Wildfire

Another massive section of the wall rose in the air and flattened the horse. It didn’t rise, buried under the rubble.

Romeo rolled past Rogan.

Behind us, the rhino was coming up, unstoppable, massive, pounding the ground with its feet.

Rogan thrust his hands up.

A twenty-five-yard section of the wall shook. He was trying to break it free from the rest, but it held.

The tank stopped, turning.

“Jump!” Grandma Frida ordered.

“What?”

“Jump!” she snarled.

I pulled myself out of the hatch, jumped and rolled into the grass. Romeo sped toward the rhino.

Oh no. No . . .

The small tank rammed the construct. The rhino veered at the last moment, throwing all of its bulk against Romeo’s flank. The tank rolled on its side. The rhino tore at it with its feet, punching holes in the armor. Fear turned my insides liquid. I ran toward it, because that was all I could do.

A shadow fell on me. The section of the wall slid above me and swept the rhino aside, burying it.

The heap of rubble shook and exploded. The rhino sprang free, reforming.

The ground underneath it split. A forest of shoots sprang up, spiraling up to the sky, fed by magic, straight through the rhino. The construct flailed, trying to break free, but the shoots caught the particles that made its substance and kept growing, thicker and thicker, becoming branches, their wood encasing the captured parts. Magic shook the lawn. The tree swept the rhino off the ground, trapping the stray pieces as they fell. An enormous tree spread its branches, a hundred and fifty feet tall, its trunk twenty-five feet wide. The colossal Montezuma cypress shook once and became still, towering over the lawn.

Wow.

Grandma Frida crawled out of Romeo, her face stained with blood. She ran for the remnants of the wall.

The sky tore. A funnel spun from the clouds, reaching toward us. We had run out of time.

“Nevada!” Rogan snarled.

I turned. He was running toward me. I sprinted to him. We collided. His arms closed around me.

The wind disappeared. It was suddenly calm and peaceful. I looked up. Rogan’s eyes had turned a glowing turquoise. He’d accessed his ultimate power. We stood in a circle of null space. Nothing would penetrate. This was how he broke entire cities, reducing them to rubble.

Around us the storm raged. An enormous tornado was forming just beyond the dome, as if someone had taken the storm clouds from the sky and spun them into a maelstrom.

The wall of air cut at us and stopped, severed by the perfect circle of the null space around Rogan. Beyond it another tornado touched down. Then another.

Dear God . . .

The circle containing us pulsed, the echo of it rattling my bones. The dome in front of us cracked.

Another pulse.

Pieces broke from the dome’s top, crashing down.

Rogan was looking into the distance. He began rising.

I clamped him to me. If I didn’t, he would keep going until he ran out of magic. Nothing would be left and our people wouldn’t be able to get away. They were too close.

He kept rising.

“Connor! Stay with me.”

His hands were still locked around me. My feet left the ground.

The third pulse. The dome cracked like a broken egg.

“I love you, Connor. Please come back to me. Come back.” I kissed him. “Come back.”

He turned his head slowly and looked at me, his eyes still distant, as if waking up from a deep sleep. Recognition flared within the magic-saturated turquoise.

“I’m here,” he said.

The fourth pulse hit the dome. It broke apart, the pieces of it crashing down.

Alexander Sturm hung within it, caught in the column of spinning air, his hands raised, his hair pulling with the wind.

He brought his hands together. A tornado moved toward us, a wall of enraged air digging a deep trench in the torn-up lawn. It slid over us, and for a moment I saw the clear sky above. Then it passed and we were still there, floating in the column of Rogan’s power.

Rogan smiled at Sturm.

Alexander bared his teeth. A second tornado swung over us and passed.

Sturm snarled something. I saw his lips moving but I couldn’t hear the words.

Magic sparked in a flash of crimson. Lenora Jordan appeared between us, nude and unafraid, her head held high. She’d risked a teleport. Oh wow.

Lenora looked up at Sturm and raised her hands.

Silver chains as thick as my leg shot out of the ground, pierced Sturm’s private tornado keeping him afloat, and wound about his body. He screamed, his face a mask of agony. The chains wound, squeezed, and dragged him down. He crashed onto the grass at Lenora’s feet.

She regarded him for a long moment, derision on her face, and raised her hand. Magic flashed from her in a wide circle. Another null space. She stood within it, Sturm bound at her feet, and waited until a new twister, light and transparent, brought Adeyemi Ade-Afefe over the wall and deposited her between us. Adeyemi raised her hands and began to dance.

She danced and danced, striking a quick rhythm, bending forward, then straightening again. As her feet moved, the tornados lost power. They spun slower and slower, breaking free of the ground, until finally they dissolved into the sky. The storm clouds tore open, revealing the first light of the sunrise.

Adeyemi smiled, lay on the grass on her back, and fell asleep.

A forest of swords studded the lawn. The tornado had picked up Sturm’s collection and seeded the grounds with them. For some freaky reason, all of the blades landed point down and now rose at a diagonal, like razor-sharp mutant flowers.

Rogan was holding me. He’d refused to let go of me and so we stood together, watching the flurry of activity on the lawn of Sturm’s fortress.

To the left my mother was trying to administer some first aid to Grandma Frida. Grandma Frida didn’t want to be aided.

“Will you stop fussing over me?’ Grandma Frida pushed my mother’s hand away.

“Be quiet, mother. You’re bleeding.”

Around us Lenora Jordan’s people were processing the scene. They had already taken Sturm off, bound, gagged, and sedated. Lenora was still here, fully clothed now, striding through the scene and shouting orders in a crisp voice.

Sturm’s people sat on the ground in handcuffs. Two psionics moved between them, broadcasting calm and happy thoughts. A helicopter had taken Catalina out of the area just before the storm broke, and faced with the several dozen hardened mercenaries crying and wailing because she was gone, Lenora Jordan resorted to the big guns and brought in psionics.

A few feet away from us, Rynda was trying her best to take care of Edward. He slumped on the ground, against the trunk of his cypress. Growing the massive beast of a tree must’ve taken every last reserve he had. The expression on her face wasn’t just concerned, it was tender.

An armored vehicle drove through the hole Romeo had made and stopped. The door opened, Rivera jumped out, and held the passenger door open, holding it deferentially. Brian Sherwood emerged into the light. Same height and build as Edward, broad shoulders, sturdy frame, long limbs. He looked like his brother and at the same time he looked nothing like him.

“Rynda,” he called out. “Oh my God, Rynda. Here you are.”

She turned and glared at him like she saw a snake.

“I missed you so much!” Brian started across the lawn toward his wife. He didn’t know that we were aware of his betrayal.

“Nobody told him?” I murmured.

“No.” The smile on Rogan’s face was frightening.

Rynda rose, her spine perfectly straight, her face iced over, every inch her mother’s daughter.

“Did you miss me?” she asked, her voice as cold as a glacier.

Brian halted. “Yes.”

“I missed you too, Brian. I endured so much while you were gone.”

He took another tentative step forward. “It’s okay. I’m here now. Everything will be okay now.”

“Yes.” Rynda started toward him. “It will. I’m so glad you are here, Brian. Let me share with you everything I’ve been through.”

Magic lashed out of her in a torrent, so potent, I felt it from yards away. Terror, panic, despair, anxiety, worry, crushing sadness, and rage. So much rage. It merely brushed me and I nearly cried just to release the pressure.