Forged in Fire (42 page)

“Kill him, lover,” he cried to the green dragon. “I will cut out his heart and we shall eat it together.”

I stumbled to my knees, struck suddenly with the truth. The runes along my scalp burned as I dragged my bloodied hand across them. I needed clarity. The fog of battle was confusing me, making me jump to conclusions. The green dragon rolled in the sky, falling earthward with the male in her talons. In that split second, I saw the ring. It was huge against the thickness of her claw, and everything fell into place.

There was the Valkyrie ring. That had been the lie. The Valkyrie statue had misled us. This was dwarven magic—Fafnir’s ring.

“No!” I shouted, running toward the cultists, cutting one of them down, breaking the surge of energy. Justin stumbled, and the remaining cultists turned on me, knives flashing. I suffered cut after cut, but I felt none of them, allowing the beserker to consume me. I knew the green dragon. She was one of us.

The ring had come down from legend, its story intertwined with that of the sword in my fist. Gram had been forged to destroy the dragon Fafnir, who was also a dwarf. The ring allowed this dwarf to shape-shift—gave him the means to terrify a kingdom. Only he was really a she. Had to be. Black Briar had figured out it was magic tuned to women. Her tragic tale was directly linked to the misbehavior of Loki and the injustices he had meted out on Fafnir’s clan. And our Trisha had taken that ring with Justin’s help and somehow unleashed its power.

I don’t know how many of them I killed, five, seven? But more seemed to appear from the mountain itself. There were too many. A blow struck the back of my head, and I fell forward onto my knees. The world swam, but I kept Gram clutched in my fist. I gulped in air—my heart thudding against my chest. My head throbbed and my eyes stung with sweat.

“So, you have come to me, finally,” Justin said. He floated across the ground, his feet six inches above the rock. The green energy held him aloft.

“I’d hoped to use your blood in this evening’s rituals,” he said, raising his hands to his chest. “Instead, I had to take many others.” He flung his arms out, encompassing the dozen or so bodies scattered around the nearest altar. “Such a waste.”

His boot caught me in the head, flipping me over onto my back.

“That,” he barked, spittle flying from his enraged face, “is for taking my fucking motorcycle.”

He raised a long blade and lunged at me. It was a bleeder like the one he’d used to kill Mary Campbell’s horse, Blue Thunder. Nice for sacrificing, I supposed. None of that messy clotting to slow down the flow of magic.

I rolled, tucking Gram to my chest. On the third revolution, I swung my knees under me, surged to my feet, and ran toward the mountainside. Several of the cultists grabbed for me, two caught me with blades, slicing in my left arm and my right hip. Hurt like hell, but I was out of Justin’s reach when I turned.

He screamed obscenities, flinging bursts of energy at me, smashing rocks above my head, and raining hot fragments down on me. I flattened myself against the stone, trying to avoid falling debris, but I passed right through and fell ass-over-teakettle into the mountain.

I flipped over, doing a reverse summersault, and landed on my chest, winded and without a sword. I’d flung Gram behind me as I tumbled. I could hear her skittering down the steep passage behind me. I tried to rise, but slipped in the rock and dust that had blown into the cave with me. I rolled over, sat up, and slid on my ass, deeper into the mountain. I plowed into the stone wall at the bottom, smacking my head on the hard stone floor.

The world spun for a moment. I tried to sit up, but a cultist came skidding down the passage on his feet, sword flashing toward me.

I grabbed a handful of gravel and flung it at him, rolling to the side. The passage opened that way, and I dropped five feet into an open cavern.

“Sarah?” a voice called to me. I scrambled onto my hands and knees, looking for the voice. It was Qindra, or rather, Qindra’s spirit.

“Hi,” I said, shaking my head. “Have you seen my sword?”

She pointed to my left, and I lunged that way as the cultist jumped from the opening. He landed, catlike, and swung where I’d been. I grabbed Gram in time to deflect the blow. He grinned, stepping toward me. This was not going well.

He raised his sword over his head, and I scrambled backward against the wall. “Damn it,” I bellowed, and he froze.

I waited a second, and, when he didn’t move, I scrambled to my feet, putting distance between him and me. Qindra had reached out and touched him, paralyzing him.

I leaned against the wall, letting my breath slow before nodding to her. She let him go, and the cultist swung his sword on the original trajectory, only I wasn’t there anymore.

I whistled at him, and he turned, surprised. “Sorry, dude,” I said, lunging forward. He dropped his sword as Gram slipped between his ribs, puncturing his left lung and heart.

He fell over, grinning. I hated these guys.

I looked down at myself. Everything hurt, and the knees of my jeans were shredded. I liked these jeans, too. It’s so damn hard to find good jeans that fit.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I said and fell over.

Qindra knelt over me, smiling. “You always were into drama, Sarah. Can you do nothing simply?”

“I’m here to rescue you,” I whispered. “And get the shield out. There are two dragons up there, and my people are getting their asses kicked by cultists and the undead.”

“Jai Li is here, is she not?” she asked.

I shuddered against the rage. I couldn’t succumb—had to keep control. “Yeah, somewhere,” I choked. “That bastard Justin has her somewhere. He’s killed a lot of people.” I had to believe she was still alive.

“Perhaps it is time for me to let this go, then.” She waved her hand, leaving a phosphorescent contrail. “I have been fighting him all evening. He has done something I cannot see, infected the dome somehow. He is very powerful.”

“I need to get the shield,” I said, trying to sit up. “That’ll put a knot in his tail.” The world swam, and I couldn’t do it. My head was really pounding.

“Here,” she said, passing her hand over me. The pain in my head subsided, and the cuts and bruises eased—like I’d been healing a few days.

