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Mallory cried out again.
“I’m here!” I called out over the crackle of Sorcha’s power. “And I’ll help you. Just concentrate! Don’t let her use you!”
Mallory’s entire body was rigid, and she began to shake from the effort.
I didn’t know what else to do, how else to help her in the war she was waging with herself, to block out the magic and the sound of chanting. I began to sing the only tune I could think of.
“I’m sorry!” I called out, and screamed out words I hoped I’d never have to repeat. “Never gonna give you up! Never gonna let you down!”
“We’ve found the crucible,” Jeff said, his voice crackling in our ears. “Going to destroy it!”
They were a moment too late.
Sorcha kindled the magic. Thick swirls of sickly green power began to compose themselves in the air, spinning and blossoming, and obscuring her completely behind them. The air filled with the chemical scents of the city.
Mallory shuddered. “No,” she said. “No, no, no, no, no!”
“Get out of there!” called a voice over the communicator.
“I’m here, right here,” I said, and she curled into me. “You’re stronger than she is. Never gonna run around and desert you!”
“Merit!”
“Here!” I called out, leading Catcher and Ethan to us. They scrambled up the side of the hill.
“Sorcha’s been draining Mallory,” I said as Catcher lifted her into his arms.
Ethan offered a hand, helped pull me to my feet. “I’m okay,” I said. “Just a little unsteady.” The earth shuddered, sending ripples across the lagoon’s surface. “And that is not helping.”
“To the evac point!” Ethan yelled, as another concussion shook us, and the cloud of smoke and magic blossomed larger yet.
Catcher scrambled down the hill, snow flying as he tried to keep his balance. We followed suit, hands linked together, my vision not quite focused, and slipping every few feet in snow that was becoming slushier.
A hot and hazy wind blew across the island, carrying the scents of sulfur and smoke, and warming the air by at least twenty degrees. Cracks echoed across the island as the ice in Burnham Harbor began to split with the sudden temperature increase.
“The snow and ice are melting!” I said. “Be careful!”
We made it back to the looping trail around the lagoon when a sound cut through the darkness, something hard and sharp, a blade meeting stone, that sound bouncing against the city’s glass and steel and echoing back again.
It was loud. It was close. And it sounded very, very angry.
It screamed again, and we clapped our hands over our ears, but the scream still pierced through, furious and cutting. The sound wrapped claws around my heart and squeezed, and for a moment I couldn’t find my breath.
Sorcha had made a monster of the Egregore. And her monster was coming for us.
“I hope to God that is Chris Pratt riding a velociraptor,” Catcher said.
“I don’t think we’re that lucky,” I said.
; Sorcha was focused on the sorcerers, and she kept moving forward through waist-high snow on the other side of the hill, into the valley where the lagoon reflected back magic. She was moving closer to the lasso the sorcerers still managed to hold aloft, but they were having trouble keeping it stable. It jolted and jerked between them, more live wire than lasso.
Sorcha aimed a fireball at Baumgartner, who fended it off with a shot of his own. But he lost hold of the lasso, which sizzled and disappeared into the air.
“The containment field is down,” Mallory called into the comm.
The immediate threat minimized, Sorcha turned back to us, began tramping up the hill. I pushed Mallory, obviously exhausted, behind me and bared my sword—and my teeth—at Sorcha.
“I’ll throw down my sword if you throw down your magic,” I said. “And we’ll have a good old-fashioned free-for-all.”
