The Power (The Magnificent 12 4)

And yet another arm, and then, something that was no arm.

A head, with skin so white, so pale that the bone could be seen clearly, as if someone had taken a skull and stretched skin as sheer as a white stocking across it.

The hair atop that skull was long and brittle, as if it was not hair but flexible quills. The hair spilled out over the ruins of the volcano and hung in the sea, causing the water to boil.

Then . . . Then Mack saw, and his heart stopped. For at last her eyes . . . He was seeing the Pale Queen, seeing her eyes, her eyes . . . and she could see him!

The eyes were palest blue where they should have been white. The irises were like a snake’s eyes, vertical slits of silver. The pupil was a black fire, a coal edged with red, and it widened in terrible joy as it focused on the eleven of them.

Mack could almost hear her thoughts.

Only eleven! the Pale Queen thought. Only eleven!

Followed by a wicked laugh.

She rose, and the earth and sea split open to allow her. Higher and higher. Until six arms were clear, and a long insect-like body, white and streaked with yellow filth.

She was huge. She was vast. Dinosaurs could have been her lapdogs.

From out of the north two military jets came screaming toward her. They fired missiles.

The missiles exploded in midair. The jets exploded next.

More missiles, fired from jets unseen or from drones, and these, too, exploded, making insignificant red flowers in midair.

Now, she opened wide her mouth. And here at last could be seen indelible colors, for within that gaping maw, behind those tarantula teeth, were the very fires of hell.

There came a sound. But it was no single sound, it was layer upon layer of sound. It was made up of the screams of every poor, unlucky creature who had ever angered the Pale Queen.

It was the sound of agony. It was the sound of terror. It was the sound of madness and the death of joy and the end of the world.

The voice of the Pale Queen screamed, and for a thousand miles in every direction men and women and children heard it and knew that the end had come. They fell to their knees. They lost control of their bowels. They drove their cars off the road and dropped what they were holding and covered their ears in a desperate, pointless attempt to block that awful sound.

There were some—the old, the sick, the easily frightened—who died from that sound alone. Or at least wished they could.

Mack felt his insides turn to water. He, too, fell to his knees. The others, likewise, dropped, or fell on their backs, or curled up in a ball. The only one still upright was Ilya in his wheelchair.

I was a fool, Mack thought. I was a stupid little fool to think I could fight that!

At that moment he hated Grimluk for getting him into this. And he hated the enlightened puissance. He hated the whole world for conspiring somehow to put him here, now, against . . . against an evil so powerful that no one, no force, could possibly defeat her.

“Huh,” Stefan said. “What are you doing here?”

Mack’s lip was quivering, his throat was convulsing, his heart was hammering like it was trying to get the heck out of his chest, his arms were noodles, his legs were weak, but still, he was curious about what could possibly attract Stefan’s attention away from the Pale Queen.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” a voice said. “But it looks like I have really bad timing.”

A vaguely familiar voice.

Mack turned in disbelief. There could only be one explanation.

The final Magnifica.

Camaro Angianelli.

Twenty-seven

MEANWHILE, IN SEDONA