She tried to suppress a gasp of pain, but Nikos felt it like a slug to the gut. You’ll pay for that, he promised Cang.
And then he forced himself to shut out the world, and focus entirely on that ward down deep in the rubble.
Nikos found the ward. He waited, and sensed the ward easing for him—that was Mikhail’s effort.
He imagined a rootlet working through the jumble of stone and moss and bits of cement . . . ah.
There it was.
Easy, easy. His tendril branched, winding rootlets around the oracle stone, then weaving together into the mental construct of a sling. When he was fairly certain it was steady, he attempted a poke.
The stone moved.
Far away, he was aware of his body, and the gritty cement under his knees. The drip of sweat down his face. He shut those out, and firmed his focus. Then, a gentle nudge at a time, he began to bring the stone upward, slow and steady, as Mikhail held an opening in his protective ward.
Where was Joey’s crew? Coming, he heard a whisper on the mental plane—and he almost lost the oracle stone.
Concentrate!
Slowly it ascended. As it neared the surface, he braced himself inwardly. While the stone was halfway between dimensions, distance didn’t matter. Nikos was not going to send the stone to Mikhail, who was three feet away. Of course Cang would strike against Mikhail first. Instead, Nikos would send the stone to Joey, wherever he was, because Joey the nine-tail fox could dive between dimensions faster than anyone.
Nikos began to bring his hands close—was that the sound of footsteps on the breeze—
Then Cang said something, and everything happened at once.
First was Joey, on the mythic plane, I’m here!
Nikos braced himself and slung the oracle stone toward Joey.
At that same moment, Cang shifted to attack, and Jen launched herself protectively toward Nikos. Keraunos shifted and lunged after her.
The stone was far too fast to track by the naked eye, but Nikos was still tethered to it. To his horror, he followed helplessly as it struck Jen. But because it was still only partly in this dimension, it went right through her a heartbeat before Keraunos’s jaws closed on her wrist. Jen’s head arched back as lightning played bluish-white over her body, then she flopped lifelessly to the ground.
Joey leaped over her and attacked Keraunos, using his dimension-shifting ability to blur. The blue wolf twisted in mid-air to avoid him, snarling, and ran, Joey in hot pursuit.
In terror, Nikos lost his grip on the oracle stone entirely. As he moved toward Jen, the oracle stone appeared in this dimension, gleaming like a pearl with luminous inner light. Nikos launched himself toward Jen, his heightened senses aware of the oracle stone hovering in the air ten feet away, vibrating. Cang shifted his attack and lunged to capture it, but it dropped toward the ground an instant before his dragon jaw snapped the air where it had been. The ground glowed red, then dimmed as the oracle stone snapped back down to its ward underground.
Nikos reached Jen as Joey’s shifters attacked Cang’s gang around him. Nikos laid his head on Jen’s chest, trying frantically to find a heartbeat, as Keraunos came around for another try, this time at him. But Joey was right there, all nine of his tails glistening eerily. That shimmer gave the assassin pause—he knew that Joey could drag him into another dimension and leave him. He twisted mid-air, landed, and backed up, snarling.
Cang turned toward Nikos.
Then a small shape arrowed out of the sky and scored a hit across Cang’s face. He spun around, swatting with a dragon claw, but Professor Ann’s swift was too fast, and six or seven other shifters all ringed Nikos, ready to defend him. Cang shot skyward as Mikhail dove on the attack. Nikos was vaguely aware of them all as he tried to find Jen’s heartbeat.
There was none.
He shifted to his unicorn. Nikos the man was pulled in so many directions: love, duty, promises, plans. His unicorn had a single purpose: healing.
He bowed his head and touched his horn gently to Jen’s forehead.
Sorrow vanished in a tidal wave of wordless joy—hope. What he sensed surprised him.
Now he understood why that hellhound with the super-sensitive nose kept sniffing at Jen: She was not a shifter, but she wasn’t completely human. Deep down in her ancestral DNA he sensed a family trait for shifters. And not any ordinary animal shifter. With a rush of joy and wonder, he identified that glimmering image: a sunbird, better known as the golden phoenix. , They lived long lives, as did many mythic shifters. And when badly hurt, sunbirds had an innate power to regenerate themselves.
But that trait had been dormant for generations.
How can I reach her? Nikos’s human self demanded.
The unicorn responded in image, not words: she was very badly hurt, her strength at nil. They could not even begin without first giving her half their own shifter strength.