness, and the third was a pulsing knot of blood.
“Beware of what you ask for, little cat. Do you understand there will be a price?”
“Yes. And I will pay it. Only me. No one else.”
“Taken. What do you want?”
“Of your own self and will, you can only walk into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night. But I am a spiritwalker. You can cross with me right now.”
“At last you understand.”
He laughed, and he sprang like a cat. He flowed like a viper. He struck like a raptor, the beat of unseen wings carrying me back through the coach. Bee sat as stiff as if she were encased in ice, but I had no time. I tumbled past her and to earth.
My sire was already standing on the gravel drive, as unruffled as you please. In his severe black jacket and trousers, and with his coldly handsome face, he looked like a man you never ever wanted to cross swords with because he would rather wait until you turned around and then stab you in back so he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of seeing the light drain out of your eyes.
“Intriguing,” he said. “The cold mages pull heat and energy from the spirit world and lock it up in this world, thus stealing it from us, but this red-haired man is dispersing it through their bodies back into my realm. I would never have seen any of this if you had not escorted me through. I shall have to think about what this means.”
“Father! He’s going to kill all those people! Save them. Save Vai! I beg you.”
“You are a slave to the chains that bind you to others. That makes you weak.” His smile cut.
I licked a spot of blood off my lip. “No, it makes me strong.”