“He’s having difficulty with bloodlust.”
“It is really him?”
“Yes.”
“Life moves in mysterious ways,” Ghastek said.
Blood smeared the gray stones of the Keep, as the mammoths threw themselves against it again and again. The left side of the wall trembled, rocked, like a rotten tooth ready to come out, and collapsed. My father’s troops flooded into the gap and broke like a wave on shapeshifter claws and teeth.
Come on.
Bodies flew. People screamed.
Come on, Father. Come to the slaughter.
Minutes ticked by.
More bodies.
A new line of troops spilled onto the field and in its center a shiny chariot sped, drawn by horned horses.
“Is your father riding a gold chariot?” Ghastek asked.
“He’s a product of his times. It’s what he grew up with.”
“There is nothing wrong with a gold chariot,” Erra said. “It’s meant to be symbolic.”
We watched the line of troops advance, gaining ground against the isolated clumps of shapeshifters. Slowly Jim’s forces retreated to the Keep.
Not yet.
The trenches emptied as boudas scrambled toward the Keep. Jim’s forces broke and ran for the safety of the walls, leaving their dead on the battlefield.
Now.
I looked down. “Now, Christopher!”
He shot into the air, spinning as he rose. Barabas waved at me and sprinted through the woods, heading east to where Curran’s forces waited.
The trees across from us, on the other side of the battlefield and to the right, turned black. Dark magic gathered there, cold and terrible. The trees rustled and a gigantic black dragon head emerged from the trees. My father raised his hand. Golden light poured from it, shielding the troops directly around him.
Aspid slithered across the field. Roman rode atop his head, feet anchored, his arms opened wide. A black crown rested on his hair. Behind him black smoke stretched like an impossibly long mantle. A wall of black flames, thirty feet tall and twenty feet wide, cut the field in two in the dragon’s wake.
I scrambled off the tree. Two vampires stepped forward, spread a sheet of clear plastic on the ground, and knelt on it. I felt the navigators let go and grabbed their minds. The bloodsuckers opened their throats in unison and I crushed their minds as they bled out.
I sliced my arm, let my blood mix with that of the undead, and felt it catch on fire with my power. The red spiraled up my legs, climbing higher, over my thighs, over my waist, forming armor. It felt clunky.
“Awful,” Erra said. “You are an embarrassment. Stand still.”
My aunt circled me, words of a long-forgotten language falling from her mouth. It felt like forever, but it took only seconds. When I looked down at myself, I wore blood armor. My aunt stopped in front of me and rested her ghostly fingers under my chin.
“Go and free yourself from your father.”
“I will,” I told her.
I swung onto the Friesian. He pawed the ground, his nostrils flaring. Julie was already on her mare, her eyes wild and scared.
“Raise the banner.”
She raised the flag, and the green standard of In-Shinar fluttered above us.
I let the stallion go. He tore out of the woods at a gallop. We burst into the open. The wall of black flames rose to the right of us, and within it monstrous mouths and claws writhed, grabbing any who strayed too close and tearing into their bodies. We had cut my father’s forces in half. I was on the Keep side of the flame wall, and Curran and his mercs, the Order, and Jim’s reserve were on the other.
More vampires poured from the other side of the woods. Roland’s troops still pressed their attack on the Keep, not realizing what was happening.
Above the Keep Christopher dived from between the clouds, his wings opened wide, like a fallen angel. He opened his mouth and screamed.
The mass of troops churned, as hundreds of men and creatures tried to flee in unison, away from the Keep and toward the smoke. Christopher screamed again and again, his shriek gripping my spine with an icy hand even from this distance. The offensive broke apart. People fled. Christopher swooped down, grasped a writhing body, and flew up, burying his fangs in the man’s neck.
We tore into the retreating troops. I swung Sarrat, slicing, severing necks and backs. Around me vampires swarmed without a sound, silent, merciless, slaughtering everything in their path.
The field was chaos. Men, beasts, shapeshifters, and animals clashed, screaming, snarling, and ripping at each other. The air smelled like blood. Harpies dived through the sky. One aimed for me and a winged form shot out from the clouds and sliced it in half with a flaming sword. Teddy Jo. I didn’t think he’d come.
A vampire headed for me. Not one of ours. I rode it down. The stallion stomped on the undead, and I finished it, crushing its skull with my magic. Across the field, green and bare undead crashed against each other, fighting silent duels.
A massive beast shaped like a leopard but twice that size leapt at me. The impact of its weight took me off the horse. Claws scraped my blood armor. I thrust Sarrat between its ribs, twisted, heaved it off me, and rolled to my feet.
A ring of fighters waited for me.
They charged me and I danced. It was a beautiful dance, of blood and steel and severed life. My breathing evened out. The world was crystal clear, the sounds crisp, the colors vivid. Everything I tried worked. Every strike found its target. Every thrust pierced a body. They cut and slashed, but I didn’t wait for them. I kept cutting, losing myself in the simple rhythm.
They’d come here to kill me. They died instead. Corpses piled up at my feet. My aunt was laughing. And then they broke and ran.
I looked up. The wall of black flames was thinning. I could almost see through it.
“Retreat!” I screamed. “Retreat now!”
The green-striped vampires fled from the field toward the Keep. Once the wall went down, my father would be able to reach them. The bloodsuckers would die by the dozens and so would the navigators piloting them.
I turned. The black smoke had dissipated. The entire front of my father’s army was gone. Mammoths lay like burial mounds of fur. Bodies, vampire and human, sprawled on the grass.
Most of the remaining army gathered around my father, forming a mass of bodies. I saw Curran roaring, enormous, demonic, tearing into monsters left and right. The mercs followed in his wake.
My father froze in his chariot, his face bloodless. One moment he had a vanguard and now it was all gone. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking to the left. I turned my head and saw the sea of green-and-blue banners the bloodsuckers had left thrust into the dirt as they retreated.
“Glory to In-Shinar!”
The hair on the back of my neck rose.
I spun around.
Julie sat on her horse, holding my banner. Her voice rolled, charged with power. “Glory to In-Shinar!”