Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“It’s disorienting,” I warned them. “Don’t get lost in the sensations. Just focus on—” the shield above us cracked down the middle “Shit!”

“Do it!” Pritkin yelled, and grabbed my hand.

I didn’t know if that was to strengthen the connection between us, or just for luck. And I didn’t have time to ask. I did it.

A stream of brilliant golden light shot out of me, branching off like lightning, and spearing each of the mages with Pritkin’s elemental magic. Their eyes flew wide, their mouths opened in little screams or just gaped like fish, and their bodies shuddered all over. And then abruptly went still when I threw the stream wide, sending their magic sprawling out over the battlefield, looking for places to land.

I wasn’t sure whether they found them or not. I wasn’t sure of anything. Because I was suddenly flying, too.

The disorientation of the first time was back, only worse because I was simultaneously watching the shield cave in from above and below. Above was better, I thought, watching my body scream. Above was way better.

And then I picked up a creature with ten arms and threw it as far as I could.

I could throw it pretty far, as it turned out. I saw it disappear over the horizon, and then I was jumped by maybe three other Ancient Horrors. I didn’t know what any of them were—and I didn’t care. I started ripping things off them, legs, arms, whatever I could find, and then using the stumps to beat anything else in the vicinity.

Acid-like blood spewed out everywhere, coating me, but acid doesn’t do a lot to solid rock, as it turns out. Another creature tried to slash at me with foot long claws, but instead got them torn up by the granite-like outer layer of my chest. And even if they’d gotten through, I didn’t think it would have mattered.

Manlikans don’t have hearts to rip out.

Unlike humans, I thought, kicking an Ancient Horror away from the mages, right before it tore into a bunch of the wounded. I grabbed two others who were trying to do likewise, and slammed their heads together. And discovered that Mircea’s trick worked pretty well, even on demons.

Black blood rained down, the medics scrambled to cover their patients, and I looked around for Pritkin, wondering if he was on the field or still down in the fortress with the others. And then I spotted a manlikan that simply had to be him: a craggy old specimen with a mossy hide and two gnarled trees on its temples, like twisted horns. It looked like the green Man straight out of Celtic mythology.

And, needless to say, it was kicking ass.

So were several smaller varieties, one with a hut perched like a jaunty hat on one side of its head and another with a gaping hole of a cave where its mouth should be—which suddenly vomited up a huge mass of bats in a silent scream. I saw even an Ancient Horror pause and look at it, like what the fuck? But most of the other colossi were remained quiescent, either standing still or lying where they’d fallen, as if no one was home. And the rest . . .

Well, they were moving, just not always in the right direction.

One wandered past me, dragging a tree the size of a full-grown sequoia, which I guessed it had been using as a club. But it wasn’t using it now. It wasn’t doing anything now, except wandering drunkenly around.

And without the rest of our group, we couldn’t make the plan work.

“What’s happening?” I asked Pritkin mentally. “What’s wrong with them?”

But all I got back was a slight scream and then a bunch of mental cursing. “How are you in my head? How?”

“Mircea has mental abilities.”

“Is that what this is?” Caleb asked. He sounded relieved. “I thought I was losing it. I keep hearing voices.”

“What kind of voices?” I asked, because I wasn’t hearing anybody. Which was weird, because the magical stream that Pritkin and I were channeling was the thread that everybody else was supposed to grab onto.

Only they didn’t seem to be grabbing.

“It’s too strange for them!” Pritkin yelled, even though he didn’t need to. He was in my head. “The only ones managing anything are the few who are part fey. But we don’t have enough of them!”

“I’m managing,” Caleb pointed out. “And I’m not fey.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, ripping the head off of . . . something. It was disgusting, and that was before it started spewing black tar out of its neck hole.

“Pretty sure,” Caleb said dryly. And, finally, I spotted him. I’d thought he was controlling one of the smaller creatures, but I should have known better. Caleb’s motto was “Go big or go home,” so of course, he’d snatched the largest ride he could find.

In this case, that meant a colossus half again taller than anything else on the field, and looking like it must have been one of the early ones the Svarestri had made. You could tell a difference between those and the ones they’d hastily thrown together after Jonathan’s warning. The latter were fairly basic, with no effort made to give them personalities or to differentiate one from another.

Not so here.

Caleb’s ride was cut through with veins of orange-yellow quartz, not just on the head but across the entire body, making it look like it had tiger stripes. They gleamed in the light of the setting sun, boiling with color, and turning him into a beacon. Which probably explained why he’d just been jumped by half a dozen hell beasts.