Ride the Storm (Cassandra Palmer 8)

“Think you ought to get on, too,” the witch said, eyeing me as I stumbled along behind.

“If I do, it’ll drag the ground.”

“Won’t matter as fast as we’ll be going,” she said, hazel eyes flashing. “Now get on!”

I nodded, and started looking for a free spot, only to stop abruptly.

Not because of the crack that suddenly resounded across the battlefield, like a hundred cannons going off. And not because of the wound in the sky, which abruptly widened, drowning the plain in crimson light. Not even because of the ground underneath us, which had begun to undulate constantly now, rippling outward from the arena like water after someone tossed in a stone.

But because of something I couldn’t see, flowing over my skin like a cold wind, raising goose pimples despite the heat. It was like nothing I’d ever felt. Like twining fingers with twenty different hands all at once. Like being pulled into a woven tapestry, where every person was a thread, a color, a knot wound into the others.

I looked up,

to where Ares’ head and shoulders had just appeared in the sky. It was an impossible sight, one that should have had me staring in awe or shivering in fear. But instead, I was shivering in something else.

Something that was part of me but not me, and not the other Pythias I could feel as if they were clustered all around me. But something that joined us because it shared us. The creature Apollo had unwittingly created all those centuries ago, when he shaved off some of his power, had become something else, something more. Something that threaded through all of us, combining our strength into one last stand, with everything it had and everything we had, its partners and its lovers.

And in that moment, I knew Agnes had been wrong when she told Rhea it didn’t feel as we did, that it wasn’t human as we were. And maybe it didn’t and maybe it wasn’t, but it felt something. A genuine, overflowing love and compassion for the world it had adopted, and for the people it had worked through.

All of them.

And suddenly, the sky bloomed with Pythias.

Portals opened everywhere, like the one Gertie had shown me once: blue skies, gray skies, sea and stone and forest, against red. Strands of power reached out, like the lassos the Pythias had put on a boiling column of light to save me. Because one strand couldn’t stop a force of pure energy, but three could.

Or, I thought, staring upward, dozens.

Something tore through the cacophony all around us, through the crash of lightning and the din of battle, through the crackle and hiss of fire meeting rain, through the yells and curses and the rumble of the ground beneath us. Something that sounded very much like a scream. It boomed across the landscape like thunder, shuddered the ground under my feet, sent shivers up my spine.

And then had me ducking back down into the mud, in terror and awe, as great Ares roared, tearing at the leashes that had ensnared him, snapping some, but unable to escape others, looking for all the world like an animal being held down by ropes.

Or no, I realized suddenly. Not held down. Held back. Because the new arrivals were trying to force him back into the gash. While the other Pythias, the ones who had followed me here, the ones who were borrowing what little power I had left, were doing something, too. And then the power shivering through me, through all of us, roared back at the crazed god.

And opened up a massive tornado behind him.

It tore into existence like a great beast, clawing at the sky. It screamed across the horizon, engulfing half the world. It was so powerful that I could feel it, even from here, churning up the metaphysical currents like a hurricane, sending waves of power shuddering through me, over me, around me. Like nothing I’d ever felt before.

“What . . . what . . . is that?” the tiny witch demanded, her eyes huge.

“Return to sender,” I yelled, remembering the storms Gertie had conjured up against me. “They’re trying to send him home!”

And they were trying hard.

Power lashed at him from the portals in the sky. An epic storm pulled at him from behind. Ares roared again, a shudder-inducing sound, and one that was more than that. It was pained.

They’re hurting him, I thought, a tiny flame of hope igniting inside me.

They’re hurting him!

And then the field flooded with fey.

The Svarestri reinforcements I had sent away were back, charging and yelling, like a furious wall descending on us. For a moment, I didn’t understand—what did it matter anymore? What did anything here on the ground matter?

But then I realized: they thought the witches were doing this. They thought they had conjured up the battle in the skies that was hurting their god. And they had decided to do something about it.

The little witch looked at me and I looked at her, but neither of us moved. We were ridiculously outnumbered, with most of the covens having fled the field, and those who remained already busy with battles of their own. We were out of power and out of time, and about to be slaughtered.

And then someone yelled on our other side, from the direction of town. A lot of someones. And before I could turn my head to see who, they were everywhere, surging all around us—another wall of fey. Only these . . .