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Hairline cracks formed in the ward. The witch on the left screamed.
With the sound of a collapsing building, the ward fractured and broke. Chunks of it floated to the ground, like weightless shards of foot-thick ice, melting into nothing as they fell.
The vampires charged, clearing the fence with laughable ease.
The three lines of magic users collapsed onto the ground.
The bloodsuckers swarmed the bunkers.
Before the first mage rolled to his feet, the vamps emerged, their claws bloody.
On the left a shapeshifter tossed a rock at the strip of plowed ground. A green fiery glow shot from the ground, licking the stone. The rock sparked with white. The glow vanished, leaving the stone, smoking on the ground. Trapped. That was what I thought.
Behind us, the shamans conferred and began to chant in unison, their voices like a beat of a human heart, rhythmic but overlapping. Magic flowed from the shamans and condensed directly in front of us. The mercs heaved the platforms forward. The boards slid over the plowed ground and froze, suspended three inches above the dirt by the shamans' magic.
The wereboar on my left roared, snorting and pawing the ground.
The four boars in our view raised their heads at the challenge.
The wereboar lowered his massive head and charged across the makeshift bridge with a fierce screech, hurtling like a cannon ball.
For a split second the Calydonian boars stared in shock, and then as one they gave chase. The group galloped behind the buildings, out of sight.
Mahon started forward. We followed. The bear picked up speed, at first moving slowly, then faster and faster, until I was running full speed in the middle of a stampede.
A boar shot out from behind the concourse. The bear on the left peeled off to intercept. Another boar came from the right, a grizzled scarred male. Eduardo sped into a charge and rammed him head on. The boar and buffalo went down in a tangle of tusks and hooves.
I could barely see. The huge furry backs blocked my view. A snort, and another shapeshifter went down. Again. Again. And again. Mahon and Curran made a sharp left and suddenly I saw the tower, a hundred yards in front of us, and three giant pigs rocketing toward us like shots from a sling.
"Get her to the tower," Curran roared, and charged toward the pigs. Mahon followed. Our armored barrier was gone. It was just me, Bob, the alphas, and a handful of renders.
We ran. The air turned to fire in my lungs. Blood pounded through my temples. Eighty yards.
Sixty.
Forty. I pulled Slayer from its sheath.
Above us, within the ward, magic streamed from the tower, unfolding in iridescent feathery smudges. The plume. We had twenty minutes before the device went active.
To the left, a squat building flew by, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a huge boar rushing at us, mouth open, tusks ready to gore. He looked as big as a house. Vicious eyes glared at me.
I sprinted, squeezing every last drop out of my muscles.
The boar loomed, closer and closer.
Twenty-five yards. The boar was on top of us. We wouldn't make it.
Jennifer spun toward the pig, baring her teeth. Daniel's clawed hand closed on her shoulder. He shoved her aside and flung himself at the boar. The werewolf's claws raked across the pig's head, gouging the left eye. The boar squealed in mad fury. His tusk caught Daniel in the stomach. The boar shot forward, half-blind, and smashed into the ward. Daniel's blond head hit the pale glow. The back of his skull exploded, his face still intact, his blue eyes staring straight at us, and then both the werewolf and the boar disintegrated in a flash of blinding white.
Ten yards.
Jennifer screamed a single hoarse howl of pain, ripped straight from her heart.
I sliced Slayer across my forearm, coating the blade with my blood, and rammed the ward, sinking all of my magic into the power word. "Hesaad." Mine.
Agony ripped through me in a fiery cascade.
The ward shuddered. Veins of pure, intense red shot through the magic barrier. It shattered and the shapeshifters burst through it, smashing into the tower.
I stumbled forward, trying to hold on to reality. Don't pass out, don't pass out ...
Derek ripped the tower's door off its hinges. A man raised a crossbow, blocking our way. Jennifer lunged at him. The bolt took her in the thigh. She ripped the man's head off, pulled the bolt out, and bounded inside, where more shooters waited on the stairway.
We climbed the tower, step by step. For the first couple of minutes Jennifer was in front venting her fury, and then she took off into the side corridor raging, and someone else took point. We killed and killed and climbed, and the stairs behind us ran red with blood. A door loomed ahead. The shapeshifters crashed through it, drunk on blood fumes and anger. People spun to us, a familiar face among them. Shane. I lunged and disemboweled him with one precise strike. He clutched at his stomach, trying to hold the slippery ribbons of his intestines inside. I sliced across his chest and neck and kicked him to the ground. He crashed at my feet, bleeding to death.
The device loomed in front of me, a cylinder of gleaming metal, encrusted with gems and inlaid with glyphs and patterns, spinning magic from its top in feathery glowing strands. A control console rose next to it, bristling with levers. Three gauges, long narrow rectangles half-filled with pale light, glowed above the console.
Around the cylinder, the shapeshifters tore into the Keepers like sharks into baby seals. I pulled Kamen's instructions from the pocket of my jeans and unfolded them, careful to keep my bloody fingerprints off the text. According to Kamen, shutting down the machine required pushing the levers in a precise sequence. He said it would take anywhere from three to ten minutes. I had no idea how many minutes I had left.
Don't think about it; just do it.
I pushed the first lever. The gauge on the left turned blue. If it turned bright green, the device would become unstable and we'd all vanish in an explosion of magic. I jerked my hand back.
The gauge glowed with blue, slowly growing lighter and lighter.
Seconds ticked by. Come on. If I ever commissioned a world-destroying device, it would have a two-second shutoff: turn the key and that's it.
Come on.
The gauge turned white. I pushed the second lever. The third gauge shot into blue-green. I held my breath.
The light shone, holding at the almost-green mark.
Turn white. Turn white, damn you.
Behind me someone snarled.
White. Turn white.
The gauge paled, sliding into pale gray. Good enough.
I pulled the first lever again. All three gauges remained steadily pale.
Third lever.
Second lever. Third lever again. When this was over, I would screw Kamen's head off his shoulders like a cap off a beer bottle. First lever.
