Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Kit
Attacks rained down on Lienna’s shield. Kade’s jackboots surrounded us, a pack of rabid hounds impersonating mythics, and they pummeled the watery-blue barrier with the slavering mindlessness of beasts.
With its infusion of archmythic power, the shield held.
Lienna stood beside me, her Rubik’s cube in a white-knuckled grip, but my attention was locked on Kade.
I wrapped a Funhouse warp around every cell in his sick brain and spun the mirrors so fast he had to brace his feet wide to keep himself steady, but the hallucination wasn’t fully consuming his senses.
Still warping, I telekinetically lifted a colorful train car from the same ride as the locomotive Kade had attempted to crush me with and flung it at him.
He caught it with his own telekinesis and hurled it toward the shield, then conjured a fireball the size of a smart car and sent that our way too.
I diverted the train car, letting it plow through the jackboots, but it barely made a dent in their numbers. There were so damn many of them. Half a second later, Kade’s fireball exploded against the shield. I flipped the Funhouse warp upside-down.
Pathetic, Morris! Kade sent agony ricocheting through my head as he banished my warp from his mind. Do you think your little tricks will save you?
He stomped his foot, and the ground under his heel shattered. A zigzagging chasm snaked through the asphalt toward me and Lienna. His jackboots scrambled to get out of the way, several falling into the fissure created by their merciless leader.
I concentrated on the pavement just beyond the dome shield. It burned red-hot, melting into lava. As Kade’s fissure met my volcanomagery, the molten rock flooded into the gap. Toxic smoke billowed into the air.
“Break the shield!” Kade roared as he raised his hands, conjuring another hissing magna-orb. He drew his hands apart, filling the space between them with the expanding sphere.
Flames erupted over Kade’s head and shoulders.
The magna-orb lost its shape and nearly exploded in his hands before he hurled it at the shield.
It glanced off the dome and hit the larger-than-life gladiator figure posed on the nearest ride.
As Maximus disintegrated, I could only assume he was not entertained.
Kade swiped the fire away from his head, revealing pink skin sheened with sweat from his fiery face wash. His eyes fixed on his attacker with murderous rage.
Two dozen mythics charged headlong into the jackboots surrounding me and Lienna—a group that included Robin, Tori, Ezra, Kai and others from the Crow and Hammer.
Standing at the back, his sword pointed at Kade, was Aaron Sinclair.
He gave his blade a sharp twist, and another blast of flame ignited over Kade.
That was a world-class pyromage for you. Even with the power gap, his skill was enough to stop an archmythic in his tracks—at least for a moment or two.
Mouth twisting in a sneer, Kade flung a magna-orb at my friends, the attack blasting through a line of unsuspecting jackboots on the way to its target. The Crow and Hammer crew scattered, and the orb exploded against the ground, throwing Aaron and several others off their feet.
“Drop the shield!” I called to Lienna.
A beam from one of those goddamn steel artifacts slammed into the shield, adding to the nonstop magic missiles bombarding it.
“We’ll be exposed,” Lienna shouted back.
I gestured wildly at the crater left behind by Kade’s orb and our allies recovering from the blast. “If we don’t give Kade a better target, he’ll kill them all in no time.”
“Shit.” She gritted her teeth. “Okay.”
“On my signal.”
From the cool humid air, I created an ice spear, just like the ones Saber wielded with unbridled violence. Then I sent an earthquake rippling through the decimated pavement outside the shield. The SI agents surrounding us staggered and fell in waves.
“Now!” I yelled.
She twisted her cube, the shield vanished, and I pitched the ice spear as hard as I could, giving it a telekinetic boost as it rocketed into Kade’s armored side.
Kade drew in a flood of energy. Metal grinding and snapping, a circular ride shaped like a fifty-foot-diameter wagon wheel lurched into the air.
Kade shot me a sadistic leer as he launched the ride over his minion horde, propelling it with his telekinesis, intending to crush all my friends in a single brutal move.
We both knew I wasn’t strong enough to alter the trajectory of the ride while he had his beefy telekinetic mitts on it, just as I hadn’t been able to shift the falling tower.
“Lienna—” I began.
“On it!” She reconfigured her cube, her new rune glowing half as brightly as when we’d created it. “Ori gravitatis maximum inicio globum!”
A scorching dart burnished with silvery power shot into the air, zooming straight for the gargantuan ride-turned-frisbee.
