The camazotz poured through the rip. There were twenty of them, then thirty. And then, as if they had reached some critical mass or were answering some command given outside human hearing, they raced to surround the shielded circle.
“Steady,” Patience called. She and Brandt were blood-linked, adding their magic to that of the shield stones, and they each had a pulsing, glowing fireball conjured and ready to hurl through the one-way shield, which would let things out, but not in.
The camazotz moved closer, eyeing the shield as if trying to figure out whether it would burn them. But the shield stones gave off only a passive force field, and one that hadn’t yet been truly tested.
Please, gods, Cara whispered inwardly, but then didn’t know what she dared ask for, or even if the gods were listening. For a few brief days, she’d felt like part of the prophecies, part of the war. Now, though, it seemed like she’d been talking herself into the impossible-seeming logic. What were they doing here? Was this even the right place, the right spell? On some level, she had expected the Banol Kax to send the shadow creatures to attack: the hellhound, the eagles, all the other beasts that had erupted during Aaron’s funeral. Those were her enemies, hers and the winikin’s, and would have meant something.
The camazotz, though, were pure killing machines, an army sent to wipe out the resistance. Which meant… what? That her signs that the winikin were crucial to the equinox hadn’t been signs at all, just wishful thinking? Or, worse, had she and Sven gotten it wrong, after all? Because something wasn’t right; that was for sure. The Nightkeepers didn’t seem to be making any progress; they were uplinked in a circle, heads bowed, with Dez leading a chant. He had the skull artifact in front of him; faint smoke rose from it where they had burned their blood offerings. But aside from that, nothing was happening. All the magic was dark, the newcomers demonic. And they were closing in.
Focus. It was way too late to turn back now. All she could do was concentrate on the task at hand. Hold the shield. Protect the Nightkeepers.
“Ready,” Brandt said in the same calm tone as his wife, the two of them working together with a seamlessness that put a lump in Cara’s throat.
A huge, burly bat demon grabbed a smaller one standing nearby and shoved it into the shield. The nearest winikin shouted and stumbled back, but the shield held. It held!
But it also didn’t fight back. Unlike some of the Nightkeepers’ shields, it couldn’t deliver an electric shock or slash of fire. It was a forcefield, not a weapon.
The camazotz roared in triumph, and attacked.
“Now!” Patience shouted, and let rip with her fireball. It slammed into the surging churn of demons, grazed one, and hit another squarely, engulfing it in flames. A nanosecond later, Brandt’s fireball hit a huge male nearby.
“Fire!” Cara ordered, and let rip with a burst from her machine pistol. The rest of the winikin started shooting a nanosecond later, and for a moment the only thing she could hear was the chattering hail of automatic weapons followed closely by the crack-booms of the explosive-tipped rounds detonating to drive shards of sacred jade deep into the demons’ flesh.
The world outside the shield erupted with bestial screams and oily sprays of black ichor. The creatures reeled as their blackish flesh peeled away under the searing, magic-wrought fire or was shredded by the jade shrapnel. Within seconds, nearly a third of the camazotz were on the ground, writhing, but a dozen or so had reached the shield. They scaled the sides like spiders, wings outstretched so they blocked the light and made it hard to see what they were doing. They were moving like they had a plan, though, which wasn’t good.
“Get them!” Cara ordered, gesturing. “We don’t want them to—”
Suddenly JT shouted, clutched at his chest, and dropped to his knees. Natalie cried out and raced to him, only to fall partway there with her hands over her heart. Above them, a pair of camazotz clung to their sections of the shield and were regurgitating a dark ooze onto the surface of the magic. It burned where it hit, eating through the shield-stone spell and somehow knocking down the stones’ wielders.
“No!” Cara unloaded her clip into the first of the bat demons, which fell back with its face gone to pulp, leaving a gaping opening in the shield. Sebastian and Breece took aim at the second breach.
“I’ll patch the gaps!” Patience said to her. “Help them!”
Cara raced to Natalie as several others converged on JT, who was normally their medic. His kit lay beside him, but in the terrifying moment when she leaned over Natalie and couldn’t find a pulse, breath, or hint of life… Cara couldn’t remember who was next on call for medical emergencies. Suddenly everything was jumbled up inside her head, competing for space. Panic lashed through her. Don’t lose it. Don’t you dare lose it.
She automatically turned and said, “Who—”
There wasn’t anybody there to ask.
“It’s the blood-link,” called the man who was bent over JT’s unmoving body. “You’ve got to break the blood-link!” It was a sandy-haired winikin with steady blue eyes. Cara couldn’t remember his name or anything about him.
“Wait!” Brandt snapped. “Let me take over their shields first. The punctures aren’t affecting me or Patience, and we can hold the spells.… Okay, go!”
The guy stripped off JT’s wristband, breaking his link to the shield stone. The second the band was off his flesh, JT arched up off the ground and sucked in a harsh, rattling breath. “It’s working!” the guy barked. “Get Natalie’s band off!”
Fumbling, Cara yanked off the device, which burned her fingers with cool fire. Natalie convulsed and then rolled over, gagging wretchedly. But she was alive. Blessedly alive.
Thank you, gods! “Ritchie,” Cara called, remembering his name as her brain unlocked, then went into overdrive. “Over here. I want you to—”
“Here they come again!” Brandt warned. “They’re regenerating faster than we can blast them back.”
“You’ve got to get out there and cut their dicks off.” The pained rasp came from JT. “It’s the only way to banish the fuckers. At least it was a year ago.” Which was an ominous caveat, as the magic was stronger now.
“Fire at will!” Patience cried, and let rip, driving back the front line once more.
But Cara heard additional screams, shouts, instructions, and knew that other sections of the shield had been breached, other winikin taken down. Any minute now, the camazotz would break all the way through, and they’d be fighting for their lives, and for those of the Nightkeepers.
The huge, burly bat demon that had started the charge rose up from behind the line, screeching at the edge of her hearing, driving the others on as they got blown back, regenerated, and rushed forward again and again.
“Transfer all the shields over to me and Brandt,” Patience shouted. “Then get over here and give us your blood-links. We should be able to hold it that way.”
Cara didn’t move, though. She stayed staring at the huge camazotz leader. As if feeling her glare, it pivoted and glared back with burning red eyes, then jerked its chin as if to say, You and what army, bitch?
But that was the thing. This was her army. These were her people, and it was her responsibility to get them out alive. That might not have been her priority the day of the mock battle back at Skywatch, but it sure as hell was now. She couldn’t hang back or hide out, not when there was something she could do to help.
Her hands shook as she scooped Natalie’s wristband off the ground and added it to her own, then activated the shield-stone spell links of both, not as part of the larger shield, but to create a tough shell of magic surrounding her. Protecting her. Heart drumming a quick rhythm that was half terror, half determination, she slung her machine pistol on its harness and pulled her combat knife in its place. Then she headed for the shield.