Chapter 25
Lance
Watching Quinn disappear past the door of the phoenix’s huge vehicle wrenched at me more than anything had since the time our sorcerer had sent us away from her with her magic. My limbs twitched, and I almost threw myself after her, but Torrent caught me with a tentacle around my wrist.
I halted instantly, knowing that he was still weak from the beating he’d gotten in the shadow realm—not wanting to hurt him worse.
“This is the best way to get her there with enough time for her to make a difference,” he reminded me. “She can’t travel through the rifts, and that vehicle is enhanced to go faster than any of Rollick’s cars can.”
I grimaced at the RV as the engine roared to life. It tore down the dusty road so fast it wavered against the desert landscape. “I know. But I don’t like her being away from us. We won’t know what’s happening to her. And we hardly know those shadowkind with her.”
“We know they fought enemies the Highest refused to tackle before,” Rollick put in, though he didn’t look much happier than I felt. “I may have concerns about their specific methods, but I don’t think we have to worry that they’d suddenly take the leviathan’s side.” He motioned to us. “Come on. Let’s lead this army of ours to the battlefield. We’ll get there well ahead of our woman, which means we can make sure her arrival is as safe as possible.”
I didn’t think there was any way that approaching the rift the leviathan wanted to bring the Highest through could be safe for Quinn, but Rollick couldn’t have picked an argument more likely to motivate me. I whirled around and dove into the shadows. Winding through the patches of gloom scattered across the sun-drenched terrain, I snapped my teeth at and nudged my dragon shoulders against the ephemeral bodies I brushed past.
“Let’s go, let’s go. It’s time to stop that watery fiend from ruining this entire realm. If you’re with us, come along!”
Now that the fight was actually in front of us, something real they’d have to face in the very near future, I tasted a ripple of hesitation spreading through the crowd. A growl reverberated out of me. “If we don’t stop him right away, there won’t be any stopping him! He’ll turn us all into slaves, cage our minds. All the wonderful mortal things will be gone. But there are a lot of us, and only one of him. And our sorcerer is going to help us stand up to him. We can do this.”
Many beings were already moving toward my three companions, who merged with the shadows as well. Rollick led the charge, continuing to beckon everyone as he headed toward the nearest rift that we could use to take a shortcut across the country. Crag and Torrent fell back near me, herding the more reluctant beings along with the crowd like shepherds.
“We could use all of your help,” Crag boomed through the sporadic shadows. “But if you aren’t willing to fight, we won’t force you to come. He’s the one who treats beings that way. We need everyone who’s with us to be committed to stopping him. There’s no shame in being scared.”
I suspected the gargoyle thought there was plenty of shame in it, especially when it came to his own emotions. But his words seemed to rouse the slower beings, as if prodding them to action. They didn’t want to be seen hanging back, cringing in fear, while their companions raced off to risk their lives defending everyone else. A hint of a smile touched my lips.
We ran on, darting through the narrow shadows in the cracked earth and leaping across stretches of sunlight when we needed to. The mass of beings condensed until we were all surging forward together like one creature.
I felt the vibration of the rift up ahead. Rollick was still leading us, a powerful presence at the front of the pack. He hurtled all the way to the patch of earth just below the rift, which hung several feet above the ground, invisible to mortal eyes.
“Keep following me,” he hollered when the whole crowd was close enough to hear him. “I’ll find the route that’ll take us to California—but not so close that we should be within range of the leviathan’s sorcery. If you lose track of the rest of us, try to get yourselves to a spot northeast of Los Angeles and look for us nearby.”
He spun around and sprang up into the rift. We leapt after him in a flood, rushing through into the dull but familiar gloom of the shadow realm, tracing his presence as he hustled past other rift openings, ignoring the beings who stopped to stare at the mass of us charging by. There was no time left to do any more recruiting—and anyway, beings who liked to hang out on this side of the boundary between the realms probably didn’t care that much about what happened on the mortal side anyway.
