God. I really wanted that cold beer and a good book.
“Don’t screw this up,” I whispered to myself. “Don’t screw it up.”
The skinwalker passed in front of the empty cottage doorway.
And, a second later, he dragged Thomas into line between the doorway and me.
I lifted my right hand, focusing my will and aligning my thoughts, while the constantly shifting numbers and formulae of force calculation went spinning through my head.
I suddenly spread my fingers and called, “Forzare!”
Something approximately the same size and shape as the blade of a bulldozer went rushing across the ground between my brother and me, tearing up earth and gravel, root and plant. The unseen force dug into the earth an inch beneath Thomas, hammered into his unmoving form, and ripped him free of the naagloshii’s grip. He went tumbling over ten feet of ground to the doorway—and struck his head savagely on the stone wall framing the door as he went through.
Had his head flopped about with a lethally rubbery fluidity after the impact? Had I just broken my brother’s neck?
I let out a cry of agony and chagrin. At the same time, the skinwalker whirled to face me, crouched, and let out a furious roar that shook the air all around, sending drops of water that had beaded upon the leaves of the trees raining to the earth in a fresh shower. That roar held all the fury of a mortally offended, maniacal ego and promised a death that could only be described with the assistance of an encyclopedia of torments, a thesaurus, and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy.
The naagloshii in my crystalline memory of the recent past and the one standing in front of me in the here-and-now both rushed at me, huge and unstoppable, determined to hit me from either side and rip me to shreds.
And suddenly I did not care that this creature was a foe on par with any number of nightmares I would never dare to trade blows with. I did not care that I was probably about to die.
I saw Kirby’s still form in my head. I saw the small, broken figure of Andi in her hospital room. I saw my brother’s wounds, remembered the agony the thing had caused me when I had seen it through my Sight. This creature had no place here. And if I was to die, I was not going to go out in a gibbering heap of terror. If I was to die, it wouldn’t happen because I was half crippled with fear and Sight trauma.
If I was to die, it was going to be a bloody and spectacular mess.
“Bring it!” I screamed back at the naagloshii, my terror and rage making my voice sharp and high and rough. I cupped my right hand as if preparing to throw a baseball, drew up my will, and filled my palm with scarlet fire. I thrust out my left hand and ran my will through the shield bracelet hanging there, preparing a defense, and as I did I felt the power of the land beneath my feet, felt it spreading out around me, drawing in supportive energy. “Bring it! Bring it, you dickless freak!”
The naagloshii’s form shifted from something almost human to a shape that was more like that of a gorilla, its arms lengthening, its legs shortening. It rushed forward, bounding over the distance between us with terrifying speed, grace, and power, roaring as it came. It was also vanishing from sight, becoming one with the darkness as its veil closed around it, utterly invisible to the human eye.
But Demonreach knew where Shagnasty was. And so did I.
In some distant corner of my mind, where my common sense apparently had some kind of vacation home, my brain noted with dismay that I had broken into a sprint of my own. I don’t remember making the decision, but I was charging out to meet the skinwalker, screaming out a challenge in reply. I ran, embracing a rage that was very nearly madness, filling the fire in my hand with more and more power that surged higher every time one of my feet hit the ground, until it was blazing as bright as an acetylene torch.
The naagloshi leapt at me, horrible eyes burning and visible from within the veil, its clawed arms reaching out.
I dropped into a baseball player’s slide on my right hip, and brought my shield up at an angle oblique to the skinwalker’s motion. The creature hit the shield like a load of bricks and bounced up to continue in the same direction it had been leaping. The instant the naagloshii had rebounded, I dropped the shield, screaming, “Andi!” and hurled a miniature sun up at the skinwalker’s belly.
Fire erupted in an explosion that lifted the skinwalker another dozen feet into the air, tumbling it tail over teakettle—an expression that makes no goddamned sense whatsoever yet seemed oddly appropriate to the moment. My nose filled with the hideous scent of burning hair and scorched meat, and the naagloshii howled in savage ecstasy or agony as it came tumbling down, bounced hard a couple of times, and then rolled to its feet.
It came streaking toward me, its body shifting again behind its concealing veil, becoming something else, something more feline, maybe. It didn’t matter to me. I reached out to the wind and rain and rumbling thunder around us and gathered a levy of lightning into my cupped hand. Then, instead of waiting for its charge, I turned my left hand over and triggered every charged energy ring I had left, unleashing their deadly force in a single salvo.
The naagloshii howled something in a tongue I didn’t know, and the lances of force glanced off of his veil, leaving concentric rings of spreading color where they struck. A bare second later, I lifted my cupped had and screamed, “Thomas! Fulminas!”
Thunder loud enough to knock several stones loose from the tower shook the hilltop, and the blue-white flash of light was physically painful to the eyes. A thorny network of lightning leapt to the naagloshii, whose defenses had not yet recovered from deflecting the blasts of the force rings. The deadly-delicate tracery of lightning hammered into the exact center of its chest, stopping its charge in its tracks. Smaller strikes, spreading out from the main bolt like the branches of a tree, snapped into the rocky ground in half a dozen places, digging red-hot, skull-sized divots into the granite and flint.
Exhaustion hit me like a hammer, and stars swam in my vision. I had never thrown punches that hard before, and even with the assistance of Demonreach, the expenditure of energy needed to do so was literally staggering. I knew that if I pushed too hard, I’d collapse—but the skinwalker was still standing.
It stumbled to one side, its veil faltering for a second, its eyes wide with surprise. I could just see it going through the naagloshii’s head: how in the world was I hitting him so accurately when it knew that its veil rendered it all but perfectly invisible?
For one quick fraction of a second, I saw fear in its eyes, and triumphant fury roared through my weary body.
The skinwalker recovered itself, changing again. With what looked like trivial effort, it reached down and ripped a section of rock shelf the size of a sidewalk paving stone from the rock. It flung the stone at me, three or four hundred pounds coming at me like a major-league fastball.
I dove to the side, slowed by exhaustion, but fast enough to get out of the way, and as I went, I gathered my will. This time the silver-white streamers of soulfire danced and glittered around my right hand. I lay on the ground, too tired to get back up, and ground my teeth in determination as it charged me for what would, one way or another, be the last time.
I didn’t have the breath to scream, but I could snarl. “And this,” I spat, “is for Kirby, you son of a bitch.” I unleashed my will and screamed, “Laqueus!”