Page 100 of Fatality on the Field

My assistant pins Jolene with the kind of look I’ve only ever seen deployed on the shitty staff members we’ve been getting rid of. “You need to go to the bathroom. I can escort you.”

Jolene, who up until now has rolled with the punches, blinks twice as she senses the absolute command in Channing’s voice. “Oh,” she says, shrinking a little. “Uh, yeah. I could give it a whirl. Show me the way. I’m sure it’s pretty swank in this insanely overfunded monstrosity, right? Let’s see how the one percent at State U pees, guys.”

The cats and dogs are on their feet in seconds and I wait for Channing, the animals, and the one person in the room who cannot witness this shit leave. I didn’t believe her men when they said she knows just enough to stay safe, but it’s clear they were right. Jolene sensed the mood and gave in with minimal coaxing or information, only a stern expression.

I doubt that’s her typical behavior when it’s not this kind of shit.

The second the suite door latches behind them, Kaspar goes full bodyguard mode. “It’s happening,” he says with a grimace.

The confirmation of his statement starts with a soft pattering, like the sound of heavy rain on metal. It's not water, though; it’s debris slapping onto the stadium roof and bouncing off the stands. The mist is so dense now that it’s impossible to see the field, but you can hear things hitting, the vibrations transmitting through the glass into the bones of the building. Then, with a noise that’s somewhere between a scream and a roar, the sky opens and a rain of—fuck, it’s not just objects; it’s bodies—starts to fall.

They hit the turf, rebound, and start to move in a way that’s both boneless and too precise for anything not supernatural. The crowd, which was standing paralyzed, erupts in a wild, primal stampede. The first wave surges up the stairs, trampling the slower and the less aware; the second wave goes straight for the field, as if the safest place is under the shadow, not away from it.

“Shit,” Teddy says as he runs a hand through his hair. “We need to move—now.”

Kaspar whirls from the window, all dragon rage and tactical focus. “Slade—break the window. I know you can and this is the fastest way we can exit to help corral whaever the fuck this is.”

My wings are straining to break out, so I give in and let the stone-gray span rip through the back of my suit. It’s not delicate; I shred the bespoke jacket and scatter the pieces like confetti. A combination of stone and scales spread over me in patches as I turn to the others. “We have to stop whatever this is. I’ve never seen anything like it, but there’s no way it’s going to leave survivors if we don’t.”

Liam’s wings fan out behind him, iridescent and lethal, the gold light on his skin has gone from subtle to blinding. Wolfie and Prez extend theirs as well, followed by the dragon who says, “We all need to go together.”

That’s when the demi steps out of the crowd, looking at Teddy, Lucas, Slade, Iggy, and Benjy. “Not a problem, gents. If you’ll follow me, I believe I can manage that part, eh?”

The first body hits the glass full-force and I make a face at the splatter it leaves—not blood, but something dark and stinking of ammonia and rust. The impact is followed by another, then another, until the whole window is flexing inward like the drumhead on a war kettle.

“Time to go,” I say as Des hisses loudly.

Doyle gives me a cheeky wink and a golden aura opens what I’m fairly certain is a fucking portal he made on his own. “Let’s move, lads. The stony lady is going to lose her slithery temper if we don’t listen, and I’m not one to mess with chits descended from that line. Off ye go.”

I watch the non-aerial guys go and turn to my siren. “Do it now.”

Slade opens his mouth and lets out a note so pure and perfect it slices the fog in half. The glass of the box warbles, goes opaque for a fraction of a second, then detonates outward in a shower of diamond-bright fragments. Air pressure rushes in, and with it, the cold, oily stink of the mist. There’s no time to check who’s still upright; we’re all through the opening headed for the sky to figure out what the fuck this giant thing is.

As we fall into formation, the last thing I register is the weightless moment just before we hit the turbulence, every muscle in my body screaming to hold on to the person next to me.

Of course this fucking thing didn’t come alone—it’s got friends.

fifty-nine

KASPAR

There’s a moment, every time, right at the edge of full shift, where the pain and the clarity overlap so cleanly I forget that even after centuries, it still hurts a little bit. I don’t do the full change in public very often, especially in this realm. Not because I can’t, or because I care about modesty, but because the first few seconds of the dragon are so violently present that every cell in my body tries to burn away the world and leave only what he wants. That’s to kill, protect, hunt, and defend whatever he deems ‘his’ and leave the rest as piles of fried jerky. Right now, in the thin upper air over the Tantalus Bowl, that’s the only objective I have—destroy enemies and secure those who are innocent, particularly my family and their friends.

It’s a difficult situation to manage, much less control when the stakes are so high.

For a half-second, the coil of instinct that is Kaspar-in-the-scales wants to whip lightning through the nearest target and leave nothing standing without caution. I clamp it down when Kaspar-in-the-skull is still driving, at least until I have a better idea what we’re up against. Saving innocent fans and such requires more brain power than I usually have when my dragon is unleashed, so I have to force the beast to listen as I zoom through the wind and rain of solid objects falling.

My vision sharpens instantly in this form, which makes it easier to do. The old myths have it wrong about most of my kind—it’s not just seeing farther, it’s seeing more. Whereas the surface-world calls this twilight, to dragon eyes it’s high noon, every contour backlit with a thousand shades of grey, blue, and violent ultraviolet. The mist that pours over the stadium is a living silhouette against the running crowds and the corpses that tumble bonelessly to the turf. I see the mysterious shadow thing above us glowing like a cuttlefish turned inside out. I’ve seen necromancers, shadow mages, and even shifters whose forms are built from what they killed rather than what birthed them.

This isn’t that—no, it’s worse.

I test the current, feeling the thermal over the stadium before I head in its direction. It’s full of boiling air, all updraft and unpredictable chop, but it’s child’s play to ride in my enormously large dragon form. From hundreds of feet up, the field below is an experiment in the failure of logistics that Channing couldn’t possibly have planned for. The exits are jammed; the first ten rows of fans are already climbing each other to avoid the mist. There’s a bottleneck at the west ramp and it’s making the stampede worse, not better. Not one staffer or cop is making a dent in the panic, which I’m hoping our ground crew can deal with.

The other fliers from our box have hit the air just after me in a slapdash formation. Liam blazes off my right side, his wings shining so intensely they could serve as a landing beacon for human aircraft. The visible runes on his body are lit up like circuit boards, throwing sparkly pulses that ripple through the mist but don’t touch it. His eyes are wide, not in fear, but calculation; it’s the same look he got at home when we were in long ago battles with the Daybreak armies. That’s good, because Li is a fierce fucking warrior, despite not looking like one on this side of the Veil.

About twenty yards back to my left is the Dark Fae doc, Wolfie, moving like someone who grew up in a war zone. His whole presence seems to warp the air so nothing can get a clean shot and I’m not sure what he can and can’t do, but this is pretty useful. If he’s scared, he doesn’t show it, but I see the hitch in his left hand as he holds something I can’t see yet but somehow know is dangerous. The shadow isn’t his kind, but he instinctually knows how to fight it, I think.

Liam was right to be suspicious about him.