When Rollick paused at a rift up ahead, my spirits lifted. The force of his nod carried through the gloom. He waited a moment for the beings around us to register the spot he’d marked, and then he jumped through it with the forerunners of our army right at his heels.
We burst out into much less pleasant conditions than we’d had back at his house. Storm clouds smothered the sky and spat fat raindrops down on us. Thunder rumbled in the distance. When I pulled myself out of the shadows into physical form, the grass squished beneath my feet. I wrinkled my nose, swiping my wet hair back from my forehead.
The demon clapped his hands together, somehow looking perfectly composed even with rain dripping off his own hair and soaking into his suit. “We’ve still got a trek ahead of us, but we need to be wary from here forward. My friends and I will take the lead. We’ve gotten the sorcerer’s commands to deflect the worst of the leviathan’s magic. The rest of you should keep at least half a mile of distance from us. If we sense that he’s trying to send out more manipulative magic, we’ll signal all of you, and you’ll need to back away as quickly as you can. Through another rift if need be. But we’re hoping that he’s focused on conserving his energy for now.”
So that he could use all his sorcery to compel the Highest into this world. My fangs itched in my gums at the thought. Those hulking brutes in the depths of the shadows had bashed around Torrent for nothing other than trying to warn them. I didn’t want them in this world for any reason, even if they’d been coming of their own accord.
I hurried over to join Rollick alongside Crag and Torrent. We melded back into the darkness, which there was a lot more of here, to begin the final stage of our journey.
I scanned the damp, dreary landscape, finding that none of it looked particularly familiar. “What about the weapons you had the humans making? To throw the metal blades at the leviathan. Will we be able to use those?”
“We should,” Rollick said. “But we have to be even more careful with the timing when it comes to them.” He sighed, an uneasy sound that he’d been careful not to make when the rest of our allies were closer by. “I don’t think it’s even the leviathan we need to worry about the most for now—at least, not what he’ll do from here on. It’s what he’s already done. I’m sure he’ll have gathered all the minions he could call on to guard the site of his grand display.”
A quiver ran through me. All those beings he’d enslaved, many—probably most—of whom hadn’t wanted this fight any more than we did. But we couldn’t let them stop us from stopping him. They’d suffer even more if he went through with his plan.
“Do your mortal workers know we’re coming?” Torrent asked.
“Yes. They’ve been building the contraptions in the warehouse that was originally meant to be the trap, so they aren’t far from where we need them to end up. But I’m not calling them to cart the things into position until I’m sure we have a clear route for them. If they’re attacked and cut down… none of us will be able to haul those things around.”
“Quinn could,” Crag pointed out. “And maybe the phoenix as well.”
Rollick hummed to himself. “True, but I expect them to be busy with other equally urgent concerns. And I gather these things are heavy. I’m not sure they’d be able to move them out of the vehicles very quickly, just the two of them. Let’s try not to get my mortal assistants slaughtered is all I’m saying.”
I let out a huff. “I can agree with that.”
I peered through the haze of rain. I’d expected it to pelt us harder as we approached the coastline, but if anything, it was tapering off a little. I shook my body even though the drops did no more than tickle through my essence while I was in the shadows. “The rain’s letting up.”
“The leviathan must have brought in the elemental spirits he had amplifying the chaos to join him by the rift instead,” Torrent said grimly. “He thinks their energy, like his, would be better spent on making sure he can carry out his plan.”
I decided to look on the bright side. “At least it’ll be easier to see!”
Rollick chuckled. “Yes, that is a minor benefit.”
I kept my senses on the alert for any hint of sorcerer energy. Quinn had given the four of us quick but careful commands before she’d climbed into the RV—to resist the leviathan and refuse his commands. That magic was already humming through my head, ready to deflect any attempts the fiend made to conquer our thoughts. But it was looking increasingly certain that he meant to aim whatever magic he had left in just one direction.
What if he still couldn’t summon the Highest at all? Would he go looking for more sorcerers to devour?
I guessed it didn’t matter. Whether he could have accomplished his goal today or not, we meant to destroy him before any of us had to find out.
