Narrowing her eyes, Kylie reached once more for her magic, letting it fill her up and tingle in her fingertips. Then she brought to mind the shield spell Wynn had hammered into her brain and looked for the code.
It almost jumped out at her. She felt like she had just landed in the Matrix, seeing data scrolling before her in endless streams. She could see the code of the magic and knew exactly where it needed to change to perform her will. A quick twist of her mind, and the spell that flowed when she raised her fingers was something a little different from Wynn’s protective shield. Instead, it became a battering ram of vivid, living energy that she held out before her and used to slice through the crowd.
Everything it touched slid away and to the sides. She felt a little like Moses parting the Red Sea, only she didn’t have the entire nation of Israel at her back, and she only needed to get as far as the other side of the room.
Not understanding exactly what she had done or how long it would last, Kylie held tight to her magic and ran. She didn’t bother to test herself too rigorously, ducking and dodging around the largest and hungriest-looking of the monsters and taking the path of least resistance to Ella’s side. That still amounted to a lot of resistance. Luckily, for the moment, nothing seemed able to cut through her supershield.
She took a detour to edge around the still gaping portal. The only mercy about the thing was that it remained its original size and shape, meaning only one entity could pass through it at a time. Any more and they’d end up clogging the drain, like some kind of preternaturally evil hair ball. Still, not something a living person wanted to get in front of. So far, everyone who had was dead.
Kylie averted her eyes and pointedly ignored the sticky slickness under her feet as she finally set eyes on Ella. The Warden lay under a row of chairs, unmoving, and bleeding sluggishly from a wound in her side. Luck had stuck with her, because without the chairs making her difficult to spot, she’d have wound up brunch for the forces of Darkness a long time ago.
Hurrying to her friend’s side, Kylie reached down to feel for a pulse, just to be certain. It beat strong and steady against her fingers, but that left their little army of good guys down one valuable soldier. And that farkakta portal to Demonland was still wide open.
Maybe it was time for a new plan.
For once in her life, being small was turning out to be a big advantage for Kylie. It made it a lot easier for her to hide and scurry and escape notice than most of the other people in the room, not to mention the ginormous winged Guardians who currently dove in and out of the fray, ripping apart any demonic creature they could lay their claws on. The continuously replenishing horde kept them so busy that no one had yet noticed Ella had fallen.
Certainly her mate, preoccupied with the big Demonic kahuna in the front of the room, had not. If he had, he’d have been at her side by now. That was a good thing, because Kylie and the rest of the innocent people here really needed him and Dag to keep Nazgahchuhl occupied, otherwise this battle would already be over, and Kylie would not have been on the winning side.
At the moment, she still wasn’t certain she was on the winning side, but she definitely wasn’t ready to give up. A survey of the room showed only the one active portal, so that was a heck of a lot better than the alternative, and it indicated that Wynn and Fil had fared better with their opponents than Ella had with hers. Go, team.
Right, a new plan, Kylie reminded herself. Number one had to be to close that portal. Cutting off the flow would mean Knox and Spar could concentrate on really taking out the summoned creatures, allowing Kylie, Wynn, and Fil to figure out a way to begin getting the survivors to safety. At least the ushers had abandoned their posts at the doors. Kylie had a feeling they had not been cult members, but staff bespelled to follow commands. Once a demon creature had taken one of them as a little snack, the rest had scattered into the crowd, leaving the doors locked, but unattended.
Kees and Dag would stick with the Demon she was really trying not to think about. With the other Wardens currently helping on the opposite side of the huge auditorium, that left Kylie to deal with the portal.
Easy-peasy, right?
Wynn had told her that while the nocturni mage would need to cast a spell that opened the portal and continue to channel energy to hold it open for a while, after a certain amount of time, it could stabilize sufficiently to remain for an unknown duration. Which meant that even if she took out the caster, the portal might remain open even after he was out of the picture. Double trouble. Always fun.
Oh, well. Sometimes it was better to just swallow the medicine and worry about the aftertaste later.