Ritual Magic

TWENTY-FOUR

“IT’S a gate!” Cullen cried. “It’s a goddamn gate!”

“Weapons!” Lily snapped at the guards, drawing hers. “Fielding, go get backup. Lots of it, with the most heavy-duty weapons you’ve got.”

“But we don’t know if—”

She shoved him. “Go!”

He ran.

“Hold your fire,” Lily called, “until we—”

Something leaped through the gate twenty feet in the air, nearer the street than the building. It was big and squat and looked like the ugliest centaur ever—only someone had substituted “bug” for “horse” in the thing’s ancestry. Segmented like a caterpillar and armored like a dinosaur, it was a mottled dun and gray with a barbed tail at one end and a gorilla’s chest and arms at the other, and way too many legs in between. As it twisted in midair Lily got a glimpse of a face like a demented gargoyle.

“Dworg!” Cynna screamed.

The guards opened fire.

The creature landed on the roof of a Suburban. It was damn near as big as the Suburban, and metal crunched and crumpled beneath the impact. Instantly it leaped off, as quick and easy as if the bullets had all missed—leaped and landed on pavement with that muscular tail held curled up over its back like a scorpion’s. And raced straight at Lily and Cynna.

Fast. Ungodly fast for such a large creature. Lily had her weapon out and aimed. She squeezed the trigger twice.

It kept coming.

Cynna hurled something at it. Something invisible.

It stumbled and grunted what sounded like words—God, did it speak?—but recovered immediately.

A wolf with fur the color of cinnamon landed on the armored back. Another one, gray and black, darted in to clamp his jaws on one rear leg, and that at last got the creature’s attention. It stopped abruptly, sending the wolf on its back tumbling to the ground. Those gorilla arms ended in claws like a bear’s, and the thing twisted to rake at the fallen wolf with those claws while its tail whipped out at the other wolf.

It was so damn fast! But so was Cullen, who’d already danced aside. She couldn’t see what had happened to the black-and-gray wolf—and couldn’t stand around watching.

“Cynna—come on!” She scrambled onto the nearest vehicle, a Ford just like hers, and Cynna vaulted up there with her. Lily jumped to the next one—a shiny black Mustang. Cynna landed beside her and together they scrambled onto the small car’s roof so they could vault over to the minivan beside it, while behind them wolves snarled and José shouted a quick stream of orders: “Joe, Steve, Santos—keep it busy—”

Lily jumped to the next car, an old Dodge Colt. “You sure that’s a dworg?” They were like a cross between a troll and a demon, Cullen had once told her, only meaner and harder to kill. Of course, he’d also said they all died over three thousand years ago. But Cynna remembered things from three thousand years ago—

José: “Go for the legs—”

Cynna landed beside her. “Hell, yes! I stopped one of its hearts but—”

“—Cullen, help Andy. Casey, with me!”

Another jump, onto another government Ford.

“They’ve got four hearts,” Cynna said. “And it took a hell of a lot of power—”

White Nissan.

“—to knock out just one. They’re—”

Government Ford.

“—resistant to magic and they heal ungodly fast and I can’t draw too much power or I’ll faint.”

They’d gone far enough, Lily decided, to pause and see what was happening, so she did—just as Santos leaped onto the Ford with them. “What the—you’re supposed to be helping Joe and Steve!”

“I’m supposed to protect you!” He grabbed her arm. “Come on—keep moving!”

She tried and failed to pull her arm away. Several cars back, two wolves harried the dworg. José stood at the trunk of the tankmobile with Casey, but he looked up and saw Santos and his lips moved in what might have been a curse. He gestured at Casey, who Changed. Cullen had switched back to man form and was dragging a bloody and unconscious wolf—God, she hoped he was unconscious—away from the action. One of the harrying wolves darted in suddenly and clamped his jaws on one of the dworg’s too-many legs, but that muscular tail smashed into him, sending him flying. He landed crumpled and still.

