Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

Who were quickly wishing that they’d made different life choices. I guess he could see through those pitted eyes, after all, because he was laying waste. I knew which manlikan he was in by the rhythmic grunts he gave while slamming them into one another and then into an outcropping of dark rocks—over and over and over again.

“You’re the exception, then,” Pritkin yelled. “The learning curve is too steep for most of them. They’re not helping!”

Yeah, I’d noticed. Out of sixty, we had exactly five that were fully functional, including mine, and another three or four who looked like they were at least trying to figure this shit out. But it wasn’t going well; they moved like toddlers still trying to learn to walk, stumbling around, uncoordinated and slow. One grabbed for a demon, missed by a mile, and then just stood there, staring at his flexing hand.

At the moment, they were mostly helping by getting in the enemy’s way.

But that meant that we were barely able to defend the area of the now dissipated shield, and protect the wounded inside. Driving anybody anywhere wasn’t happening. And we were running out of time.

“How long do we have?” I asked Pritkin.

“We don’t! The line could move at any time, and the Old Ones only have enough strength left to do this once. We get there, or this is over!”

“We can’t get there,” Caleb said. “We leave, and everybody dies.”

“It’s stalemate then,” I said, and realized almost before the words left my lips that I was wrong. Because a large group of our attackers had just broken off and were headed for the city. “Shit!”

We watched them go, knowing that there was nothing we could do.

“Mircea,” I said, trying to warn him. “Expect company!”

“This would not be an optimal time,” he told me grimly.

And, suddenly, I had the brief, disorientating image of a battle in a massive corridor, and there were no generals in this fight. Mircea had a sword out and was battling alongside his men, giving me the frantic view from his perspective. And even with vampire speed, it was insane.

I watched him slide under not one, not two, but three different sword thrusts, the wicked blades missing our face by a fraction of an inch, then jump back to his feet, spin and decapitate the last attacker in the row, before being jumped by the other two.

Somebody pulled one of them off, Mircea gutted the other, and then put his fist—literally—through the face of a third who I hadn’t even noticed sneaking up on us. And all of this was

done in a couple of seconds, because vampires haul ass. But then, so do other things, I thought, my vision snapping back to the roiling mass of hate headed his way.

I felt my heart clench. “Mircea! Get out of there!”

“If we get out, we lose,” he snapped back, when Mircea never snapped. “Figure something out!”

“Like what?” I looked around desperately, but there was just no one left to help us. “I can shift you—”

“Don’t you dare! We’re right outside the throne room! Another few minutes—”

“You don’t have another few minutes!”

“Damn you, you sorry bastards! Get up!” Pritkin yelled, but the war mages did not get up.

They were trained for the unexpected, but not like this. Just today, they’d invaded another world, been ambushed, seen their comrades shredded by the hundreds, and been attacked by vicious things that bent the brain to look at and didn’t seem to die no matter what you did. And now they were about to get eaten by some of those same creatures unless they flawlessly mastered a new magic system that they’d never used before and did it immediately.

Pritkin was right; this wasn’t going to work.

“Damn it! Get out of my head!” Caleb yelled.

“What?” I asked him. “I wasn’t in your—”

“Not you. Them!”

I looked up, following his pointing finger, to see that I’d been wrong. Maybe we were going to get a Caedmon ex machina, after all. Because his men were coming in fast and hard to avoid the flailing limbs and clawing hands of our attackers. Brown feathers gleamed, feline bodies twisted this way and that, huge wings banked and swerved and dipped and landed, with only a few casualties along the way.

“Earth magic isn’t my forte,” Caedmon said, talking to Bathrobe Cassie. “But I’m rather good with elemental. Perhaps we can help?”

“Perhaps,” I said, and watched her lips move, echoing the words. “Caleb, you’re the end of the line. Hook them up!”