Elves Invasion

39

“Run!” Caleb hollered.

Blue and red lights flashed to the left and the right, both lanes suddenly filled with police cars converging on their location. Breakfast bounded the last few steps across the street to grab Una’s outstretched hands. A helicopter lifted up and over the phalanx of police cars to hover above the coven. The air spilled down on top of their heads like water being poured from above.

Windyard glanced at Ava, a regretful smile on his face. Just over his far shoulder, but separated by distance and bad fortune, was Tristan, stranded on the other side of the road. He knew what she was thinking before she did.

Not him too. Not both of them.

“I’ll protect him. Gift me,” Windyard said, his deep voice penetrating through the din.

Ava called the heat of the desert to her. There was a lifting, like gravity had given up, and for a moment the cars, the police who were running toward them, and even the rocks and dust on the ground, let go of the earth and swam up for the sky. A boom sounded across the barren land and Ava’s witch wind spiraled up in a column as it threw her into the suddenly freezing-cold air. The helicopter gyrated drunkenly to the side in the updraft, and as it listed off, Ava saw the passengers inside as if in tableau.

The pilot wrestled desperately with the stick and didn’t even see Ava floating level with the helicopter. Simms stared at her in a mixture of horror and triumph. Ava recognized Eye, who was utterly terrified, and couldn’t imagine how he’d ended up in the mix. And behind them all was Carrick. The look of hunger he gave Ava stole the breath from her body. She watched him move easily through the cabin, never taking his eyes off her, open the door, and throw himself out of the falling aircraft with the slithering grace of a snake.

The helicopter careened to the ground, narrowly missing the gas station, while Carrick dropped lightly to his knees and rolled smoothly over a shoulder, hitching his stride and flapping the dust off his jacket as he strode forward toward the small army of police that were streaming toward Windyard.

Alone, in the middle of the road, Windyard stood waiting for them. He looked to make sure Tristan had joined the rest of the coven on the dunes, and then looked up at Ava before launching himself at the oncoming tide.

She Gifted him as he leapt into the fray, throwing back her head and shouting with mad joy. Magelight pulsed out of Windyard’s willstone, phosphorus bright. It stunned the officers closest to him and dropped them to their knees as they clutched at their faces to shield their eyes. He hit the second line before they could draw their weapons and wove through their ranks so quickly his progress was only made visible by the trail of unconscious bodies left to slide to the ground behind him.

The third line had their weapons ready by the time he faced them, standing knee deep in a swath of immobile bodies. They fired as one.

The c***k of gunfire halted before it could resound across the sand. Ava took the thousands of little explosions into her as jubilantly as the night sky receives fireworks. She Gifted the rest of her coven with the fresh burst of power, and they streamed down the now-frosty dunes like falling stars.

Police cars continued to arrive at both ends of the street until the road looked like a garish river of flashing lights. The gunfire came randomly now, and although Ava was stealing momentum from the bullets as fast as she could, there were some that were starting to slip past her. She couldn’t risk losing any of her claimed. She needed to make them impervious as she had done against the Hive. It was a little thing. One small difference that wasn’t so bad, after all—at least, not compared to death.

Windyard was the only one who felt the difference when Ava invaded his stone and took it over.

No, Ava. What are you doing?

Making you stronger by making myself stronger, she replied. He balked for just one moment more, and then relented.

Ava used their willstones to transmute energy, and with five more loci of power to add to her three, Ava drank a bigger measure of energy than she ever had before. She flooded the bodies of her claimed with so much power even Windyard forgot anything was wrong.

She became They.

They bellowed and screeched with bloodlust, vaulting over the cars in their way to get at the fresh foes behind. It didn’t matter how many They faced. As one, They were unbeatable. Every line but the last fell before Them. They looked down from their throne of air, purring with pleasure, and saw one among themselves who did not belong. He was a sour note that jangled out of tune in Their symphony.

The bubble of ecstasy that surrounded her shattered, and Ava was just herself again.

Carrick was not sparing his opponents. Each officer he faced he killed. Ice flaked in Ava’s blood.

Lillian, you must rein in Carrick. He is killing innocents.

He feels he must kill to protect you, Lillian answered.

He’s lying. He’s only doing it because he likes it.

Ava watched the back ranks of officer as they set up stronger machines of war—rocket, tanks, and high-caliber assault weapons. Carrick would kill them all, and if Ava didn’t stop her coven, they would have no choice but to kill as well.

The officers were signaling to one another. They planned on unleashing all their hardware at the same time, but coordinating their attack would only make Ava stronger. The more power she gathered, the more berserk it made her and her coven.

Windyard saw the firepower arrayed against them and knew what was coming.

Ava, we have to get out of here, he said. Hundreds will die if we don’t. Worldjump us. We can’t make the crossing east in this world with so much against us.

If we go back to your world it will take us months to travel and gather my army, and in that time Lillian’s army will be wiped out by the Hive. Hundreds of thousands will die, Ava argued.

They needed to get east, and they needed to be there now. She had to at least try to jump them. She sent her spirit out to look.