Chapter Sixteen #3
I lifted my cloak and ducked behind the folds, knowing its position was paramount to our safety.
Just so, or the energies would move laterally.
I pointed the staff where the drone would appear as it dropped down the side of the building, white on white, no lights.
But leaking massive energies. I hadn’t fought in the war and had limited firsthand experience with EEBs, the extradimensional energy-based things, but combined with basic general knowledge I had picked up, and the potentialities offered by my gift, I was learning fast.
Red and sickly green magic indicated one (or more) демон в коробке, Russian for a powerful interdimensional energy, trapped in a box.
демонs were far more powerful than green sprites or chorts, or even shedims. These energies were more powerful than a single Bes.
If there were several big demons in this drone, the bomb could take down the entire city.
The immediate futures didn’t claim that. But—
Behind me, EJ whistled up a protective working, an air witch’s version of a wyrd shield.
The huge drone dropped lower, appearing out of the falling snow and the dark, visible to my seeing working as raw energy and multicolored lights. It was huge. The futures coalesced into one. “Now,” I murmured into comms.
“Target in position. Grizz, take the shot,” Alex said.
A shot rang out. Two more.
Everything happened at once.
The drone lurched to the side.
Red and green light blasted out. Blinding me for an instant.
A shock wave hit the building. Hit me. I staggered, breath knocked out. The energies deflected by my cloak bent and angled down. Toward the parking area instead of past me to hit my brother.
The drone wumphed down. Two vehicles died and snow flew upward as the демон в коробке was fully released. Just one. But a massive signature of malignant, intelligent, raw power.
I pressed the small stone on the staff’s side.
The black emptiness of the pocket universe opened.
From the parking lot, black energies, charred scarlet power, bilious green, the stench of burned bones swirled into the whirling snow, searching for a host. I willed it to sense me, to search for me specifically.
When it didn’t, with my free hand, I tossed an amulet at the демон.
The witch working opened and a blue orb appeared. Simple, easy to make. A lure.
The демон в коробке whirled in the air, an eight-foot-tall tornado, still growing. It reached for the orb and sucked the illumination working into it. Tasting it.
Through its energies, the EEB found me. Shot toward me.
I tilted the staff. The black emptiness of an entire barren universe drank at the fringes of the demon.
Began to siphon the EEB into it. Tentacles of black fire shot out as the demon fought, trying to regather its energies, trying to spin itself away.
My hand ached and froze as the EEB fought the anti-energies pulling at it.
The demon flailed. Fighting.
The staff took it in. All of it.
Big. But…just one. Decoy.
I released the trigger stone. My hand ached. Burned. I didn’t look at it.
The futures coalesced into one. I said, “Employing Everhart toys.”
“Toss at will,” Alex said.
I threw three of the amulets I had hastily made, to the front of the building, past EJ, into the snowfall. Three small drones appeared. Two of the drones stopped, hovered, tilting in midair as Everhart toys made the tech unstable.
Grizz took out one drone from above. EJ took out one, his head whipping around to make sure collateral damage wasn’t an issue. A third drone zipped toward us, fast. Villetti took it out with his police energy weapon. The sound of gunfire and the zizzing sound of the blaster echoed.
I pressed the small stone in the staff. My knees nearly buckled as the place of darkness opened again. Wider. Deeper. A maw of darkness that pulled in everything around it. Snow. Wind. The glowing black energy of demons. Too many. Dozens. Hundreds.
“Get inside,” I screamed.
The stench of brimstone and burned bones filled the air. Orange-green light and motes of dark power crowded the porch.
Gorge rose in my throat. My hand burned-ached-froze. The pain shot up my arm and through my body like lightning. My heart beat an uneven rhythm, bounding against my ribs. I squinted my eyes against the brilliance of the demon energies.
EJ ducked back inside, behind the wards of the apartment.
But Villetti…
Hadn’t moved inside. Idiot man was being a hero. He fired at two more drones.
They spat and cracked and fell.
I struggled upright, through a drift of snow. Stumbled. Almost lost the trigger stone, my fingers numb yet throbbing with pain. I couldn’t feel the staff. I took it in both hands, both thumbs pressing on the trigger, holding it in position. My right hand ached, joining the agony of the left.
I kicked at the snow. Fell over Lee, my staff outstretched, my cloak over us both.
The demons—thousands of them—formed a sideways whirlwind of green and orange light, spinning with scarlet and black motes.