It struck, and the black hole expanded in a flash—larger than anything Lienna had ever conjured before.
The air pressure dropped so fast that pain shot through my inner ears.
The ebony sphere twisted and crumpled the ride as it was forced into the heart of the black hole.
A curtain of broken pavement flew into the air, and concession stand awnings and nearby jackboots whipped into the sky.
The gravity bomb blinked out, releasing the compacted ride to plummet to the ground and pulverize Kade’s men who’d been caught in the spell. Billows of choking dust rolled out from the impact, obscuring my vision.
I focused my clairsentience and found Kade’s mind—his retreating mind.
“Where the hell are you going?” I growled.
I sprinted into the dust cloud, navigating the debris and destruction half-blind. As I jumped over a smoldering hunk of metal, I landed on a foam-erly steel truss, which collapsed under my weight.
A hand caught my elbow and pulled me upright before I could fall.
Zylas’s glowing crimson eyes met mine as he released my arm. “I will protect your back.”
“Thanks,” I said tersely, facing the fissure I’d previously filled with lava. A bubble of molten rock spat onto the pavement with a loud hiss. Inhaling through the deep, weary ache in my nerves, I drew in energy and concentrated. The magma solidified, sealing the chasm shut.
I broke into a run. Zylas swerved away, streaking into the haze to dispatch a group of jackboots, then zipped in the other direction to take out a pair of SI mages.
Kade was a glaring red dot on my inner radar, moving east, then north.
Ahead of me, tangles of mythics and SI agents clashed.
The blast wave of someone’s spell ripped through a group brawling near a helicopter ride, taking out combatants from both sides.
Rushing past them, I sidestepped a soot-stained woman struggling to drag her bloodied friend to safety.
I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t slow down. Not when Kade was so close.
Silvery-blue light shone through the settling haze.
Zylas grabbed my arm and yanked me sideways with lightning-fast reflexes. The magna-blast whipped past us, hit the ground, and exploded with enough force to throw us off our feet. Zylas was up again in an instant, and I was almost as quick.
Kade appeared a dozen paces away, smiling. “I told you I would kill you, Morris. But I won’t stop there. The moment your burning corpse stops twitching, I will hunt down every one of your friends and peel the flesh from their bones.”
Arrayed behind him was a fresh wave of SI agents, half of them armed with large steel artifacts. The ones closest to Kade had infernuses hanging around their necks—a lot more infernuses than I liked to see.
Crimson light flared as twenty demons materialized in front of their contractors.
“Ch,” Zylas muttered beside me.
As the demons lumbered forward, fifty overpowered artifacts were pointed at me. Kade raised his hands—a flaming boulder was suspended above one palm and a block of ice above the other.
I dug into the energy spiraling around us and dragged as much as I could away from Kade—and felt the vibrations shift. Kade tensed, confusion ghosting across his features.
Suddenly, the energy was singing to me in perfect Kit harmony. Power surged into my body like it belonged there, filling every atom of my being.
I felt more than heard the thud of galloping hooves. I couldn’t see my druid harbingers—but they were close by.
Kade hurled his double elemental assault.
With power coursing through me, I tossed a bolt of lightning at the oncoming attacks.
It split to strike both, blasting them apart before forking again to smite the advancing demons—and it kept going.
The lightning split with each target struck, leaping from demon to contractor to SI agent, rushing through the horde in a tumult of thunderclaps.
Kade’s face reddened with fury.
The beating of hooves grew louder, and I sensed them coming—my friends.
An enormous fae stallion wreathed in shadow charged down the path where the fissure had once been, the Crystal Druid on its back.
Riding behind Zak, holding on to his shoulder with her cube in one hand, was Lienna.
Tori, Robin, and the other Crow and Hammer members followed on foot, and with them were even more mythics.
Some were limping, cuts and burns marring their skin.
Dirt and blood had become their uniform, but they were all still standing.
I felt Kade’s intent, his attention on my friends. I jerked my telepathic focus to his gray matter as he hurled a command drenched in irresistible mentalism at their minds.
Kill each oth—
I hit him with a Blackout warp.
It lasted only for a fraction of a second, just long enough to break his concentration, and then I swapped it to a Funhouse warp.
Instead of distorted reflections of his surroundings, I filled the mirrors with his own face twisting and raging impotently.
He could see through it, but it was a distraction.
