The Gypsy Morph (49 page)

“Look,” she said, pointing.

Winged forms swept in and out of the haze ahead. Skrails, Logan realized at once. If there were skrails, there were likely once-men and demons close at hand.

Then they crested a long, low rise, and the whole of what was happening ahead was revealed.

T
HE LITTLEST OF THE CHILDREN
were already being led across the narrow span of the dam, hands linked together, a long winding chain of tiny forms, when Angel told Helen to move the vehicles into position in front of the crossing point to form a protective barrier. They would have to make a stand here if there were still children who had not gotten safely over by the time the lead elements of the demon army reached them. Helen selected from among the adults those who would act as defenders and began passing out what weapons they had. The engineers and explosives experts went to work laying charges along the perimeter of the battlefield to help defend against the enemy approach. Everything was pandemonium, a barely controlled chaos that Angel and Helen kept in check with close supervision and repeated reassurances.

When the Lizards and Elves and some of the other creatures who had been traveling with them came down to the dam head and offered to help, Angel made a quick decision.

“Helen, give everyone who volunteers weapons to use, and I’ll put them at the barrier with the others. We need as many defenders as we can manage. No time to get choosy about who we’re using.”

Helen Rice didn’t question her, but handed out what weapons remained, and when those were gone sent the rest of the newcomers down to the dam to help with the children. Angel watched for a few minutes more and then walked up to the barricade of wagons and vehicles and made some last-minute adjustments. Even Logan Tom’s Lightning was pulled into line, its weapons pointed outward, one of the better defenders who’d come up from Los Angeles at the wheel. She wished more than she could say that the other Knight of the Word was there to help. She missed his steady resolve and fierce determination. She found herself wondering anew if she would ever see him again.

Kirisin was there briefly, ashen-faced and edgy amid all the activity, asking finally what they were going to do about Simralin. She had no answer for him. She told him to join the Ghosts and cross to the other side. He was carrying the fate of a nation in the Elfstone tucked in his shirt, and he had to remember that. His sister would tell him the same thing, if she were there. He left with tears in his eyes, unable to look at her.

Helen Rice reappeared. “How are we going to defend when they get here?” she asked.

Angel shook her head. “Send the explosives people down to the dam when they’ve finished with the perimeter. Wire it to explode. Tell them to do the best they can. We’ll slow the attack down, hold the once-men for as long as we can.” She gripped the other woman’s arm. “The truth is, Helen, we’re running out of choices.”

“I know that. I’ve known it for some time.” Helen gave her a brave smile. “But we’re not giving up, Angel. No matter what.”

“No,
amiga,
we’re not giving up.”

Helen folded her arms and hugged herself. “I’m so afraid.”

Todos tenemos el derecho de sentir miedo,
Angel thought. We all have a right to be afraid. She gave the other woman a hug. “Let’s keep working.”

She returned to positioning the armed vehicles and defenders among the haulers and wagons. Some of the latter she ordered overturned to provide better cover. She had the wheels removed from the rest, hoping to prevent the enemy from being able to pull them aside. She was not entirely sure of what else she should do. They relied on her, all of them, Helen included. But she was not the skilled and experienced warrior that Logan Tom was.

She thought momentarily of Johnny, the first time she had done so in days. If he were there, he would know what to do. He would sense instinctively what was needed and see to it that it was done. But her own sense of things paled by comparison and left her feeling inadequate.

The crossing over of the children to the far side of the gorge was almost finished when dust clouds appeared on the horizon and the lead elements of the demon army came into view. Once-men, wild and unkempt, ragged figures numbering first in the hundreds and then in the thousands, crowded forward. They came running across the flats—running! Their makeshift weapons were raised over their heads, and their voices were shrill and frenzied. They made no effort at an organized attack. They simply threw themselves into the fray like animals, their bloodlust driving them.

Thousands of feeders bounded through their midst, gimlet-eyed and hungry for what was about to happen.

“Keep coming,” Angel whispered to herself, ignoring the feeders, concentrating on the once-men, her teeth clenched, the black staff gripped tightly.
But there are so many! Too many for us to stop!