Screaming, keening, sprites, chorts, and a Bes had been pulled out of their interdimensional world and trapped in the drones’ containment vessel prisons, then liberated in a blinding moment of freedom.
The stench of burning bones stole the air and I fought a coughing fit. My body shook. Tears froze on my face.
The EEBs wrenched and spun, fighting the staff’s power. But they were being pulled through the air of this dimension, and into an interdimensional prison.
Lightning flashed from within the mass of whirling energies. A pale icy glow formed in the center of the whirlwind. A ball of blue plasma.
Too much energy. Too much power. I screamed a warning, the sound lost in the blare of EEBs.
Lightning cracked out from the plasma. Hit the windowed doors to my side.
I caught a glimpse of EJ drawing the energies of the lightning strike into the iron supports that fed the wards, using the power instead of allowing it to harm the building.
The plasma ball dimmed for a second, then glowed brighter.
The possible futures had changed when I fell onto Lee, shifting cards in the hands of a drunken gambler. So many. All bad.
The energies that didn’t belong here created a wind. A storm in miniature. Lightning arced out of the ball of plasma. Slammed into the building next door. Crackled and spat. Energy crawled across the building’s facade.
My arms were shaking, hands frozen by the energies I was handling.
Eyes burned by the dark light. I wouldn’t be able to hold on for long.
The whirlwind grew. Taking everything into itself, even matter.
Two deck chairs crunched into a mangled ball.
Clay pots ready for spring herbs collapsed.
A tea mug. All were swept up, slamming into my staff and disappearing within, along with the demons. I sat up.
I hadn’t guessed that matter could be taken into the void. I had to keep it pointed away from people. Shitshitshitshit.
Wordless, I screamed with the effort of holding on to the staff.
But the drones weren’t done. “Lee! To our side!” I shouted.
Another drone zipped in beneath the porch roof. Villetti raised his weapon. Tried to aim through the tornado winds.
A small clay pot hit the staff. The pot cracked and fragmented.
The staff bucked. Sucking demons out of the human world. Taking them elsewhere.
Villetti’s body jerked. He’d been caught in the staff’s energies.
Pulled by the staff, Lee slid away from me, through the snow, toward the metal tip. Sitting upright, his back to me, bent forward, toward the new threat. Two-hand stance, he fired a steady blast at the last drone. Ignoring his own danger. Shouting the drone’s location into his comms.
A shotgun sounded from a higher apartment balcony.
The drone exploded. More demons were swept into the staff.
I fell forward, landing on my chest in the deep snow beside Villetti. I stretched ahead. Holding the energy-sucking, life-devouring staff past him.
The darkness of the staff’s alternate universe was wide open. I hadn’t expected it to do this, to be so powerful. Its own energies reached again for Villetti. For his life.
He jerked. A spasm shaking him like a seizure. He dropped flat. His body bucking.
I rolled over him, crushing him into the snow.
Holding him in place. My null cloak once again covered us both.
Weakly, his hands pulled the cloak tighter around us.
And still the demons came. A roar of orange light and black motes cascaded over us, the greenish shade of old, decaying bodies, the stench of graveyards, charred bones, brimstone. A maelstrom.
My arms trembled. My breath came in shallow gasps. My spine arched with a wrenching spasm from the strain. And still they came.
Beneath me, Villetti stirred. He slithered around underneath me, sitting upright. Pulled me onto his lap, my back against his chest. His arms, still weak from the loss of his life force, extended around me and clasped his hands around mine, helping me hold the staff.
“Feckin’ Staff of Doom,” he said into my ear.
I gasped a laugh. Breathing, huffing as if I raced for my life. And his.
Sounding stronger, he added, “Grizz says that was the last mini-drone. Almost done, sweetheart. Almost. Hang on. We’ve got this.”
Sweetheart. I laughed, the sound high-pitched and not quite sane, my cackle buried beneath the roar of the demon-wind. Tears pooled in my eyes, froze on my face, some whipped away by the vortex of the staff.
Another minute went by. At least. It felt like an hour. I trembled as if I had a high fever. Or was dying of hypothermia. Only Villetti’s strength and warmth and his hands wrapped around mine allowed me to hang on.
Distantly, I heard the sound of EJ’s flute playing a strength working, but most of the working’s power was ripped away, along with the dark energies.
With a crack, the last of the power was pulled inside. The sound echoed down the street.