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“I won’t have to come again, young one. This time, I am not leaving. This time I will carve a bloody path of vengeance through those who have wronged me. Their corpses shall litter the Earth, as will those of any who—ah!”
The voice broke off abruptly, I wasn’t sure why. And then I heard it, another voice behind the first, too quiet to make out. But whispering, whispering.
“Save your breath, mage!” the monster hissed. “You do not control me. Did you think you could use a god as your puppet?”
Jonathan, Louis-Cesare mouthed.
“I will take your power,” the thing that had been Sokkwi said, “and once I am back in the sun, I will add to it such a mighty sum that all the Earth shall tremble!” The huge head was suddenly back in Hassani’s face. “But you first.”
I started fighting again, knowing what was coming even if the others didn’t. I’d just seen it, and it had been memorable. And, sure enough, the burst of caustic venom hit Hassani dead center barely a second later . . .
And kept on going.
“What the—” I stared. I’d seen that shit dissolve solid rock! How was he just standing there?
“One of the Teacher’s master powers,” Zakarriyyah murmured. “To project an image somewhere he is not.”
“So, where is he?” I asked, because I only saw one of him, standing calmly in the middle of a torrent of poison that couldn’t hurt him, because he wasn’t really there. But he was somewhere, and I didn’t think playing hide and seek with a demigod was going to work for long.
And neither did the demigod.
“I don’t have to look for you,” the voice in my head echoed again. “You will come to me. The only question is, how many of your people do I have to kill first?”
“Scatter,” Zakarriyyah said—unnecessarily. We were already doing it, with me and Louis-Cesare heading for my bike until it was crushed under the massive body slithering this way. It loomed up in my vision, a solid wall of gleaming scales, blackness smothering the light and swallowing the earth—
And swallowing us, or flat out running us over, crushing our bones into powder. Except that I’d been wrong earlier. Louis-Cesare hadn’t used the Veil, his own personal master power, after all. It took a huge amount of energy and couldn’t be deployed again for hours.
So, if he had, I wouldn’t be looking at the world through a haze of white, like a London fog had just rolled in.
Or staring in disbelief as a river of scales slammed into me, yet didn’t hurt.
The creature passed right on through us and out the other side, leaving me staring around wildly, confused, disoriented, and seriously skeeved out.
“All right?” Louis-Cesare asked.
I nodded breathlessly. That was a lie, but the truth wouldn’t help us right now. Not when I could still see the massive creature stopped in the middle of the room, not ten yards away.
But it couldn’t see me.
Like Hassani, I simply wasn’t there anymore.
Louis-Cesare was able to slip out of phase with the world for a short time, transitioning into some kind of non-space I didn’t fully understand. I doubted he did, either, since he couldn’t stay there for long. A minute, maybe two—probably the former since he’d dragged me along with him—and that was it.
We didn’t have much time.
“Come on!” I said, pulling on him, but he wasn’t budging. Unless you counted going the other way—toward the snake. “What are you doing?”
“You bought us time; we used it,” he told me. “But we have to finish this—”
“How?” I demanded, holding onto him.
“—and the chance will pass by if you don’t trust me.”
“Like you trusted me?”
He at least had the grace to blush. “Dory—”
“Later,” I said, and released him. He nodded, although he did not appear to be looking forward to later. Personally, I’d just be grateful if we had one.
