I rolled the window down.
“Welcome to the party.” Tatyana grinned.
“Have you found Marat?”
“Jiang is looking for him. Go down the street directly behind me. I’d go with you, but I’m a little busy on the grill.” She laughed, her eyes sparkling.
I stepped on the gas and steered Rhino around her and down the street. Ruined buildings in various stages of repair slid behind us, and through the gaps Tatyana’s flames glowed like a magical aurora borealis. I couldn’t even begin to calculate the kind of power required to maintain a wall of that size.
We passed an abandoned Burger King, a convenience store, a deli with dusty windows . . . Ahead the street and the island ended, the swamp beyond it blocked by fire. Where the hell was Stephen?
“Up there.” Alessandro pointed to the right, at a four-story building jutting out of the rubble. I squinted. A man in a suit stood on the roof. Found him.
I parked and grabbed Linus’ sword. Alessandro leaped from the vehicle, carrying the prototype of the prototype Linus had given him.
The building’s automatic door stood ajar, stuck permanently open. We passed through it. The inside was dark like a cave. A musty stench filled the air, like hundreds of waterlogged books were drying in it. Alessandro turned left. I followed him and we came to a door leading up the stairs. He sprinted and I did my best to chase him.
One flight, two, three, four . . .
Alessandro had disappeared into the gloom above.
I picked up speed, sprinting.
Above me a door banged, probably Alessandro emerging onto the roof. Another flight of stairs. A door loomed ahead. Finally.
I stumbled through it into the sunlight, gasping for breath. The roof was paved and square. Stephen stood at the far edge, looking out into the Pit. Alessandro was next to him. I ran to them. Heat washed over me. Tatyana’s wall ended about twenty feet below us.
A clump of vegetation protruded from the mire about fifty yards away. The long green stems, striated with metal, shifted against each other, braided into a fist.
“Is Marat in there?” Stephen asked me. “Can you feel his mind?”
I reached out. My magic grew, spiraling, and found a mind, glowing with purple.
“He’s in there.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.” Marat was emanating a lot of magic. “He’s fighting.”
Stephen took a deep breath and said something in Mandarin. It sounded like a curse.
“Can you open a path to him through the water?” I asked.
Stephen backed up, all the way to the door. “That won’t be necessary.”
He leaned forward. “I told him to leave the damn bulldozers. The man never listens.”
Everyone had told Marat to leave the damn bulldozers. If I ever did business with House Kazarian, the contract I offered Marat would have to be a mile long to account for every harebrained idea he came up with.
Stephen sprinted. He tore past me, pushed off the ledge into a leap, and for a moment he flew through the air, over the wall of flames, arms raised like wings.
Breath caught in my throat.
Stephen plunged down. He landed on the water as if it were solid ground. Waves pulsed from the impact. He thrust his arm out. Water flowed into his hand, forming a long transparent shaft with a blade on the end. He’d made a guandao. Oh, wow.
Stephen spun the watery glaive and dashed across the swamp to the clump of plants. A tentacle emerged, snapping at him like a whip. Stephen spun the guandao without breaking stride. A fan of water struck from the blade, severing the tentacle like a giant razor.
Arabella would die.
Stephen attacked the green wall, slicing, cutting, spinning, and stabbing, flawless and graceful like a genius dancer.
“Catalina,” Alessandro called.
“Are you seeing this? This is insane.”
“Listen to me very carefully. I need you to draw a circle that can generate a null space. A really good one.”
I turned around. Alessandro was staring in the opposite direction, at the bridge leading to the island. I raised my head and froze.
Constructs marched through the mire. Huge, industrial monstrosities, gleaming in the sun with metal and magic. I had seen them before. My brain supplied the right names. Climber XV. Crawler XI. Breaker VI. Others I couldn’t name. People with weapons rode atop them. And at the head of it all, on top of a colossal Digger XII, sat Cheryl Castellano.
I couldn’t see Cheryl’s face from this distance, but I knew it was her. My brain feverishly assessed and calculated. Nine huge constructs. At least thirty people.
Cheryl didn’t have a private army. She had House security, but she wouldn’t use them for this. One look at the forest of tentacles and constructs and even the dimmest person could tell that this wasn’t normal magic. House security didn’t have the kind of discipline to keep their mouths shut about what they saw. If the Assembly called on them, they would testify.
No. She wouldn’t deploy House security. That meant Arkan’s people were riding on the constructs. And that meant . . .
“She’s going to kill all of us,” I said.
“Yes,” Alessandro said.
She knew she couldn’t destroy the Abyss, so she’d settled for the next best thing. She would kill everyone who knew about it. Tatyana, Stephen, Marat, all the workers, and the two of us would die in the Pit. What a great tragedy. She would bravely carry on the work of her fallen partners, free of oversight. Free to interact with her creation at her leisure. Maybe a part of her still thought she could control him.
“Do you need chalk?” Alessandro asked.
I pulled chalk out of my pocket.
“Good.”
He walked to the edge of the roof facing Cheryl’s armada, crouched, and drew a perfect circle with a practiced swipe of his hand. Another circle, a line of glyphs . . . So House Sagredo had a House spell of its own after all.
The constructs drew closer. One crawled along the bridge. The rest stomped their way through the mire. Tentacles slapped against the spidery metal legs of Climber XV. Buzz saws slid out of the construct’s legs, chewing the plant and metal to pieces.
There were too many. Even with Tatyana and Stephen, there were too many constructs for us to overcome, not to mention the trained killers they carried. We were stuck between the Abyss and Cheryl’s army.
“Trust me,” Alessandro said.
Even if I used all of my power and beguiled their minds, the most I could do was throw them at the Abyss. United, they would injure it, but not destroy it. It would return. The longer people I beguiled stayed under my power, the more they loved me. Those who survived this fight would tear me apart, consumed by the need to possess a piece of me. There would be no winners here.
The chalk felt clammy in my fingers. An odd kind of calm washed over me, clearing my fear. This was my job. I would do it and I would fight to the bitter end.
I dialed Tatyana’s number. The male secretary answered. “Yes?”
“Tell Tatyana that Cheryl is not the cavalry. The thing in the swamp is her doing. She’s coming to kill us.”
“We know,” he said and hung up.
Cheryl was a threat to us. But the Abyss would end our world if we let it. If I let it.
I put Linus’ sword down and crouched. I could draw a dozen circles with a null boundary, but none of them fit. Half of them would cut me off from the environment. I would be safe in the circle, but magically deaf and blind, able only to expel magic by relying on my eyes and ears. The other half would allow me to use my mind but wouldn’t give me the power I required to project my magic.