Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Kit
Since the day Lienna and I first stood in Bodil’s tomb, we’d wondered if the account of her power inscribed on the stone walls had been a posthumous exaggeration.
Today, I could say with absolute certainty: no, it had not. She’d been all but unstoppable.
And now, with power flowing effortlessly from the earth into my body, so was I.
Hooves thudded against the asphalt on either side of me.
On my left, Saber sat astride a black fae stallion with orange eyes and flames licking up its legs.
On my right, Zak rode on the back of an even larger fae horse with a smoky-gray coat, the ends of its mane and tail fading into the shadows, making it terrifyingly impossible to know where the colossal beast ended and the darkness began.
We advanced through the amusement park together. My druid harbingers guarded my flanks, smiting any agent who got within range of their weapons—if their mounts didn’t crush their skulls first. All the while, they kept the faucets of energy cranked wide open for me.
And I devoted all my brainpower to inflicting as much pain and chaos as archmythically possible on these SI assholes.
With telekinesis, I tore the giant beverage receptacles off the teacup ride and dumped them onto the agents’ heads.
I ripped the canvas top off the merry-go-round and used a gust of wind to sweep it over a pack of men armed with high-powered artifacts.
A team from a local guild descended on the trapped agents to finish them off.
I unleashed firestorms, called down lightning, and summoned earthquakes that made the amusement park rides groan and rock on their foundations.
The farther we moved from the amphitheater, the greater the pandemonium. Groups of mythics battled, magic blazed on every side, and voices shouted, screamed, and roared. Whenever I saw or sensed my allies, I diverted from my path to rain hell down on whatever agents they were up against.
But none of it felt victorious. Rather, it felt like the bleak herald of the inescapable fight to the death we were marching toward—the grim inevitability of my showdown with Kade.
As we passed by a vomit-inducing swing contraption, magic exploded in a reddish flash several yards to our right. A troop of agents was hurling Arcana and Elementaria attacks at a pair of mythics sheltering behind the pirate ship ride.
I targeted their minds with a warp. At the sight of ravenous, fanged clowns streaking out of the darkness toward them, all but one of the agents bolted.
“It’s an illusion!” a bearded agent with a bandana pulled up over his unkempt scruff yelled, holding his ground. “It’s—”
Saber’s mount lunged forward. Bearded Bandana Man turned in time for the stallion’s burning hooves to trample him into the pavement. She urged her fae familiar into a gallop, charging after his fleeing comrades.
Bones crunched and men screamed as she ran them all down. The last one she finished with a well-aimed ice spear.
As the horse turned back toward me and Zak, its head jerked up, nostrils flaring. Zak’s mount raised its head as well, both beasts staring eastward.
A monstrous howl cut through the cacophony, coming from the direction of the soccer fields. Zak gripped a fistful of his mount’s mane as the stallion reared and kicked its front hooves.
“Some black witches just summoned a dark fae,” he growled as a shaggy black wolf materialized beside us with its hackles raised. “Even if they can keep it under control, which I doubt, it’ll corrupt all the energy here.”
“Can Ríkr—” I began.
“Busy with the other SI fae.”
“Go,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
Saber was too far to hear me, but her stallion took off. As it thundered past us, she ducked under a fireball some idiot SI agent had just lobbed at me. I swatted the flaming projectile away with one hand.
“We’ll find you again,” Zak said. Then his mount was galloping after Saber, the fae wolf right behind him.
As they left me, their bolstering effect on my fuel source lessened, but I had more than enough for a fresh maelstrom of elements. I unleashed an electra-inferno-cane on the ring of enemies closing in around me, bludgeoning them with ease.
But then the power of my storm began to fade, and the energy beneath me swirled away.
A brightly painted, kid-sized locomotive hurtled from behind a row of concession stands as if flung by a trebuchet. I threw my hands up, deflecting the train with my telekinesis. It sailed above my head, hit the pavement with a crash, and kept tumbling, debris spinning off it.
The concession stands detonated, and I barely got an ice shield up before the shrapnel struck. As I let the ice fall to the ground, the energy spiraled even faster, rushing away from me.
On the other side of the rubble that had been a mini-doughnut truck and a poutine stand, a seething mass of shadows drew closer. I could sense the toxic malice of at least a hundred minds, and leading them was a pit of psychic blackness that radiated venomous rage.
Kade levitated above his platoon of jackboots like a vengeful deity.
He wore all black, but instead of a Kevlar-lined vest like everyone else, he’d covered his torso in armor—actual medieval armor ornamented with gold.
