I could see the blackness of the tunnel with my magic. It wasrotating, the speed increasing, tightening, like a net in shallow water, gathering the dark in the room into itself.
The EEBs released outside spiraled back into the room, moving like tattered, glowing fog, stinking of open sewers, burned bones, and charnel pits.
Two. Three. More. Too many.Chortsand sprites. Incubi and succubi. Powerful and wily. All whipped toward me on the winter wind. Foul colors and the stench of death and burning bones filled me when I breathed. I had thought it was over.
It’s never over…
Wicked thought. Not my own.
An icy, frigid wind of the arctic in perpetual winter hit me. The room spun. I trembled at the deep chill. Darkness pounded at my eyes, into my exposed skin.
I’m going to die.
Except Shiloh was suddenly there again, her outstretched hands wrapped around mine.
EJ reached out a hand and touched my foot, his fingers warm. He may have been humming a protective tune beneath the noise of battle.
Our humans nearby curled together for warmth. Hands over their ears against the blaring high-pitched shrieks of the EEBs. Breath blowing white in the unnatural cold and the darkness. Inhaling burned my lungs, froze my lungs.
Time passed.
I tucked my head against Shiloh.
Cousin Wacko shifted position to give me more protection from the blistering wind, even as her own body temperature dropped. If not for the vampire’s strength, I’d have lost my grip.
And still more demons came.
But…after forever, the winds slowed.
Died.
There were no more dark things.
An outer door banged with an echoing clatter.
I could hear breathless sobbing. It came from me.
My breath blew white clouds.
Shiloh peeled her hands away. Swore too softly to hear, and gently began to pull my right hand free from where it covered my left. As she did, I released the trigger, closing the black tunnel leading to the nothingness of the empty universe. The ley line had twined around the staff, a hairlike tendril touching the small piece of The Glob beneath the blue tigereye. The ley line powers unraveled and withdrew, back into me, pristine and clean and untouched by the powers of darkness.
The staff hadn’t tried to take any humans this time, nothing physical. Maybe it got its fill on the dark energies. I croaked a laugh at the thought of interdimensional indigestion. A cough racked me. I was sitting on the floor, uncertain when I landed there.
The last of the lights and the darkness and the stench of filth had vanished.
False warmth trickled against my frozen flesh.
Shiloh was no longer holding my hands. My cousin met my gaze, blinked, and collapsed to the floor, landing in an ungainly sprawl.
EJ groaned and rolled to his back. He looked dead, but was taking in huge lungfuls of air, each sounding pained.
I wavered. The staff clattered to the cement floor.
“Fuuuuck,” Shiloh muttered. “Kons…Kons…Ne’r mind. I’ll take care of ’em.”
A lot had happened in the seconds—hours?—I had been chasing ley line energies and sucking demons. I laughed at that too, but it was little more than a pained rasp.
Powered by the might of the Earth’s ley lines, my precogslammed into me. Iknew…things. The maths of all the magics in the room were clear, easy as addition and subtraction.
