On the right, vampires dashed out of the woods, slicing at the other column. The tide of Neig’s soldiers slowed. We’d cut them in half and bled them. But there were too many. So many.
Minutes crept by. The werebears and the vampires chewed the twin prongs of Neig’s vanguard. Blood drenched the grass.
Neig stepped from his chariot. Shit.
I reached out and grabbed Nick’s hand. “Look.”
Neig strode forward, his furry mantle flowing behind him. His body split open, releasing the darkness within. It billowed, solidifying, growing, expanding, building on itself. A black dragon landed on the field, towering over the battle line, so huge my mind refused to believe it was real.
Nick’s mouth hung open.
Neig’s soldiers ran to the sides, scrambling away from the dragon, but the front lines, holding back the maddened yeddimur, had nowhere to go.
The colossal reptile opened his mouth. A torrent of fire hit the knot of writhing yeddimur and his soldiers. They vanished in the blaze, dark shadows swallowed by the white inferno.
Neig doused the field like a colossal flamethrower, burning everything in his path. He’d cleared the blockage. It cost him his yeddimur and a good chunk of his soldiers, but now the field was clear and we were screwed.
Nick clicked his mouth shut. “He’s going to break through. I’ve got to get down there.”
He took off at a run.
Neig’s massive wings opened.
“Retreat!” I yelled at Phillip.
The bagpipes blew a single clear note. Clan Heavy disengaged and broke into a run, galloping toward us. On the other side, the undead streamed for the boundary.
I raised my arms to the sides, gathering the magic to me, molding it into a shield. I had done this before. I held off my father when he tried to rain fire and rocks on the Keep. I couldn’t do anything about Neig’s soldiers—too few and too insignificant magically on their own—but he was huge and brimming with magic. He presented a very defined target. If Neig thought he was about to fry us, he would be in for a surprise.
Neig’s wings beat once, twice, and he took to the air, shooting straight up.
Clan Heavy was running for its life. Faster, I willed. Faster.
Neig dove from the sky, torching the woods to the left, circled, and set the woods to the right on fire.
The undead were all in, but Clan Heavy was slow. Two werebears lagged behind. The fire caught them twenty yards from the boundary. Their shaggy bodies vanished, instantly burned to a crisp. Neig shot upward, picking up speed.
Here’s hoping my magic would be enough.
The dragon swooped down, like a striking hawk, and spat fire. I jerked the shield of magic up. The fire splashed against it. Pressure ground on me. I clenched my teeth and held.
There. How do you like that, you asshole?
Neig climbed higher, turned in midair, and threw himself at my barrier.
Around me people ducked on instinct.
The dragon smashed into my shield. The impact reverberated through my bones. It felt like my whole skeleton snapped. I snarled and held the shield in place. He bounced off it back into the sky, spun around, and hit it again. The shield held.
“Brace yourselves,” my aunt roared.
The field was clear. All of the yeddimur were dead. There was nothing between us and Neig’s warriors except for smoking corpses.
Neig’s army charged.
* * *
• • •
FIRE.
Claws.
Fire.
Fire.
Ramming at full speed.
Fire.
My nose was bleeding. My breath came in ragged gasps, as if I had run a marathon with a hundred-pound weight on my shoulders.
Below me fighting raged. The trenches funneled Neig’s army into a five-hundred-yard killing field, and going around the trenches from the outside wasn’t an option. Neig had set the woods on fire. The trees burned like torches. Soot and smoke filled the air, mixing with blood and heat. The sorcerous ballistae whined, sending charged bolts into the mass of troops, followed by the steady booms of explosions. Andrea had tried to hit Neig, but he was too fast.
Neig’s troops brought up the engines of war and hurled fiery boulders at us. I held off the first three barrages, so they switched targets and aimed at the front of their own line, just outside my protective boundary. The rocks rolled at our people, and I couldn’t stop them and hold off Neig at the same time.
We were trapped together in five hundred yards of hell on earth, and Neig’s war machine ground us into mush. Mages hurled their spells and Neig’s soldiers spat fire back. Witches summoned horrors, pagans evoked their gods, the military pounded the warriors with advanced magic weaponry, and still Neig’s troops kept coming, unstoppable, unending. There were always more.
The bloodbath raged. Screams, howls, and snarls filled the air. The bagpipers had long ago stopped playing. Now only the voice of the battle could be heard. It hung above us like an oppressive din, the song of dying, pain, and fury.
Where the hell was my father?
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but it had to have been hours. The sun had reached its apex. My world had shrunk to Neig and magic. I wanted to be down there, in the slaughter, but Neig saw me and Yu Fong next to me, and we were too tempting a target. All I could do was contain him.
He was tiring. So was I. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.
A werewolf swung into my view, covered in blood and someone’s guts. She grabbed a bucket of water from next to me and drank, spilling it over her monstrous face. “We can’t take much more,” she snarled in Desandra’s voice.
Neig dove at me, unleashing a torrent of fire. I held it back.
“You have to hold,” I told her.
“If you have an ace up your sleeve, now’s the time.”
An undead ran up to me. “We’re taking heavy casualties,” it said in Javier’s voice. “Lt. General Myers is dead. Ghastek states that in another half hour, we will run out of vampires.”
Neig screamed and smashed into my shield. I took a step back, snarled, and shoved the magic back at him.
My father wasn’t coming.
We had to retreat. If there was any hope for anyone surviving, we had to retreat.
Another blast of fire. Damn it, didn’t that fucking dragon ever get tired?
A clump of Neig’s soldiers broke apart below. Curran emerged, bloody, huge in his warrior form, looking like a demon. The shapeshifters rallied around him, but even he was getting worn out.
Roland wasn’t coming. He had betrayed us once again.
“Kate,” Desandra snarled. “I need a decision.”
The vampire hovered by my feet.
To the left, Julie and Derek, both covered in blood, waited.
We’d lost. If we turned back now, at least some people would survive.
I opened my mouth to tell them to retreat.
Magic burst at the far end of the field. The sky above us darkened. Huge rocks plummeted down from the clouds, burning as they fell, and crushed the troops on the field before us.
Oh my God.
The rocks smashed into the ground, cracked open, and glowing swarms of brilliant green bees spilled out, stinging Neig’s warriors. The rocks melted, boiling into a glowing slime. The slime snapped out, grabbing at the remaining troops, and they screamed as their bodies melted. A huge hole opened up in the center of Neig’s forces, and through it, I saw my father.
I forgot to breathe.
He rode a glowing chariot, drawn by mechanical horses. He was young and beautiful, and full of magic so powerful it hurt to look at him. He shone, brilliant and sharp, like a second sunrise. Behind him, an army rose.
My aunt appeared by my side. “Look! This is your real father! This is the brother I haven’t seen for eons. Look, child!”
My father raised his hand. A serpent of pure glowing magic tore out of it, snaking its way through the battlefield, devouring all in its path.
He came. He hadn’t abandoned me. My father had come to fight.
Neig spun in the air. A terrible screech tore out of the dragon’s jaws.
“Your dad is hot!” Desandra said, surprised.
I snapped out of it.
Neig dove at my father.
I spun to Yu Fong. “Do it now.”
Yu Fong pulled the shard of a tooth out of his clothes and carved a vertical line, from as high as he could reach down to the ground. A glowing hole opened in the fabric of the world. Derek grinned, a feral baring of teeth. Julie ducked into the gap and he followed. The glow vanished.