“You son of a bitch,” Lily said to Santos, her voice low with fury. “You will follow orders. Get back there. Now.”

He grabbed her and dumped her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and jumped down off the car, which drove his shoulder into her gut. Her air whoofed out and she gulped in a breath. She needed to get her Glock turned around so she could clobber him with the butt and—

Metal crunched loudly.

This time it was accompanied by the crash of glass breaking, and she couldn’t fucking see what was happening from her upside-down perch over the shoulder of the idiot who thought he was fucking rescuing her.

Suddenly magic blazed all over her skin, a blast of fur-and-pine prickles. And there was no shoulder in her stomach. There was no anything beneath her but air.

She didn’t land well, but somehow did manage to keep her head from connecting with the pavement. Instead her left hand did. Pain shot up her arm from that impact, but training had her rolling away, rolling and pulling herself into a low crouch, her weapon still clutched in her right hand.

A huge dun-colored wolf stood on Santos’s clothing, hackles raised and growling at the dworg that had fallen out of the sky onto an ancient Pinto—the one just across the center lane from where Cynna still stood on the government Ford. Right fucking next to Lily. This close, she got a good look at the face—rubbery skin, too-loose lips stretched in a grin that showed a row of shark teeth. This close, she could smell it—eau de rotten meat and vomit. And gasoline—?

Two more dworg fell out of the sky. A goddamn pair of dworg, who landed one behind the other on the pavement between her and the other lupi—and immediately turned to face her.

She was so screwed.

SEVEN floors above the ground at St. Margaret’s Hospital—one floor above pediatrics—two monstrosities clung to the brick like enormous caterpillars. One pounded the wall with its rearmost legs while the other clawed at the hole the first had started, widening it.

The hole was about a foot wide. Not monster-size. Yet.

THIRTEEN miles outside the city, a monster fell from the sky. Toby froze in a thrill of terror so absolute he didn’t recognize it as fear. He scarcely noticed the woman-sized girl beside him screaming. All he could think was, That can’t be, it can’t be . . . He’d heard the stories about monsters like this one, but they were about the past. Way, way back in the past.

When glass shattered on the second floor and an orange-and-black streak leaped through the window to the ground—when his dad came racing around the side of the house four-footed, going flat-out fast—when a second monster landed beside the first, and a third—he knew that whether it could be or not, it was.

Dworg.

Run. Hide. Evade. Find a weapon. Fight.

Those were the priorities for what to do if he was attacked and there was no adult with him: Run if you can get to a safer place. Hide if you can’t run. If you can’t run or hide, evade. Only then look for a weapon, because for kids, fight was the last resort.

Toby bent and grabbed the tarp covering the trench and yanked it back. “Come on!” But Julia didn’t unfreeze, so he grabbed her leg and yanked, making her stumble, which got her attention. “Down here! Hurry!”

He jumped down into the darkness, scampering aside immediately so Julia wouldn’t land on top of him, and then thought he should have pushed her in first because for a second it didn’t look like she was going to follow—but she did. She landed on her hands and knees, panting in fear. “They—another one came and the wolves—and a tiger—” She gulped.

Toby felt a rush of relief. Wolves, plural, meant the others had Changed and followed his dad, and Grandmother was there, too. Dad wasn’t fighting alone. “Come on,” he hissed, because even though plywood wouldn’t stop a dworg, it was better not to stay in the same spot they’d entered. They scuttled farther down the tunnel and stopped. Listening.

Toby’s heart pounded so hard. Anyone could hear it, he thought. Anything. Maybe those creatures weren’t really dworg, but something else that looked the way those long-dead monsters were supposed to have looked. Either way, he’d done the right thing. He thought he had. He hoped. He couldn’t just run away. If the monsters were dworg, they’d be too fast, and besides, they’d been between him and the house, so where would he go? That left hide and evade. This was more evading than hiding, because they’d probably seen him and Julia jump down here.