A belt with a gilt buckle in the shape of an inverted star gleamed around his waist, and to top off his god-king attire, a simple diadem sat upon his polished cranium, a round sunburst affixed to the band.
He’d dressed himself as a bastardized Arthurian knight, the megalomaniacal embodiment of moral malignance and unrepentant violence.
Morris!
His telepathic voice ripped into my mind, even more agonizing than when we clashed in London, but this time I kept my footing.
I drew my shoulders back, focused on the surrounding energy, and pulled it out of the spiral sweeping toward Kade. Power flowed into my body, charging up my magic.
A rictus smile split his lips. Light yourself on fire.
The command speared my cerebrum. A knife through my skull would have been less invasive. Heat blazed through my body, ready to burst through every pore, and fire ignited across my palms.
Baring my teeth, I let the flames expand into white-hot fireballs—then I hurled them at Kade.
They snuffed out a few feet from his face. His eyes bored into mine, and even though we were surrounded by people, everyone else faded away. It was just me and him, a kitchen table and a cute pitcher of milk between us, murder our intent.
The energy funneled toward him in a whirlwind so intense my head spun. He raised his hands, and a silvery-blue radiance gathered between them. The glowing sphere made the air hiss and burn as it brightened and expanded.
It was pure energy—Kade’s version of the Magna Potestas artifacts Lienna had described—gathered into a ball of barely contained destruction.
The light flashed brighter than the collision of neutron stars.
With my telekinesis, I seized a small shipping container painted with a smiling grilled cheese sandwich and wrenched it in front of me.
The magna-orb struck. Metal and magic exploded all around me—the top half of the container turning into shrapnel and the pavement on either side of me disintegrating.
The largely unhindered sphere nearly took off my head before hitting the two-hundred-foot-tall tower ride behind me.
Metal tore apart with a horrendous shriek, and the groan of bending beams followed.
I cast aside the remains of my shield as one of the anchors at the top of the narrow tower broke. A cable as thick as my arm plunged toward the ground. I grabbed it with my telekinesis and whipped it straight at Kade where he still levitated in deific superiority over his jackboots.
Levitation might look cool, but dodging shit was damn near impossible.
Kade could only lurch backward as the steel wire arced down in a perfect line. It thrashed across his torso, driving him down and crushing the bones of the jackboots beneath it.
My breath caught.
But from the pile of bodies he rose to his feet, looking no worse for wear, except for his shattered left pauldron. Runes glowed faintly on the armor.
Damn it. His dragonslayer cosplay wasn’t just for vibes.
His manic grin returned.
A cacophony of snaps and metallic whines erupted from the tower ride behind me. It began to topple—and I was directly in its path. I took one frantic step, but I was trapped by upturned pavement and jagged shrapnel.
I threw my hands up, every neuron in my brain bent on diverting the mass of steel plunging toward me, hastened by Kade’s telekinesis. An indescribable weight dragged at my muscles and compressed my bones. I couldn’t shift it.
Dropping my arms, I focused on the steel. The tower slammed me into the pavement. Pain burst through my body, leaving me gasping as echoes of the colossal tower’s crash landing filled the park. Distant cries of shock and confusion soon followed.
I sat up and pushed rubble away with shaking hands. The tower’s steel beams crumbled into grayish clumps of Styrofoam at my touch. Broken pieces of polystyrene foam littered the park. My environmental karma score had just dropped by about ten million.
I sucked in a deep breath. A torrid ache permeated every inch of my being, and not just from my unintentional, tower-aided body slam into the ground.
Panting, I lifted my head—and found Kade forming a new magna-orb between his hands.
He unleashed it.
Light burst across my vision at the same moment a figure dropped out of nowhere and landed beside me. “Ori te formo cupolam!”
A watery-blue dome arched over us an instant before Kade’s attack struck. The shield rippled with a silvery luminescence.
“Kit!”
For a second, I gawked at Lienna. Logically, I knew she must’ve jumped off the nearby Snack Shack, but my logical brain was taking a short break, leaving me to marvel at her miraculous arrival.
Though blood streaked her face, her eyes were bright with resolve as she grabbed my arm and helped extricate me from the heap of steel-textured foam.
I wanted to pull her into my arms and hug her. Instead, I wrapped my fingers tightly around hers.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“No ‘I love yous’ before death-defying stunts,” she whispered back.
Despite everything, I managed a smile and breathed deep, tuning my senses back to the energy beneath me.
Side by side with Lienna, her shimmering shield between us and imminent incineration, I turned to face my nemesis and his horde of evil minions.