Roar took one last look at the looming twister, saw Ransom’s bulky body and bald head moving toward it, and she knew that she was endangering everyone by distracting Locke.
“Knock me out,” she said through gritted teeth.
“What?” Locke panted, winded by the sheer force it took to keep her in check.
“They need you,” she growled. “Knock. Me. Out.”
He stared at her, brown eyes wide and intense. His long hair had escaped its tie and hung in chunks between them. He hesitated, and without any conscious thought, Roar reared upward, trying to head butt him. He was quick, but she still caught him in the chin. Pain reverberated from her forehead, and his chin split, dripping blood between them. She cried out, even as she took advantage of his momentary distraction to work one hand free. She reached for his hair, the long waves that she’d admired more often than she cared to admit. She gripped it without care and yanked hard. He hissed, but his only retaliation was to try and capture her hand once more. Then after another particularly hard pull on his hair, Duke came into sight over them.
Roar had a brief moment to sigh in relief before he swung a long, skinny glass bottle down and smashed it against her head.
Then she surrendered to the black. Where there was no rage. No fear. No twister.
There was nothing at all, but peace.
*
Blood ran from a cut near Roar’s hairline, and her fierce expression went blank with unconsciousness. Locke swung around, gripping the front of Duke’s shirt and dragging the old man up onto his toes.
“Why did you do that?” he growled.
“Because someone had to. I’ve never seen someone react to a storm like that, but I know she would have only hurt herself trying to hurt you.” Even in the face of Locke’s wrath, the old man was stoic and calm. “And you’re the torque specialist. They need you out there.”
Locke wanted to argue, but the winds howled like bloodthirsty hounds, and the Rock shook forcefully even with the anchors down.
“Fine,” he growled. “Help me move her.” Together they carried Roar to the back of the Rock, and Locke found a towel to cushion her head. He hesitated a moment longer, but one glance outside the glass told him there was no time to wait. Duke pulled the lever that lowered a metal shade over the glass dome at the front of the Rock, blocking their view. Locke opened the sliding door at the bottom of the Rock, grabbed a bag of the enchanted jars they used to capture magic, and dropped into the narrow space between the Rock and the earth. He plucked the horn he carried from the pouch on his left hip and blew it hard to signal the hunters to retreat.
He knew his crew well enough to know that they had been focused on weakening the twister, not dissipating it. They would have been using opposing winds to slow the rotation. Jinx would be using her abilities as an earth witch to strengthen the surrounding trees so that the twister did not gain any more deadly debris.
They could have dismantled that twister fairly quickly, but they could not siphon off raw magic unless they got to the storm’s heart.
Jinx rolled into the space beneath the Rock, panting heavily, and Ransom squeezed under a moment after her. Sly was so silent that he didn’t realize she was already there, her short form tucked beneath the Rock horizontally above his head, until she said, “One minute out. I tried to slow the winds, but the moment I broke away to come here, they flared back to top speed.”
“It’s brutal, this one,” Ransom said. “Not that big, but the magic is potent. Even mesmerized me for half a second at the beginning.”
Locke cursed. Ransom had some of the strongest mental guards of any of them. It didn’t bode well that the twister had gotten through his defenses.
He opened the bag he’d brought with him and handed a jar to each of the three hunters. Then he rapped on the metal shell of the Rock above him and the sliding door opened, revealing a grinning Bait.
“We ready?” the teen asked, the Stormheart from his thunderstorm affinity already in his hand.
Locke nodded and said, “Good luck. Fast feet, novie. If you get killed, I’m going to be unhappy.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Bait gave a quick salute, then slid the door closed. A moment later, they heard the top hatch open, and Bait hit the ground running, on the far side of the Rock. There was a crescendo of noise in the cyclone’s scream, and the wind picked up, the earth trembling in response. It had taken the bait all right.
Storms were fierce, and while they displayed intelligent behavior on occasion—lashing out when threatened, zeroing in on threats, even chasing prey—they didn’t have the senses that humans had. Locke had always imagined they were more like bats, who used sound to map the world around them, only storms used wind or rain or whatever tools they had at their disposal. And when Bait took off, Stormheart in hand, filling it with his magic, the twister could not tell the difference between Bait and an actual thunderstorm, but it rushed toward him to investigate.
Locke looked at his team, finding three clear and focused sets of eyes. They were ready. He waited until the first wall of the twister was close enough that the ground buckled and jerked beneath their backs. “Ready,” he said, tensing his muscles in preparation to move. The Rock lurched when the wall hit, and debris battered at the sides. They covered their eyes to keep them free of dirt. After a few agonizing moments of deafening sound, the wall passed, settling them into temporary stillness.
“Now,” he barked, and each hunter had rolled out from beneath the Rock into the relative safety of the eye.