But the monsters were big and the tunnel was narrow. Maybe narrow enough they wouldn’t fit. Maybe.

Then he thought of something else. He should have had Julia go the other way, away from him. Because even though she was really a kid, the dworg wouldn’t know that, with her having such a grown-up body. He’d thought he was helping her, but if those were really dworg . . .

Dworg had this instinct, this drive. That’s what all the stories said. It’s what had made them so horrible, but it was also their weakness. They didn’t always do the smart thing, didn’t always follow orders, because this instinct sometimes took over. A feeding instinct.

Dworg ate kids.

TWO minutes and twelve seconds after Isen summoned his fighters, the klaxon was blaring, calling for the immediate evacuation of Clanhome. A few cars were speeding away already, with more car doors slamming at this house and that one as dworg poured over the crest of the hill on the north side of the meeting field. They’d come from the big node, the one not tied to the mantle.

Twenty-two dworg, Pete had just informed Isen. Twenty-two nightmares from a past so distant humans knew nothing about it. Nightmares that his people had fought in the Great War—fought with tooth and claw, yes, but also with swords. There weren’t many ways to kill a dworg, but cutting off its head worked every time.

Isen had used every one of his hundred and thirty-two seconds. In the old days, it had taken between ten and twelve lupi to bring down a single dworg. Isen didn’t have enough fighters to pit ten or twelve against each dworg. He didn’t have half of that, and those he had weren’t all here. Some were on patrol. Some he’d sent to the barracks to retrieve weapons stored there. Most of the rest were deployed around the day care, which was where he’d sent Hardy. That’s where Pete now watched from the roof, coordinating their defense. Isen had kept one squad with him.

Not that six lupi could do much against twenty-two dworg. “It’s in your hands now,” Isen said crisply into the phone he’d borrowed. He’d left his at the house—bad habit, that, and one he should have abandoned the moment they knew themselves at war.

“Rho, please—” Pete began.

“No.” Isen had neither time nor patience for argument. He disconnected and tossed the phone down. He wouldn’t be able to use it in a moment, anyway.

Isen had used every one of his hundred and thirty-two seconds, but that wasn’t much time. Not enough to devise an entirely new strategy against creatures who weren’t supposed to exist. He had to hope these were traditional dworg against whom a traditional plan might work.

According to the tales, no one could hide from a dworg, for they directly sensed the lives around them because it was life itself they fed on, along with the flesh of their prey. But they had one weakness: their hunger. It held them always in a pack, that being the only way they could maintain focus on their task. Sometimes a few would become distracted anyway and begin to feed before they’d achieved their objective, and then the rest would turn on those few. That could be exploited, though Isen preferred that they not be given the chance to feed at all.

They hungered most of all for children.

Not all of Clanhome’s children were at the day care, but many of the youngest ones were. Four babies, three toddlers, and ten between the ages of three and nine. Seventeen babes and children currently being loaded into a pair of minivans behind the day care. At the last drill, it had taken the tenders just under six minutes to evacuate the day care. The dworg would be here much sooner than that.

According to the tales, the Great Bitch had often sent dworg to kill the Rho or Lu Nuncio of a clan, for dworg could sense the mantle just as they sensed the bright flame of life in children, and so could always find their target. So if these were nice, traditional dworg, they were here to attack Isen. But they’d be distracted. Rushed, wanting more than anything to get to the children.

As the monsters reached the green grass of the meeting field, Isen’s fierce grin broke out. “Now!” he shouted. And Changed.

A second later, Isen led six wolves as they streaked across the green—not running directly away from the charging monsters, but at a teasing slant: Come get me, come get me—you can do it! And yes, praise the Lady, the dworg immediately shifted direction to flow toward them. Their gait was oddly smooth, like a centipede’s. And fast. Ungodly fast.

Lupi in wolf form were faster than any born-wolf, reaching speeds around fifty miles an hour.

According to the tales, dworg were faster.