The portal wasn’t opened by someone returning from the second encampment. They would have come through the already open one.
“Ianto, they’re coming!” I shouted.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Ellery
Releasingthe rope tied to my cow, I ran behind the animal and shoved it toward the portal. It would have to decide if it wanted to live or die, but saving Ianto was my bigger priority.
Turning away from the cow that staggered toward our portal, I prepared to devastate the wave of guards pouring out of the new portal. I didn’t give them a chance to get their bearings before I unleashed my lightning.
It smashed into the front row, lifted them off their feet, and flung them back. Smoke coiled from the tops of the guards’ heads and their empty eye sockets.
Before more could arrive, I twisted my hands until my lightning became caught in a tornado that spun it across the ground. I pushed the funnel toward the portal as more soldiers emerged.
As the tornado moved across the ground, lightning fired from the funnel as it tore up chunks of earth, ripped trees from the ground, and lifted houses from their branches. The debrisit churned up pummeled the guards as they came through the portal.
They screamed as they scrambled for cover from the monstrosity bearing down on them. Some tried to flee back into the portal, but with more emerging from the opening, there was nowhere for them to go.
The roar of the tornado and the crash of the obstacles it plowed over mirrored the wrath burning within me. Ever since they took Ryker, I hadn’t had the time to stop and think about what they did to him; my focus had been on saving those who remained.
But now I could think about the finger burning a hole inside my pocket and the things already done to him… as well as those soon to occur. I could think about thesefuckerswho’d torn our lives apart, forced us into these woods, and still sought to takemorefrom us.
And as I thought about them, my power grew until the wind whipped my hair around me and lightning encompassed not only the tornado but me. It didn’t lift me off the ground; I retained enough control to keep that from happening, but nothing would deter me from releasing the revenge burning within me.
Even as I pushed the tornado toward the portal, I gathered another blast of wind that whipped across the clearing. It extinguished the remaining fires as its funnel gathered the fallen debris, lifted it, and swept it all toward the portal.
Screams came from all around me as Ianto released the cow and shoved it toward freedom. He ran for me as more guards were swept up by the twister, hit by lightning, and flung into the nearby trees.
Their broken, smoldering bodies fell to the ground as the tornado grew higher. Another one descended from the sky to connect with it. When the power of its suction intensified, someof the guards who had scrambled for cover were dragged away from their hiding places.
Their fingers tore up dirt as they clawed at the earth. Their feet dangled in the air before the funnel whipped them into it. I didn’t see many of them again, but some still screamed when they were flung away from it.
I didn’t feel joy over their destruction, but a strange sense of satisfaction filled me. They may not have been the ones to take Ryker’s finger—I was sure that was his father—but they were here to hurt us, and I wouldnottolerate that.
As the power continued to swell within and around me, I pulled on the cool moisture in the air to form large balls of hail that pummeled anyone who evaded the tornado’s wrath. The lightning crackling around me created a white blaze that engulfed me as Ianto skidded to a halt beside me.
“Ellery, we have to go!” he bellowed. “They’re opening more portals, and if they catch you, Ryker’s doomed!”
He was right, but trying to repress all the hatred and frustration I’d unleashed was proving more difficult than I’d anticipated as my body thrummed with the urge to destroy them all. To my right and left, I spotted the two new portals they’d opened into the clearing; there were probably more behind me too.
“Ellery!”
Ianto reached for me before snatching his hands back. Touching me now was a good way to get himself killed.
“Go!” I shouted at him. “Go!”
“No… I’m… you!”
The howling wind sucked away most of his words, but I caught part of them. He wouldn’t leave without me, and if he stayed, the guards would eventually succeed in overwhelming us.
If that happened, they wouldn’t keep Ianto alive. Once they had me, they’d have no use for him.
Behind the two new portals, I spotted more of them opening. I didn’t have time to shift my tornado or create a new one as guards poured from the openings.
There were too many of them coming from too many directions. If they opened a portal between us and the one waiting for us, we were doomed.
And not only would we be condemned, but so would all of those at the second encampment. The guards would pour into that place and kill everyone they could.
