“I don’t think any of us want to find out,” Calli said darkly.
The final raptor dropped dead to the ground, but we had little time to celebrate. Again, an ear-splitting shriek tore across the plains. Another pack of raptors was coming.
Except it wasn’t just a single pack, I realized as I looked across the plains. It was many packs. They covered the blackened fields before us, stretching out to the horizon. There were over a hundred of them, and they were charging straight at us. I wouldn’t be able to take them out one by one. They’d tear us apart long before that.
I turned to Bella. “I have an idea. Do you have a flood potion?”
It would take too much of my magic to create a whole flood. There was no water nearby, so I had nothing to draw on but my own magic. It was much easier to redirect a river than it was to create one from scratch.
“I do. Well, it’s more of a puddle than a flood. A big puddle,” she added quickly.
“Big enough to cover all those monsters?”
“If they stand really close together. And don’t move at all.” She gave me an apologetic look.
I glanced at the monster horde. There sure were a lot of them.
“How long do you need them to stand still so the flood can cover them?” I asked Bella.
Bella looked at the field of monsters too. “Fifteen seconds.” Her voice shook a little. “Twenty for maximum coverage.”
I took a deep breath, then told Calli, “Keep driving at them. Right before we hit the horde, swerve off.”
“Only you would try to play chicken with a horde of dinosaurs,” she said in disbelief, but she kept driving straight at the monsters.
The raptors were getting close. I could smell the acidic tang of their breath. Closing my eyes, I reached for their minds. They popped up in my head like tons of tiny lights in a sea of blackness. Taking a long, slow breath, I snatched their minds, locking them inside my siren magic. One by one, I crushed their wills. My magic rippled across the horde, starting fast but then slowing as I met resistance. It hurt like a hammer to the head to hold so many monsters’ minds at once, but I kept pushing on. The monsters were slowing down.
“How are you doing this?” Bella gasped in wonder.
I couldn’t answer. I was putting all my power, all my concentration, into grabbing the monsters’ minds and overriding their will to fight. Nero had once told me that it was easier to control someone or something if you moved with the flow, working with their nature and their instincts rather than fighting against them.
Well, there was no way around that with these raptors. This was an uphill battle, a fight against their very nature. They wanted to kill me and my family. They wanted to swarm us and rip the flesh from our bones. They didn’t want to stop charging at us. Raptors were hyper, agitated monsters. They couldn’t ever sit still. They were always moving, running, twitching, tearing. Making them stop in their tracks was as easy as making it snow in the scorching desert.
“Get ready to throw the potion,” I said through clenched teeth. My head was pounding so hard I thought it would split open.
“Leda, your nose,” Bella said.
I wiped away the blood dripping out of my nose. “No matter.” I kept conquering the monsters’ minds, winking out their willpower. Almost there.
And then, just like that, all the monsters suddenly stopped. They were frozen, suspended in time. The lands were silent, all but the roar of our truck. We were almost upon them, but they didn’t move. They didn’t even blink. They looked like dozens of statues someone had placed on the plains.
But underneath their plaster-like facades, I could feel their minds pushing and clawing at me, trying to break free. If my plan didn’t work, the beasts would explode out of my spell and tear us apart with all that bottled-up angry energy.
“Now!” I shouted.
Bella tossed the potion. The bottle landed in the center of the dinosaur army, shattering. A pool of clear water swelled up beneath the beasts’ feet, slowly spreading outward even as it grew higher.
Calli swerved the truck away.
Turning, swirling, the whirlpool consumed the statuesque raptors. Soon, they were all caught in the whirlpool. I lifted my hand in the air, drawing on the lightning magic in the dark storm clouds above. The clouds swelled, growing heavier, darker, even as the pressure in the air grew thicker.
I unleashed all that magic at once, crashing down bolt after bolt into the whirlpool, electrocuting the raptors. The whirlpool stopped spinning a few seconds later and washed out across the plains.
Calli stopped the truck and we just all stared at the blast radius of my spell. The ground was burnt black and peppered with dead black raptors. Not a single monster had survived.
The crisis over, I slouched down into my seat, exhausted.
Calli drove us onto the old, broken road once more. The truck thumped and shook as the wheels rolled over the dinosaur graveyard.
“Where did you learn to control monsters?” Calli asked me after a few minutes of silence. “That’s not a Legion thing.”
“No, it’s pretty much a me thing.”
“I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“According to the gods, it’s not supposed to be possible. If they found out, they’d probably kill me. Or study me.” I yawned. My head felt so heavy. Using all that magic had drained me down to the bone.
Calli glanced at me. “No one is killing you, kid. Not on my watch. You rest your eyes for a bit.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, closing my eyes, drifting into sleep.
In my dreams, the ground opened up beneath us and swallowed the truck. We fell into the fiery pits of hell, where a dark angel tried to convince us to part with our truck for five dollars. But Calli wouldn’t take anything less than twenty dollars. They eventually settled on ten dollars, but the dark angel had to throw in a pack of Venom beer to sweeten the deal.
The dark angel and I were shaking hands on the deal. His grip was so tight I thought he’d pull my arm off.
I jumped awake. Torn out of the dream, I looked around wildly. My hand moved toward my sword.
I looked down at Calli’s hand on my shoulder. I relaxed. She’d shaken me awake.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Status?”
Calli smirked, then she said in a very no-nonsense voice, “We’ve arrived at the edge of the Doorway to Dusk, Lieutenant. I’ve parked us out of sight so we can approach undetected on foot. With your permission, of course.”
“Cute,” I said, snickering.
Her eyes twinkled at me.
We all climbed out of the truck and began hiking up the rocky path. When we reached the crest of the hill, we looked down, staying low to the ground. In the rocky valley below, a group of prisoners were chained to a cluster of boulders. Mercenaries surrounded them. They were everywhere. And every single one of them was armed to the teeth.
8
Doorway to Dusk
I counted six teams of mercenaries, each team identifiable by their distinct outfits.
With their long, pencil-straight hair, the vampires were certainly living up to their image. Some wore it in high ponytails, others in a whiplike braid; a few wore it down long. There were two teams of vampires, one group dressed in crimson leather bodysuits and one in maroon.
The group of elemental mercenaries wore boots over dark camouflage print pants, and crisscrossing, second-skin tank tops.
The witches were decked out in designer sportswear: tiny shorts and spaghetti straps for the ladies, muscle tanks and surfer shorts for the guys.
Like the shifters I’d fought in Purgatory, the ones here were wearing an even mix of leather and denim.
There was even a group of human mercenaries, all dressed in head-to-toe black.
This—whatever this was—had to be a huge operation, much bigger than a single isolated incident.