Magic Burns

Page 180

 

 

 

He pointed at the bubble. “They are not men. There is no human flesh on their bones.”

 

Where was he going with this?

 

“What happens here, stays here. Today there is no Code. Today you can let go.”

 

They lived the Code. They followed it with fanatical discipline. Obey, perform, account for yourself.

 

Ever diligent. Always in control. Never let go. Curran had promised them the one thing they could never have. One by one their eyes lit amber, then flared blood-red.

 

“Remember: it’s not your job to die for your Pack! It’s your job to make the other bastards die for theirs. Together we kill!”

 

“Kill!”breathed the field.

 

“Win!”

 

“Win!”

 

“Go home!”

 

“Go home!”

 

“Kill! Win! Go home!”

 

“Kill, win, go home! Kill, win, go home!”They chanted it over and over, their voices merging them into a unified avalanche of sound.

 

Another fraction of the dome tumbled to the grass. As one, the shapeshifters stripped off their clothes.

 

Around me people gripped their weapons. I smelled sweat and sun-warmed metal.

 

With the ear-splitting roar of a crumbling ice flat, the gray dome fell apart revealing the sea of Fomorians.

 

They shifted forward a few steps and stood silent, a chaotic mass dappled with green, turquoise, and orange, monstrous like an old painting of hell.

 

“Turn!” Curran roared.

 

Fur burst along the shapeshifter ranks like a fire running down the detonation cord. Beasts and monsters shrugged their shoulders and bit the air. Curran snarled and rose above his troops, an eight-foot-tall bestial nightmare.

 

Behind the Fomorian horde, Morfran stood on a small knoll of garbage. He thrust an enormous, double-edged axe to the sky.

 

The Fomorians bellowed.

 

A hundred roars answered them from thick furry throats: wolves snarled and howled, jackals yipped, hyenas laughed, cats growled, rats screeched, all at once, and through it all, unstoppable and overwhelming, came the lion roar.

 

The Fomorians hesitated, unsure.