The front ranks reached the perimeter of the defensive lines, and the hidden explosives detonated, shredding hundreds of once-men. Screams mingled with clouds of smoke, and body parts flew everywhere. But the assault continued, fresh waves of attackers replacing those that had been decimated. A second set of charges went off, and again the attackers vanished in smoke and screams. This time the assault slowed, and the once-men, fragmented and scattered, struggled to mass anew.

Angel glanced over her shoulder at the dam. The last of the children were crossing, and now the adults who had helped them were beginning to file over as well.

“Fall back!” she shouted to the closest of the defenders, and then started down the line, drawing the attention of the rest. “Get back! Get across the dam!”

They began to withdraw in ones and twos, a too-slow response to her order. Frustrated, she stepped out into the open as the now fully regrouped once-men threw themselves at the defensive lines, and she sent the Word’s fire exploding out of her black staff into the attackers. The front ranks collapsed, but more kept coming. Skrails were diving at her from out of the sky, tearing at her with their claws, trying to distract or disable her. She ignored them, sweeping the fire across the flats and into the enemy hordes that filled them.

But there were too many to hold, even for her, and she screamed at the last of the defenders to run for the dam. Some did not make it. Some were caught from behind and dragged down. She tried to cover the retreat, but the once-men were coming at her from all sides, the feeders on their heels, invisible shadows. A pair of defenders wheeled back and cleared out those closest to her with their Parkhan Sprays, bravely standing their ground even as they were overrun. She raced for the dam, engulfed by the screams of those who sought to reach her, fighting through smoke and ash from the explosives and fires.

She had just reached the gorge embankment and was scrambling for the relative safety of the far side when a makeshift arrow drove deep into her shoulder and spun her about. She righted herself and kept going, but another caught her in the leg. Then a third buried itself deep in her side, and she felt a wave of shock and nausea wash through her. Her strength failing, she scrambled forward, bleeding heavily now, and then she was on the embankment crest, the dam wall just below her, and she saw someone standing not a dozen feet away, fully exposed as he faced the rush of the oncoming hordes . . .

Hawk!

She could hardly believe what she was seeing. The boy somehow had managed to stay behind instead of crossing over as he should have, and now he was just standing there, alone and unprotected.

Then suddenly the boy knelt and placed both palms against the earth, and she realized this was exactly where she had seen him kneeling earlier, when she had come up from examining the dam with Kirisin. His head was bent as before, and his eyes were closed. He might have been alone in the world for all the difference the ranks of attackers coming at him made. Steel-tipped arrows and spears and automatic weapons fire flew all around him, but he never moved.

Angel, crouching not twenty feet from him, wheeled back and sprayed the closest of the attackers with the black staff’s deadly fire. It wasn’t enough. The rush barely slowed. The feeders had outpaced the once-men and were almost on top of Angel and Hawk. They were both going to die. Why hadn’t the boy run, as he was supposed to? Why hadn’t he saved himself, when so much depended on it?

As if in answer, a massive tremor shook the earth, followed by a series of shudders that rippled outward from the embankment into the plains beyond, throwing the once-men to their knees. The attack stalled as bodies tumbled everywhere. The feeders broke off their rush to reach her, suddenly confused. The tremors continued, rough-edged and powerful, generated from somewhere deep underground.

But it wasn’t an earthquake that was causing them, Angel realized. It was Hawk.

A sharp cracking sound rose above the rumble of the tremors and the screams and cries of the attackers, and a spiderweb of jagged fissures split the barren ground, spreading out from where Hawk knelt and running on for as far as the eye could see, across the flats and under the feet of the once-men. The cracking sound deepened, and the splits widened into huge gaps, and then into dark, bottomless chasms. Everywhere, frantic attackers tumbled from view and were swallowed. They tried to run, but the cracks, angling this way and that, growing in number, chased them down as if they were food to be eaten. By the handfuls, by the dozens, and finally by the hundreds, the once-men dropped away into the chasms.

