My nose was bleeding. My breath came in ragged gasps, as if I had run a marathon with a hundred-pound weight on my shoulders.
Below me fighting raged. The trenches funneled Neig’s army into a five-hundred-yard killing field, and going around the trenches from the outside wasn’t an option. Neig had set the woods on fire. The trees burned like torches. Soot and smoke filled the air, mixing with blood and heat. The sorcerous ballistae whined, sending charged bolts into the mass of troops, followed by the steady booms of explosions. Andrea had tried to hit Neig, but he was too fast.
Neig’s troops brought up the engines of war and hurled fiery boulders at us. I held off the first three barrages, so they switched targets and aimed at the front of their own line, just outside my protective boundary. The rocks rolled at our people, and I couldn’t stop them and hold off Neig at the same time.
We were trapped together in five hundred yards of hell on earth, and Neig’s war machine ground us into mush. Mages hurled their spells and Neig’s soldiers spat fire back. Witches summoned horrors, pagans evoked their gods, the military pounded the warriors with advanced magic weaponry, and still Neig’s troops kept coming, unstoppable, unending. There were always more.
The bloodbath raged. Screams, howls, and snarls filled the air. The bagpipers had long ago stopped playing. Now only the voice of the battle could be heard. It hung above us like an oppressive din, the song of dying, pain, and fury.
Where the hell was my father?
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but it had to have been hours. The sun had reached its apex. My world had shrunk to Neig and magic. I wanted to be down there, in the slaughter, but Neig saw me and Yu Fong next to me, and we were too tempting a target. All I could do was contain him.
He was tiring. So was I. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.
A werewolf swung into my view, covered in blood and someone’s guts. She grabbed a bucket of water from next to me and drank, spilling it over her monstrous face. “We can’t take much more,” she snarled in Desandra’s voice.
Neig dove at me, unleashing a torrent of fire. I held it back.
“You have to hold,” I told her.
“If you have an ace up your sleeve, now’s the time.”
An undead ran up to me. “We’re taking heavy casualties,” it said in Javier’s voice. “Lt. General Myers is dead. Ghastek states that in another half hour, we will run out of vampires.”
Neig screamed and smashed into my shield. I took a step back, snarled, and shoved the magic back at him.
My father wasn’t coming.
We had to retreat. If there was any hope for anyone surviving, we had to retreat.
Another blast of fire. Damn it, didn’t that fucking dragon ever get tired?
A clump of Neig’s soldiers broke apart below. Curran emerged, bloody, huge in his warrior form, looking like a demon. The shapeshifters rallied around him, but even he was getting worn out.
Roland wasn’t coming. He had betrayed us once again.
“Kate,” Desandra snarled. “I need a decision.”
The vampire hovered by my feet.
To the left, Julie and Derek, both covered in blood, waited.
We’d lost. If we turned back now, at least some people would survive.
I opened my mouth to tell them to retreat.
Magic burst at the far end of the field. The sky above us darkened. Huge rocks plummeted down from the clouds, burning as they fell, and crushed the troops on the field before us.
Oh my God.
The rocks smashed into the ground, cracked open, and glowing swarms of brilliant green bees spilled out, stinging Neig’s warriors. The rocks melted, boiling into a glowing slime. The slime snapped out, grabbing at the remaining troops, and they screamed as their bodies melted. A huge hole opened up in the center of Neig’s forces, and through it, I saw my father.
I forgot to breathe.
He rode a glowing chariot, drawn by mechanical horses. He was young and beautiful, and full of magic so powerful it hurt to look at him. He shone, brilliant and sharp, like a second sunrise. Behind him, an army rose.
My aunt appeared by my side. “Look! This is your real father! This is the brother I haven’t seen for eons. Look, child!”
My father raised his hand. A serpent of pure glowing magic tore out of it, snaking its way through the battlefield, devouring all in its path.
He came. He hadn’t abandoned me. My father had come to fight.
Neig spun in the air. A terrible screech tore out of the dragon’s jaws.
“Your dad is hot!” Desandra said, surprised.
I snapped out of it.
Neig dove at my father.
I spun to Yu Fong. “Do it now.”
Yu Fong pulled the shard of a tooth out of his clothes and carved a vertical line, from as high as he could reach down to the ground. A glowing hole opened in the fabric of the world. Derek grinned, a feral baring of teeth. Julie ducked into the gap and he followed. The glow vanished.
Yu Fong tossed the tooth aside. An overpowering heat emanated from his skin, the air streaming from him in transparent currents.
I backed away.
Yu Fong’s body burst. A creature spilled out, twenty-five feet long, a muscular leonine body covered in scales. A huge head crowned with a red mane sat on a thick but agile scaled neck, its face a meld of dragon and lion. A serpentine tail snapped.
The beast that used to be Yu Fong charged onto the field. His body burst into flames, red fire coating him like a mantle. Neig’s warriors parted like water, letting him pass.
On the other end of the field, Neig spun away from my father.
“I am the Lord of Fire!” the Suanni roared, tearing through the warriors like he was a comet. “Face me, coward!”
I grabbed my swords and dashed onto the field, through the gap Yu Fong had made. I had to find Curran.
The ranks of warriors were closing ahead. A moment, and they surrounded me. I spat the power word “osanda.” They went down to their knees and I cut my way through them, pushing my way forward, to the center of the battlefield. Blood sprayed. Bodies fell amid hoarse screams. I cut, severing limbs and carving bodies with blades and magic. Fire and lightning streaked above my head, ripped through by a stream of glowing green bullets from a machine gun. Fighters tore at each other, shapeshifters disemboweled their opponents, vampires ripped into bodies. Carnage reigned, the roar, bellows, and moans of the dying blending into a terrible din.
I cleaved a body in two, opened my mouth, and screamed. The word of power burst from me, straight as an arrow, searing Neig’s fighters, mangling their bodies. I tore into the gap, cutting like a dervish in a familiar lightning-fast pattern, severing limbs and spraying blood, unstoppable, without mercy.
A yeddimur popped up in front of me, the lone survivor of the fire and bagpipes. I carved him from shoulder to waist and kept going, reaping a harvest of lives, spitting magic and bringing death. On the left a clump of bodies exploded, and Hugh roared, covered in blood, a bloody axe in his hand. We connected, back to back. For a brief moment we stood alone in the carnage, and then we broke apart and charged back into battle.
Suddenly the clump of warriors around me split. They fled, panicked. Wind hit me, nearly taking me off my feet. A huge black lion landed next to me, his wings wide, glowing with silver. Curran had assumed his god form.
I jumped and climbed black fur onto Curran’s back. He sprinted and then we were airborne. The battle yawned below us. Ahead, Neig spat fire at Yu Fong in a steady torrent, circling him, great wings beating. Yu Fong limped along the ground, his side torn, sending a torrent of white flames back. My father stood, caught in the middle of it all, a protective bubble of magic glowing around him, reflecting the dueling fires. He held a spear in his hands.
Curran dived at Neig. I jumped, aiming for the dragon’s neck, and missed. Damn it.