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It happened so fast. A spire of rock jutted out from the ground, bringing with it a burst of torn earth, spraying clods of dirt and chunks of jagged stone every which way. Higher and higher it climbed, until it was taller than a man, then as tall as a house. I followed the rocky spike to its peak, and my heart swooped when I saw what waited on its pointed tip.
“Well, well,” said Agatha Black. “Now isn’t this a coincidence.”
Chapter 16
We weren’t ready for that. At least I could say that I wasn’t, because before anyone could move, the air just in front of our group glimmered. Bastion had already erected one of his force fields.
Had we caught Agatha’s attention somehow? Did Carver’s scrying give away our location?
“You’re not getting the sword,” I blurted out.
Agatha’s laughter filled the meadow. “Little one. You may keep your toy. A witch knows when she needs tools for her rituals.” She pressed her hands together, levitating off the spire of rock. “But I am no mere witch. I am the hand of the Eldest that crushes the weak. I am the mouth that sings their song of doom.”
“Then if you aren’t here for the sword,” I said, my mind still wrestling with the question, “why are you here at all?”
Agatha sneered at me. “Must the lioness repeat herself? I told you. Mere coincidence. I came here to do my holy work. You have your ceremonies, little one. You and your friends.” She cast her gaze across us all. I caught Asher flinching at the sight of her, his eyes filling with terror, and it made me hate Agatha even more. “You have your rituals, and I have mine.”
“Doesn’t matter why she’s here,” Prudence cried out, loud enough to alert us all. “Stop her. Kill her.”
We advanced as one, Agatha’s laughter raining down as we launched the first salvo of arcane missiles, fire and frost and bone lancing towards her. But she was protected by the very talent she had given her descendants, that bizarre gift of occult telekinesis. As strong and sturdy as Bastion’s shields were, Agatha’s were nigh impenetrable. I reached for my backpack, unclasping it to let Vanitas fly out and join the fray. I’d become so used to his blood thirst that I expected him to laugh as he soared straight for Agatha’s heart. This time, there was none of his easy laughter. Vanitas knew exactly what we were up against. Maybe he was even frightened.
I searched for Prudence among the crowd. Would we need to hit Agatha with another one of those ridiculous combos? Last time, the only way we had stopped her was for Prudence to assume her dragon shape, and for me to invoke the power of Nightmare, the exhausting, terrifying torrent of both shadow and flame that I called from the Dark Room.
Wincing, I remembered that we also had a third, cruci
al ingredient in the mix, one that still hadn’t been enough to annihilate her: Odin’s horse, Sleipnir, in the form of a massive eighteen-wheeler truck. I watched for the gleam of the air around Agatha as each of our missiles struck her force field. It shimmered around her, an invisible bubble. If only we could crack it.
Something else cracked, just then, the terrible sound of stone shattering and snapping. My eyes went huge as the spire that Agatha had summoned from out of the depths of the earth broke off, then went flying straight for her. Bastion had uprooted the damn thing, hurling it at his grandmother like an enormous, flying battering ram. With any luck, the stone pillar would be enough to smash Agatha’s defenses. I paused in battle just then, considering how ridiculous I sounded, how we’d never fought anyone or anything as powerful as the lioness.
And she proved herself once more. Agatha slashed her hand through the air, and the spire of rock splintered into hundreds of sharp, worthless pieces, just fragments of harmless slate as they struck her force field.
“So my grandson thinks to turn his powers against me,” Agatha said. The air felt so much thicker with her menace, the night darker. “Who do you think gave you your gifts, child? You and your harlot mother.” She clasped her hands together. “But you children do so like your playthings. Then here. Have more of them.” Agatha lifted her hands to the sky, her eyes glowing a stark, hellish red. “Have as many as you like.”
The earth trembled. No, it felt as if the sky itself was shaking, as if something massive and ancient from deep within the ground was struggling to break free. And break free they did: more of the enormous, hideously sharp crags of rock, siblings of the first that Agatha Black had called out of the ground.
I dodged the closest one frantically, readying my body to shadowstep if any of them got too close. More and more erupted from the earth, sending us scattering. I looked for the injured among us, but the spires were too huge, too numerous. From the thicket of stone spikes, all I could see were the flailing bolts of magic we sent at Agatha Black, at least those that could find their mark as she dodged and weaved through the petrified forest of her own making.
And as she dodged, she came closer, and closer.
I crouched to the ground, prepared to shadowstep, my heart thumping as I guessed at where the others were – whether they were safe, or even alive – when I caught the flash of silver, and what looked like the sheen of moonlight glinting off of lupine claws. I forgot all about our vampire and werewolf.
So had Agatha.
Sterling came first. He wielded the same katana once gifted to him by Susanoo, the Japanese god of storms. The blade crackled with electrified rage as he brought it around in an arc, the air crashing with the shattering of glass as Agatha Black’s force field broke under the combined physical and magical might of Sterling’s blow.
Gil came next, bounding here, there, off of the spires of stone, building momentum, then bringing his vicious claws up and against Agatha’s body. She cried out at the contact, and the blur of black fur and red eyes that was Gil in his wolf form streaked past her through the night. Before he departed, I could have sworn that he and Sterling exchange high fives.
At once, Agatha’s control over the rocky spires diminished. One by one they fell to the earth, crashing and disintegrating into motes of worthless dust. If anyone came here, they would find imprints of huge stone things that had flattened the grass, but no sign of what had done the flattening. All this fighting – all the quaking of the earth – must have called attention. Good thing the battle was over.
Or at least that was how it seemed. The three glistening gashes ripped into Agatha’s torso should have killed anyone. Instead she looked serene, unbothered by the blood dripping out of her in streams. Instead, she brought her hands against her wounds, staring at her own blood, before once again lifting her arms to the sky. Then she called out in a lilting, terrible voice.
“It begins.”
Twelve copies of Agatha Black’s voice echoed her, sounding horribly from out of the air. From somewhere far away, or far, far too near, came the unmistakeable sound of human screaming. Dozens of voices, all reaching for the sky with the terrified pitch of their horror. Agatha laughed one last time before her body vanished into a pillar of blood-red light, before it streaked into the sky. Dread settled in my chest when I looked up. The sky overhead was supposed to be cloudless, sprinkled with beautiful stars.
But thirteen of them had turned bright red.
Heedless of my friends shouting after me, I shadowstepped towards the sound of the screaming, instinct and fear driving every muscle in my body. We were so far from the village. That kind of screaming didn’t come from a small huddle of people. It sounded as if half the town were wailing their heads off.
