The Keep below us swarmed with shapeshifters. Jim was front and center, Dali next to him.
Jim had shared intelligence from his scouts. My father couldn’t pull the entire Golden Legion together on short notice, but he had put together a force of over two hundred undead, enough to decimate an army five times that size. He’d kept human reserves in Virginia, something none of us knew about, and they had arrived last night. Together with his mages, the Pack scouts estimated that he was fielding almost three thousand combatants.
Jim had called for a complete mobilization. Everyone older than eighteen would fight. Anyone above sixteen could volunteer. He ended up with around six hundred troops. We brought one hundred twenty vampires to the fight. Ghastek had gotten every journeyman with half a hint of talent and put them on the field. He stood next to me now, the skin on his face too tight.
We were outnumbered and outgunned, several times to one.
“Wondering if you shouldn’t have rolled the dice?” I asked.
“No. It’s too late.”
A red light claimed the horizon, glowing like a second sunrise. Wolves fled from the woods and sprinted to the safety of the Keep.
“It begins,” my aunt said in my ear.
If I failed, everything was over.
In the distance trees collapsed as if torn aside by an invisible tornado half a mile wide. Smoke billowed, white and thick, and lightning crackled within it. My father was coming.
“Take and hold,” Erra’s voice whispered.
“Hey, Kate? You’re nobody’s bitch,” Desandra said.
Behind me, one of the navigators drew a tense breath.
The smoke was almost to the boundary. My father’s fury loomed, a magic storm devouring all before it.
I felt every drop of life within the land I claimed. It was enough to make you go mad.
The storm rolled across the land, swallowing the distance in hungry gulps. A hundred yards.
Eighty.
Sixty.
A sound like the roar of a distant waterfall rolled through the land.
Forty.
Take . . .
Twenty.
Below me in the Keep, the shapeshifters stood frozen.
The trees before the boundary collapsed, snapped like toothpicks, and were sucked into the storm.
And hold!
Magic shifted like a mountain that somehow moved. It wasn’t an isolated stream or a burst. The entirety of the magic around us changed somehow, and everyone felt it.
My father’s storm splashed against an invisible boundary and stopped. Smoke billowed. Lightning struck, licking at the boundary with glowing snake tongues. The storm didn’t move.
It pushed.
I held.
The storm melted into nothing.
Ghastek laughed.
I released the magic.
The ground trembled.
Hold.
The budding earthquake died.
A ball of fire appeared in the sky. It hurtled toward us, an enraged inferno of red and yellow, threatening to demolish everything in its path.
Hold.
The impact shook me. The fireball evaporated in midair.
Ghastek grinned at me. “My queen, you have inspired me greatly. I shall now go and do what the Legatus does.”
“Don’t strain anything,” I told him.
“I won’t.”
The vampire picked him up, grasped a metal pole on the side of the tower, and slid down. The other Masters of the Dead followed suit. Pillman lingered.
“Yes?” I asked him.
“I . . .” he faltered.
I let the magic suffuse me. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” he said.
“I’m always afraid,” I told him. “Before every battle. Use the fear. It will make you sharp.”
He nodded, and his vampire took him off the tower.
“You’re starting to scare me,” Desandra said.
“That’s one off the bucket list.” I took a deep breath and yelled at the top of my lungs. “Chernobog! Living darkness, father of monsters, I ask for your aid in battle. I invoke your name. Lend us your power. Those who are afraid, let them pray to you and hear their prayers.”
Okay. The invocation was done.
“He’s coming,” Erra said.
In the distance the trees fell. Five huge shaggy forms burst out of the forest, their massive tusks wrapped in metal. Behind them vampires galloped with their odd jerky gait, followed by human troops.
“Are those fucking mammoths?” Desandra asked.
“Yes.” Enormous, colossal mammoths, bigger than any reconstructions I had seen. Where the hell did my father get mammoths?
Desandra’s eyes lit up. “Kate, get off the tower, so I can get down there. I’ve never killed a mammoth.”
“Christopher?” I asked.
He leaned back. Blood-red wings snapped open from his back.
“Whoa.” Desandra backed away.
Christopher picked me up and leapt off the tower. We glided and turned right. I craned my neck. The ground gave under the leading mammoth, and the massive beast collapsed into a hidden trench. A chorus of eerie cackles filled the air. Jim had put boudas into the trenches.
Christopher’s eyes turned blood-red.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“The battlefield is calling.” His voice wasn’t his own.
“Can you hold on for a little while longer?”
“I’ll try.”
We swung toward a large oak. Christopher plunged down and landed, setting me down next to Barabas and Julie. Barabas looked like he’d jumped out of some D&D book featuring thieves and assassins. He wore leather armor and carried a sharp knife. A dark rag covered the bottom part of his face. Above it, his eyes were blood-red with demonic horizontal pupils. Julie stood holding the reins of our horses. She would be riding a roan mare. We all agreed that Peanut was much too beloved to take into battle. I would be riding Hugh’s mean Friesian. No horse on this battlefield would stand up to him.