I stood, amazed again at her power. If she worked for the good guys, we’d totally kick the dragon’s asses. I glanced around the room. It really wasn’t very big, but the shield floated where I remembered it. I strode to it, watching the way the energy crackled off it.

“What do you think?” I asked.

A shout brought me around, and two more cultists jumped down from the ledge, rushing at me. I sidestepped the first one, throwing him to the side, into the ley line.

He shrieked as his face melted off. Very Indiana Jones. The second guy paused to stab at Qindra, who only smiled at him as his sword passed through her.

Spirits began to slip into the room, and she stepped back, putting up her shield once more—the crystalline force wall that kept the spirits from her.

“Yo, scumbag,” I called.

The cultist turned to me, raising his sword, and attacked.

We exchanged a few strokes, steel crashing on steel, when the spirits turned to us. I kicked him, sending him backward, and several of the eaters fell on him.

He screamed as they bit into him, ripping out chunks of his spirit.

I took the opportunity to turn back to the ley line and the shield that blocked its natural flow.

Okay, Sarah. Treat it like flame. Get the shield out without burning yourself.

I reached out with Gram and touched the shield with the tip of the blade. Power arced off the ley line, ricocheting around the cavern, killing several of the spirits that had fallen on the struggling cultist before fizzling out.

Nice. I took a deep breath. Nothing held the shield there except the force of the energy flow. I should be able to knock it out of the way.

I pulled Gram from the flow and looked around. Three spirits were feeding on the writhing cultist. It was nothing to slash through them. The cultist wasn’t dead, but nearly so. I grabbed him by his robes and dragged him onto his feet.

“Come here, be useful.” He staggered with me, not sure of what was happening, and I shoved him against the shield.

He screamed as the skin flayed off his bones, but the shield careened into the middle of the room. I was flung backward. Qindra moved to me, encompassing me in her magical field.

“Are you unharmed?” she asked, once the light in the cave dimmed back toward normal human spectrum.

I sat up. “Yeah, I think so.” Gram was glowing like nothing I’d ever seen before. She’d absorbed a lot of energy from the ley line, and she vibrated at a higher pitch than I was used to.

Qindra nodded grimly. “He’s been wresting control of the dome from me for hours. I think I’m going to let it go, relinquish the magic. Maybe it will rebound on him, fry some of his cronies.”

I looked up at her. “Careful, I need you to come out of this alive.”

“Then you’d better come get me from the house,” she said. The smile on her face was bittersweet. “I don’t think I can walk.”

The ground shook. Rocks and dust fell into the cavern. Qindra’s energy shield vanished, and she faded, waving. “Go,” she said, her voice trailing away.

I got to my feet, picked up the shield and tossed it up onto the ledge, laid Gram up there, and hoisted myself up. A large chunk of rock crashed into the room behind me as I picked up the sword and shield. Time to go.

Halfway up the passage I found a cutoff I’d missed on the way down. It ran to the left, toward where the house was. The up passage led to the necromancer. “Left,” Qindra’s voice spoke in my head. I scrambled left, running along the undiscovered passage. Behind me, the cavern began to collapse.

Dust and debris rolled out of the cavern ahead of me, choking me as I emerged into the night. The whole mountain shook, and I stumbled out, coughing.

Seventy-four

K
atie leaned against the sheriff’s car, catching her breath. The dragons had been battling between the dome and the plateau when the dome exploded. The smaller dragon was flung back onto the road, but the green dragon, nearly twice his size, had taken the brunt of the explosion.

Shattered scales and green blood splashed against the car where Katie had hidden. Most of her people were down. Jillian still sat in the elm tree, sniping at casters. Her sniper rifle had quit working awhile ago, but she was damn good with a crossbow.

Jimmy and Kyle were on the other side of the battlefield, and they still had a working rifle by the echo.

There were bodies everywhere, some moving, some not. Cultists were getting to their feet, and, as they did, the dead rose around them, moving at their commands. Katie swung out from behind the car, her short sword out, and cut one magic-weaving son of a bitch down as she ran past, cleaving through his skull while he concentrated on raising the dead around him. As soon as he hit the ground, the undead around him fell as well.

Others weren’t doing so well. Stuart and a group of others had been knocked down when the dome exploded, and not all of them were getting up. Stuart had his great axe out, clearing a path to the fallen, regrouping near the deputy’s car, farther back down the road.

Only they were seriously outnumbered. As the magic casters began weaving their spells, the dead around them rose up, including some of our own. It had only been a matter of time, Katie knew. She did not want Stuart to have to kill his own, even if they were already dead.

She sprinted down the road, sheathing her sword and swinging her guitar around. She slowed as she approached the back of the crowd of cultists and dead. Stuart and his crew were surrounded, and time was running short.

She thought a minute. If the dead weren’t a problem, they’d be doing okay. Then the idea hit her. The song she began was slow and melodic, filled with deep thrumming notes that reverberated across the open ground.

Take ’em home, me boy’os

Return him to his mother

let her cast the posies

atop his cairn

and we’ll drink him into heaven

It was a funeral dirge—a wake song she’d heard a long time ago at a ren faire. One of the regulars had passed, and the filking group sang this. Katie had been young, maybe fifteen, but the song came back to her as clear as if she’d just heard it.

The music flowed from her, and her nose began to bleed. The music, when used this way, was taking more and more from her, but she couldn’t let her people die. As the music touched them, the dead froze where they were, becoming statues of flesh and bone. The cultists noticed and stopped their charge, confused. One of the cultists reached out, giving the nearest undead a shove, and it crumbled to dust.

Stuart and his surviving squad rushed forward and cut their way through the dead until they reached the living, and Katie drew her sword to meet them.