Granted, Harry would have used fire. And I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have pulled out a wand and prepared the One-Woman Rave spell I’d developed. And I’m absolutely certain that he wouldn’t have taken a moment to start up DJ Molly C’s Boom Box spell, which would play C& C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” loud enough to be heard in Anchorage.
But I did. I wanted loud noise that was totally out of place and as weird as possible to whatever supernatural critters were riding around inside the fishermen—and the creatures of the supernatural world aren’t exactly pop-culture mavens. Plus, it was dance music from the ’90s. Nobody thinks that stuff is normal.
Heavy bass and lead power chords started thumping against the windows. I turned loose the One-Woman Rave, and the air around me filled with a light-and-pyrotechnics show that would make Burning Man look like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. My heart started pounding in fear and excitement and something disturbingly like lust as I crossed the last few feet to the cathedral’s entrance.
And then, just as the song screamed, “Everybody dance now!” I leaned back, drew the power of Winter into my body, and kicked the big double doors off their hinges as if they’d been made of balsa and Scotch tape.
At which point I learned the real reason Harry keeps doing that.
It. Is. Awesome.
“Give me the music!” I screamed with the song, and walked straight in. I might have had some hip and shoulder action going in time with the beat.
Look, I hadn’t been out dancing in a while, okay?
I crossed the little vestibule in a couple of steps and passed into the sanctuary in a thundercloud of rave lights and showers of multicolored sparks, music shaking the air. I got a good look at the fishermen as I came in.
All twenty of them were there, scattered around the sanctuary, though three, including the captain, were up on the altar, along with half a dozen Miksani children, aged about four through ten. Their wrists were bound together with one long length of rope, which cut cruelly into their wrists.
Everyone in the cathedral lifted a hand to shield their eyes as I came in. The cultists’ mouths gaped open and tendrils emerged to begin thrashing the air.
I felt the surge of power coming, an ugly, greasy pressure in the air, and as it gathered, physical darkness swirled and surged around the fishermen. And then, like a stream of fouled water, it surged from each of the cultists to the captain, where his tentacles gathered it, whipping and writhing, and sent the enormous collective surge of negative energy flying directly at me.
It came fast, too fast to dodge, too intense to be stopped by any magic I could manage, and struck my solar plexus like an enormous, deadly spear.
Or, at least, that’s what it looked like to them. I was actually about ten feet to the left, hidden behind my best veil while maintaining a glamour of my image. The bolt struck my little illusion, and the conflict of energies, combined with the difficulty of running the Rave and the Boom Box, made it too much to hold together. The image popped like a soap bubble, and the dark bolt tore through the flooring and foundation in the vestibule like a backhoe.
The captain froze for a second, unsure of what had just happened. I had no such moment of hesitation. I was already rushing down the leftmost aisle behind my veil, plastic-handled knife in hand. I reached the first of the tentacle-mouthed fishermen and, with a single flick, cut his throat.
I could barely hear the creature’s sudden, high-pitched scream of pain over the thunder of the Boom Box, and I’d known it was coming. It didn’t register on the other fishermen in the chaos, and I didn’t slow down.
I killed three of them with my knife before one of the cultists saw what was happening and screamed, pointing.
Number four went down when he turned his head to look, but he writhed as he went down and I was splashed with blood.
Magically speaking, blood is significant in all kinds of ways. It carries a charge of magical energy inside it, for example, and can be used to direct a spell at a specific person from hundreds or thousands of miles away. This blood was stronger than mortal stuff and carried a heavier charge. The power in it flared into sparks as the blood hit my veil, and then it ripped a huge hole in it, and I was suddenly visible to the entire cult.
Another bolt of energy came my way, this one tossed by an individual cultist. It lacked the landscape-rearranging power of the first bolt, and I was lucky it did. I threw up a shield of enough strength to barely deflect it, and dove to the floor as others came winging my way, chewing chunks the size of my fist from the wall behind me.
From the floor I couldn’t see much—but the cultists were howling and they had to be coming closer, sending their nearest members to rush me while the others kept me pinned down with their blasts of dark power. If I didn’t move, and fast, I would be swarmed. Winter Queen or not, that wouldn’t end well for me.
I let go of the remnants of the veil, crystallized a new spell in my mind, and gave it life. Then I hopped up and ran for the exit.
I also hopped up and ran down the nearest aisle of pews. I also hopped up and sprinted toward the altar. I also hopped up and started vaulting the pews diagonally, heading for the nearest fisherman. I also hopped up and backed up one step at a time, conjuring what looked like a heavy energy shield in front of me. I also hopped up and hurled a blast of deep blue energy at the captain. I also hopped up and …
Look, you get the idea: Thirteen Mollies started running everywhere.
Blasts of dark power ripped apart pews and tore holes in the walls and shattered panes of stained glass. Some of them struck home, disintegrating the images, but the others continued to move and duck and evade.
Meanwhile, I stayed low and scramble-crawled twenty feet into the concealment of the confessional. I had done what I meant to do: entirely occupy the cult’s attention.
Carlos made his entrance in perfect silence. The wall behind the altar was made of dark wood, but it just … fell apart into freaking grains of matter in an oval six feet high and three across, revealing the young Warden on the other side.
Without ceremony, Carlos pointed at a cultist, muttered a word, and a beam of pale green light struck it in the back. The man-creature simply dissolved into a slurry of water and what looked like powdered charcoal. The young Warden didn’t miss a beat. Before the first cultist was done falling to the floor, he drew his sword and ran it smoothly into the nape of another cultist’s neck. The creature arched for a second and then dropped like a stone, his mouth moving in frantic, silent screaming motions.
The captain whirled on Carlos and unleashed a wave of dark energy the size of a riding lawn mower. The Warden dropped his sword, slid his back foot along the floor, and tensed into a crouch. His arms swept up in smooth, graceful symmetry and intercepted the energy, gathering it like some kind of enormous soap bubble.
It was a water-magic spell, Carlos’s specialty. He rolled his arms in a wide circle, took a pair of pirouetting steps, and swept his arms out toward the captain, sending the dark spell roaring back at him. It hit the captain like a small truck, hurtling him off the stage and halfway down the sanctuary.
“Come on, kids,” Carlos shouted. He recovered his sword and almost contemptuously deflected an incoming blast of cultist magic with it. “I’m taking you home!”
The little Miksani didn’t have to be told twice. They got up, the larger children helping the smaller ones, and began hurrying awkwardly toward the escape route Carlos had created on the way in. He shielded them, backing step by deliberate step, calling up a shield of energy with his left hand, intercepting blasts of energy with it, or swatting them wide with his Warden’s blade.