How could he kill Simralin?
Then, eyes still scanning the faces of the Elves being marched toward them, he saw Praxia, too. For just a second, he thought he must be imagining it. But no, there she was—Praxia—her small, dark pixie-face unmistakable amid the other, lighter-complexioned faces.
But Praxia was . . .
He had buried her . . .
Then he noticed that there were no feeders among the prisoners, not one dark shape in all that hapless mass of potential victims.
He caught his breath. It was a trick.
“Fire!” he ordered at once. He levered his black staff and roared in fury and fresh shock. “Now! Fire!”
The defenders pulled the triggers on their automatic weapons and the Elven wall collapsed and then disappeared in smoke, gone in an instant, vanished completely. An illusion, as Logan had realized just in time—a trick to make the defenders think the Elves were hostages when in fact they were not. It had almost worked. Logan had almost been taken in by it. His feelings for Simralin had very nearly persuaded him.
That old man, he thought suddenly. That old man had found him out and used what he had learned—maybe from his spies, maybe from Kirisin—against him. He could still see the other’s cunning face, the knowing smile, the certainty that he owned an eight-year-old boy whose parents and brother and sister he had just killed.
Or maybe this wasn’t about him at all, but about Kirisin. Maybe the use of Simralin was an effort to flush him out and cause him to expose himself while at the same time overrunning the defenders of the bridge. The old man would still covet the boy’s power over the Elves, and would not hesitate to use his sister against him.
Logan felt a rush of hatred so intense that for a moment it threatened to overwhelm him completely.
The foremost ranks of once-men had reached the barricades and taken cover behind them. More were surging out of the flats, hundreds of them, thousands, screaming and brandishing their weapons, swarms of feeders rushing after. Logan’s defenders were firing into them, but the effect was negligible. The once-men had secured a foothold, and they wouldn’t stop now until they had it all, no matter how many were killed.
The bridge was lost.
Logan steadied, his hatred for the demon put aside. “Everyone get off!” he called out, and motioned for the defenders to fall back.
He stood his ground as they did so, using the black staff’s magic to create a wall of bright flames between themselves and the once-men, holding their attackers at bay. The bridge was cleared in seconds, and when it was, he wheeled away, as well, racing for the far bank. As he leapt onto solid ground once more, he gave Helen the signal she was waiting for.
“Blow the bridge!” she shouted, just as he reached the command station.
The man designated to do so threw the detonator switch.
Nothing happened.
FIXIT HAD BEEN CROUCHED DOWN behind the command station through the entirety of the enemy attack, cringing at every assault, barely able to look at what was happening. It wasn’t until he saw the defenders streaming back off the bridge and heard Logan Tom give the order to ignite the explosives that he lifted his head for a look. He saw Cranston, who was the senior explosives expert, throw the switch, stare at it in disbelief when it failed to function, and then throw it again and again in a desperate attempt to get it to work.
But Fixit already knew the problem. He had warned them about it when he had watched them wiring the charges the day before, sent to see if there was something he could do to help by Logan. Nobody wanted his help; nobody cared to listen. He was a fourteen-year-old boy; what did he know?
In fact, he did know something. The detonator was wired to a central relay, and the relay sent a signal to the various charges. If the relay failed to function, the charges would not ignite. No one thought that would happen. The relay was solar-powered and had a backup battery. But it still relied on the wires from the detonator to trigger its internal mechanisms, and the wires, though carefully protected, were still suspect. Too many things could happen to break their connection to the relay. Use Redline wireless, he had argued. Use Bluetooth Extreme. Use something that wasn’t hardwired. It was more dependable, less subject to malfunctions than the more rudimentary system they were using might invite.