The feeders threw themselves after them, caught hold of them as they fell, and tumbled from view.

In moments the flats were swept clean of all but a handful of the thousands that had composed the demon army, and those few cowered in small clusters here and there, swaying and moaning like ragged trees left standing in the wake of a terrible storm. Then the earth began to rumble anew, and the myriad chasms closed like great mouths, the cracks sealed over, and a deep silence settled over everything, a shroud thrown over the bodies of the dead.

THIRTY-TWO

S
TANDING APART FROM THE OTHER DEMONS
, Findo Gask considered his options in the wake of the destruction of his army. He had watched it all happen from high ground far enough removed from the carnage that he had never been in danger. Until now, of course, when his subordinates began to look at him as something less than infallible. A demon that could lose an entire army of once-men to a mere boy was not as all-powerful as they might have thought. A demon that could sacrifice that many followers without accomplishing anything, no matter the reason, was demonstrably less able than what they had believed.

Which meant, of course, that they were already considering which of them should replace him.

He glanced at them accusingly, and some, but not all, looked away. It enraged him that they should be so bold. Fools, he thought. Not a one of them could do what he had done. Not a one could command his power. They were children in the presence of a master, and he needed none of them.

Still, he would have to watch them closely.

He turned back to the plains, empty now save for clusters of survivors who cowered together like frightened sheep. The loss of his army mattered little to him. It was but a single arm of a much larger force, and replacing once-men had never been a problem. Whatever his needs, there would always be fresh bodies—at least until no more were needed and he could dispose of them all. He would simply send for another supply. The caravan might have escaped him for the moment, but it was a temporary escape at best.

What mattered just now was the boy, the gypsy morph, wielding all that magic.

The fact that he was still alive was proof positive that the Klee had failed. Findo Gask had suspected as much for days, knowing that the Klee must have found the boy by now and yet had not returned. That the Klee had failed was inconceivable. Delloreen, yes. But not the Klee. That anything or anyone was strong enough to destroy it—for it must be dead—was an impossibility he could not fathom. Only he had power enough to destroy a demon as powerful as the Klee. He could not imagine how any of these humans—even a Knight of the Word—could have managed such a feat. A shape-shifter, a trickster, a creature of great cunning and strength, it had proven itself invincible time after time.

But now it was gone. There was no doubting that.

And here was that boy, the gypsy morph, still alive.

The boy lay sprawled on the ground, unmoving. How badly was he hurt? Not all that badly, Findo Gask judged. He had barely been touched in the assault. No, he was merely exhausted from the exercise of his magic. Which was hardly a surprise, given the power it must have required to open up the earth like that. The demon watched as the female Knight of the Word, lying nearby, began hauling herself to her feet, using her staff to provide leverage. But exhaustion had overtaken her, as well, and she fell back again. Then, as if consumed with desperation, she began to crawl.

Findo Gask had seen enough. He needed to put an end to this business once and for all. The gypsy morph had to be destroyed, and this was the perfect chance to do so. Weakened, depleted of magic, it would provide little resistance. Not only would he kill the morph, but he would kill the Knight, as well. It was not a task he would delegate; others would welcome the chance to take credit for such an accomplishment, but he would not allow them to do so. He would handle this himself because it would serve as an object lesson to his treacherous subordinates and enhance his somewhat diminished stature as leader.

Then he could reassemble his army and continue to hunt down those still alive in the ragtag band of misfits the morph had been leading, humans and Elves and others.

He signaled to the pair of skrails hunkered down nearby, beckoning them to him. They came at once, seized him by his shoulders, and lifted off. In seconds they were airborne, flying toward the boy and the Knight of the Word. He glanced across the gorge to where the members of the caravan were gathered on the embankment edge, watching his approach. Some were already yelling in warning. None, he noticed, had made any effort to try to come back. He would give them no chance to rethink that decision. He would make quick work of their precious leaders, of this boy and his protector. He was already relishing what it would feel like when the morph died beneath the crushing weight of his magic. They believed this boy so powerful, but they had no concept of what real power entailed. They had no idea what he could do.