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“That will never happen,” Abaddon growls.
“We have an idea to stop it,” Layden shouts. “But you have to trust us. Together.”
Abaddon looks Kharon’s way, then to Remus. Trusting their younger brother doesn’t seem like anything either of them are keen to do. But considering they can’t use their usual ways to combat this enemy, there’s little to do except stomp around in futility while Phoenix, the other woman, and Layden scramble, taking positions around the circle.
Phoenix heads to the center, lifting her arms up toward the sky.
The other woman runs forward with a knife. She slices along Phoenix’s palm and then, together, they drip the blood in a line at Phoenix’s feet. Layden offers his hand, and she does the same, squeezing it out in a line behind Phoenix. Then, he and the woman take positions in front of and behind Phoenix.
The woman begins chanting, and Phoenix lifts her arms even higher.
“What is this?” I ask, bewildered. Yeah, everything I’ve encountered with the boys up until this point has been wild, but at least it was still helicopters and missiles—things of this earth that I understood. It finally sinks in that I’m looking at straight-up magic about to be done in front of me.
Thunder suddenly cracks overhead, and the chalk-marked runes around the circle light up with blue light just like they did when they were pouring out of Layden’s hands earlier, but all on their own. Not only that, but they begin spinning—some interlocked circles move one way, and others spin in the opposite direction.
The wind picks up. Kharon and Abaddon hurry to get their women back to the safety of the courtyard walls, but thankfully, Remus is just as enthralled as I am with what’s happening.
As the wind whips faster in a circle, I realize it’s becoming a small twister. Yes, the wind stirs my hair, but it’s nothing to the way the clothes of the three in the circle are being all but torn from their body.
I gasp when Phoenix lifts off the ground. She doesn’t go high, but her heels lift first, and then the tips of her toes hover over the cobblestones as she begins to levitate. A foot. Five feet. Ten.
She stays there and begins to speak, eyes closed. “I call to you, spirits. I call to the hungry ones. Who can help us?”
“Does she even know what she’s doing?” Abaddon asks loudly, having returned after getting his wife and child to relative safety.
“Leave her alone,” Vlad snaps, and we all stand and watch as Phoenix floats in the middle of the large, lit-up circle amid the wind, hair whipping this way and that. She frowns, and even though her eyes are closed, it’s like she’s looking at something the rest of us can’t see.
Moments later, the furrow in her brow disappears, and she looks excited, saying, “Yes! Yes, I see you! Come over, Devourer. Come near and devour all of it!”
“What the fuck?” Remus says. “What the hell is she calling?”
“I don’t know,” Abaddon says, “but it doesn’t sound good.
I back up a few steps but don’t run away. I’m oddly transfixed by what I’m seeing, and none of the others are running. Granted, they’re immortal beings, and I’m not, but I still don’t move as I watch Phoenix start to frown. Her eyes open suddenly, and she looks to Layden and the other woman.
“They can’t get through!” she shouts. “The circle doesn’t have enough power—either that or I don’t.”
Layden starts running along one of the inner circles, laying down more bright blue-lit runes, but Phoenix just keeps shaking her head. “They can’t cross the plane from theirs to this one. We didn’t have enough time to—”
She sounds frustrated, despairing even.
“I will give you the power to cross planes,” Vlad hisses. He’s standing nearest me, and I’m not sure anyone else hears him. But when Remus’s head swings his way, I realize I’m wrong. It doesn’t matter, though; it’s too late. Vlad has already taken off. He’s moving so fast that I barely see a streak of movement.
And then, maybe a blink later, he’s standing beside Kharon and the other women. I’m so startled by the quick movement, I’m not sure what I’m seeing until it’s all over.
Vlad all but climbs Kharon and sinks his fangs into the big man’s neck. Remus is halfway across the courtyard before Kharon manages to fling the much smaller Vlad away from himself.
But by that point, the storm in the circle has suddenly turned from baby twister to cyclone.
“They’re coming!” Phoenix shouts. “I’ve opened the portal!”
My head swings back and forth between Kharon grabbing at his neck and the increasingly wild tornado contained in the circle. Lightning crashes every other second, and the other woman is flung outward, landing on the cobblestones near me. Then Layden’s body comes out next, toppling end over end. I hurry over to help her up. She clutches her head and stares wide-eyed back at the cyclone in dread.
“Are you okay?” I try to ask, but she just keeps shaking her head.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” she says.
“What wasn’t supposed to happen?”