Zylas darted forward, claws flashing toward the demons, half of them immobilized after my chain-lightning zapped their contractors.
Ranged attacks from my friends and allies flew past me to crash into the wall of SI agents.
From somewhere way behind us, a sizzling whoosh accelerated rapidly—and a small missile flew over my head toward Kade.
What unhinged lunatic was firing a rocket launcher in the city?
Actually, I knew exactly which tall, crass smuggler with a pompadour haircut had brought an RPG to a magic fight.
The rocket’s trajectory was too high, so I yanked it down with a telekinetic tug—and Kade hastily constructed a dirt barrier around himself. The warhead detonated, and the fireball punched through the terramaged wall, engulfing Kade and taking out more SI agents.
Kade had survived yet again. More runes glowed on his chest plate, but most of it was charred, cracks running up the sides. The spiky pauldrons had broken away entirely.
As I sprinted at him, he conjured new fireballs.
I froze them into ice. He made the earth quake and I reality warped it into quicksand under his feet.
He levitated as he threw another magna-blast. I intercepted it with a fiberglass palomino from the merry-go-round, then threw several prancing ponies at him for good measure.
Meanwhile, my friends battled the SI agents all around us: Zylas ripping apart demons while Robin sent contractors flying with her artifacts; Vinny protecting Lienna’s back while she smacked foes around with myriad spells; Zak dealing damage with his glowing whip while his steed trampled every agent in his path; Tori and the mages mowing through opponents with elements and blades.
Kade and I drew closer together, a mere ten feet between us now, hurling magical attack after magical attack at each other in a constant struggle over the energy fueling us both.
The whole of my body burned, my lungs were on fire, and my limbs trembled. Surrounded by the corpses of his men, Kade raised quivering arms toward me, hatred twisting his face as he conjured another magna-orb.
Exhaustion dragged at me. I tried to think, to come up with a counterattack, a new magical assault that could break through his defenses and finally, finally end this.
Then I felt the ping of a familiar presence hit my clairsentience radar.
Kade stiffened.
He pivoted, aiming at a point off to my left, because he could sense the same thing I could: the hidden luminamage blinding him.
He fired his magna-orb, and Darius blinked into sight. Blythe and Tori flanked him on either side.
Stepping forward, Tori drew her arm back, a playing card in her hand.
As she shouted an incantation, she swung her arm and smacked the magna-orb right out of the park like Babe Ruth.
It sailed over the midway and collided with the hulking form of the wooden rollercoaster. Timbers exploded in every direction.
“Ori te formo cuspides!”
Lienna’s voice rang out right beside me, the rune on her Rubik’s cube glowing faintly as the super-powered spell erupted: a hundred inky missiles that bombarded Kade and all the agents around him, dampening their magic.
The energy beneath me rippled, and a dozen feet away on Kade’s left, a black stallion emerged from nowhere in a burst of flame. Its front hooves smashed unprepared SI agents out of the way as Saber, astride its back, raised a gleaming ice spear in her hand. She hurled it.
Kade jerked his arm up to deflect it—and a glowing amber whip snapped around his wrist, yanking it backward. Zak and his fae stallion loomed behind Kade. Saber’s ice spear hit the ground at Kade’s feet and ruptured into stalagmites that froze his legs in place.
Kade bared his teeth in rage, the energy beneath him swirling as he recovered from Lienna’s abjuration.
A glowing crimson rune appeared across his breastplate.
“Rumpas!” Robin shouted from just a few feet away on my other side, and Kade’s rune-marked armor cracked, lines spiderwebbing across the metal.
It was time to finish this.
I spread my arms. In front of me formed a sphere of pure magic just like the ones Kade had been chucking at me—except mine was bigger. Mine was more powerful than anything he’d ever created. More powerful than anything he could imagine with his sadistic little brain.
The energy beneath Kade and me spun in an invisible vortex as I sucked it in and directed it straight into the sphere, making the earth wheeze and tremble. Kade’s eyes widened as he felt it. The atmosphere seethed. I let out a manic laugh.
“Eat this, Kade,” I snarled.
Kade wrested a massive amount of energy into his body, but my super-sphere accelerated, rushing at him too fast for any defense. With a bellow, he threw his arms up in front of his face as my wrecking ball of primal power barreled straight into him.
It all disappeared. Everything went silent.
Kade opened his eyes.
And I drove my dagger into his chest.