The landscape became more uneven, rising into the low rolling hills I remembered around the coast where we’d seen the leviathan and the behemoth working on their rift. How many beings was he eviscerating in his final attempt to open it as wide as possible? How wide would it need to become?
I had no idea what the Highest’s physical forms might look like, or how big they might be. I wasn’t sure they’d ever taken on a true physical shape before. I’d never even gotten near them in their shadowkind form, but I’d passed close enough to the deep place where they lived to know their presence stretched far and felt uncomfortably heavy.
Rollick slowed and then stopped. The rain had eased off to a mere drizzle, but the clouds overhead still shut out all but a faint glow of sunlight. He pointed to a road that wound between the hill we stood at the base of and the one farther north. “Quinn and the phoenix’s people should come along this route. Keep a close watch for any patrolling minions.”
I stretched my long body, tension twined through my limbs. “Should we start harassing the leviathan now? We don’t know how soon he might be ready to call on the Highest.”
“If we send our allies in now, they won’t have the benefit of Quinn’s sorcery strengthening them,” Crag pointed out.
“We’ll wait as long as we can,” Rollick said definitively. “Better to hit them as hard as possible all at once than to get into an extended battle that’ll wear us down. You wait here and rally the troops as much as you can. Destroy any of the leviathan’s lackeys that come near. And flag down the RV when you see it. I’m going to venture a little closer to see how much progress he appears to have made.”
“On your own?” Torrent asked quietly.
Rollick raised a haughty eyebrow. “I’ve never needed a babysitter. I’m the one with the easy task.” Then he raced off into the shadows stretched across the hill.
As we’d talked, the beings who’d followed us this far had amassed a short distance away, waiting for a signal one way or another. Rollick hadn’t told them what to do if we stopped moving. Crag and Torrent motioned for them to join us.
Voices carried from the restless crowd. “What now?”
“Is he already calling the Highest through?”
“Should we attack?”
“Rollick has gone ahead to get a read on the situation,” Torrent told them all. “We’ll wait here for the sorcerer and our other allies who were traveling by road. Quinn will be able to enhance your powers so you’re even better equipped to take on our enemies.”
I was surprised by the uneasy murmur that spread through the swarm of beings. They’d seen what Quinn’s help could accomplish, how it could make us stronger instead of restraining us. Why would they hesitate?
The answer came to me without needing to think. Because it was sorcery. It was the stuff meant to twist our wills and overcome our minds. I’d balked the first time Quinn had been going to use her magic on me as a shield, and I’d been the one to suggest the idea.
But since then, I’d fed her my own essence to increase her powers. And while I’d wondered if I was betraying my kind at the time, I found that I didn’t have a single doubt left in me.
Quinn was good. What we were doing here was good. Somehow we’d worked together to transform something evil into something amazing.
I’d helped make that transformation happen—by thinking of the possibilities, by trusting Quinn enough to let her try.
Not that long ago, I’d have said the best thing a being could do to a sorcerer was cut them down. But changing their magic into something that fueled our own powers rather than binding them was even better.
I could show every being here how true that was. I could lead them just like Rollick had led them here.
I scrambled partway up the hill and turned to face them again. “She’ll be here soon. And as soon as she is, I’m going to be the first to accept her magic. It’s going to make me faster and stronger and the flames in my breath burn hotter. She isn’t just a sorcerer. She’s our sorcerer. She’s more ours than that beast of a sea serpent ever will be.”
Not everyone in the crowd had been hesitant. A chorus of approving shouts rose up—the beings who’d been freed when Quinn had killed the behemoth, the ones who’d already experienced how her magic could protect and empower them. I even spotted Goldie, who’d hung back with obvious discomfort among the others after his arrival at the house, pumping a fist in the air.
With that rush of whoops, more voices rose with increasing eagerness. “All hail our sorcerer!”
A grin stretched across my face, but my heart sank a little as I looked down the road. There was no sign of the RV yet.
Our sorcerer might be beloved, but she still needed to make it to us in time.