Sinister Seraphim of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 8) (28 page)

Two men appeared from behind a wrecked shield generator, staffs glowing. One hurled a blazing meteor at us, while the other shouted a word. Thunder erupted in my ears and I felt myself being thrown backward even as the large burning hunk of rock razed the ground in front of me. My feet slipped in the mud and I went down hard right in the path of death.

Chapter 26

I tried channeling a shield, but my mind was a mess of static and confusion. I tried to rise on legs that felt like jelly.

I heard the shout of a young girl. A massive beam of Brilliance shattered the meteor, showering the area with shrapnel. A black blur raced across my vision and suddenly the two battle mages were flat on their backs, staffs and wands torn from their grasps. Elyssa stood over them, lips peeled back in a snarl. She aimed a fist and fired silver darts into each of their necks. The mages went limp.

Mom pulled me to my feet. "A chaotic blast," she said in a trembling voice. "Only the most skilled battle mages are capable of such a feat."

"Daelissa obviously spared no expense in attacking this place," I said, my voice still sounding tiny in my ears.

"I was able to shield me and Ivy at the last instant," Mom said in an apologetic voice. "Unfortunately, my reflexes weren't fast enough to protect you."

Elyssa secured the attackers with diamond fiber. "Let's keep moving." She looked toward the catapults in the distance. "It looks like the battle mages are grouping back there."

"I count twenty," Mom said.

Elyssa nodded. "There are a dozen bodies around this area. I don't know if they're dead, unconscious, or just faking."

"Is it possible the interdictor killed them when it went down?" I asked.

"I know how to check," Ivy said, and sent a finger-sized beam at one of the bodies. A tiny wisp of smoke rose from the skin, but the stricken mage didn't move. Ivy flicked the beam from one body to the next. A man sprang from the ground, yelping as the white-hot lance of Brilliance scorched his behind.

Elyssa nailed him with a lancer dart and dragged him over to join his unconscious comrades.

"Looks like the rest are dead meat," Ivy said, brushing her hands together as if they were dirty.

"Good work," Mom said, ruffling the girl's hair.

"Puny mortals." Ivy's blue eyes glowed for an instant. "They dared to mess with us."

Mom's eyes widened with concern. "Is that something you heard from Daelissa?"

My sister's gaze seemed locked on the catapults in the distance. She didn't answer at first.

"Ivy?" Mom asked.

The girl looked up as if startled from a daydream. "Yes, Mommy?"

"We've got to move." Elyssa peered over the car-sized hulk of an aether generator. "I don't know if they've spotted us yet."

I looked at the dark cloaks the unconscious mages wore. "Let's go for the element of surprise, then." I snatched a cloak from the guy who'd nearly flattened me with a magic meteor and put it around my shoulders. Elyssa and Mom did the same for the last two.

"What about me?" Ivy asked.

"You're a little short to pull it off," I said. "Stay directly behind us so they won't see you."

"I don't want to wear a dead guy's clothes anyway." She shuddered.

Elyssa handed us each a staff. "Let's go." She pulled up the hood of her cloak and walked around the generator.

The rest of us followed her lead. We walked across the muddy fields. A few stray ASEs whirred in the air around us. Only one projected the flickering hologram of a cloaked man who walked back and forth. The rest seemed dysfunctional.

As we closed in on the remaining battle mages, I saw a group of them carrying an orb the size of a head to the catapults. Malignant yellow energy crackled within.

"Be careful!" a portly mage shouted loud enough to be heard from a distance. "It's the only one we have."

"I know what that energy is," I said. I'd seen it while trying to pluck the Cyrinthian Rune from an arch with identical deadly energy pulsing next to it. "It's malaether."

"A dose of aether so concentrated, it's practically radioactive," Mom said almost under her breath. "In a crucible bomb it would be like a magical nuclear device going off."

"They couldn't take the castle, so they're going to kill everyone inside," I said. "Is it really that powerful?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. It's small. It might not have a blast radius larger than a hundred yards or so."

Ivy tugged on my cloak. "How far away are they from us?"

"I don't know. Maybe a few hundred feet?"

"Eighty yards," Elyssa said, her eyes never leaving the targets. "And there's not a lot of cover between here and there, so let's—"

A group of mages turned toward us, staffs levelled. I wasn't sure if they could hit us from so far away.

"Identify yourselves!" One of the men shouted.

"Launch ready!" another shouted as the catapult locked into position.

"Justin." Ivy tugged on my cloak. "When I say 'go', I want you to put up a shield."

I looked back, confused. My mouth opened to speak, but hung open when it saw my sister. She glowed, as if Brilliance suffused her entire body. Without another word, she clapped her hands together and sent a bolt of destruction right at the mages.

"Go," Ivy said in a weak voice and fell to her knees.

Elyssa's eyes went wide. "Holy shi—"

Grabbing everyone close, I channeled the hardest thickest shield of Murk I could manage. Ivy's shot penetrated the crucible of malaether. The bomb imploded, sucking in all the catapults and battle mages within a thirty-foot radius. I saw their mouths open in silent screams as they flew into annihilation. Everything went deadly silent. A light at the center of the maelstrom flashed and pulsed outward in an instant. The rest of the battle mages who hadn't been drawn into the implosion threw up their hands as if mere flesh would protect them.

Skin sloughed from them in black ash, leaving skeletons standing in their place for an instant before the blast wave scattered them. A cloud of dust and debris shaped oddly like a unicorn horn sprouted at the center of the explosion. Wind whistled past the shield. The muddy ground baked to desert dry in an instant and dust filled the air.

The pressure against the shield built to the point I could barely maintain it. I squeezed my eyes closed, teeth clenched, fists balled tight. Just when I thought I couldn't hold the barrier a moment more, I felt a hand press against my upper back and gentle energy coursed into me, bolstering my reserves. My shield of ultraviolet brightened and I breathed in relief. I opened my eyes and saw Elyssa looking at me, eyes full of concern. I turned my head and saw Mom's hand squeezing my shoulder.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was in truth probably only a few minutes, the howling winds died and the dust storm cleared. I looked behind us, half-expecting to see nothing left of the castle but rubble. Other than the conventional destruction already visited upon it, it looked just fine. A few yards from us, the ground still looked muddy.

"We must have been right on the fringe of its range," Mom said.

"Will the air be radioactive?" I asked.

Mom shook her head uncertainly. "I don't know.

I looked toward the epicenter of the blast. Other than dry scorched desert, there was literally nothing. "One way to find out." I released the shield.

Hot dry air assaulted my lungs. I didn't feel as if my skin was about to melt, but didn't feel like taking chances. I scooped Ivy off the ground and jogged to the border of the scorched earth. Once there, the air felt noticeably cooler even though it was summertime in the Down Under.

"The castle…out of danger?" Ivy asked weakly, eyes fluttering open.

"Yes," I said. "That was a great shot."

"I was trying to destroy the catapult," she said with a tiny giggle. "I wanted a shield just in case I missed."

"Still a great shot." I smiled.

"It sure does take a lot of energy to shoot so far." Her eyelids drooped. "Mommy, I want my stuffed unicorn." With that pronouncement, she fell asleep.

Mom stroked her cheek. "She tries so hard to be a good girl."

"She is a good girl." I started walking toward the castle. Smoke rose from behind its walls. Blackened craters pockmarked the exterior where the orbs had smashed into it.

"She's still struggling with post-Daelissa issues," Mom said. "The woman planted a seed long ago, and I'm doing all I can to stunt its growth."

I pshawed. "No thanks to Jeremiah."

"If not for him, that seed would have taken strong root long ago." She touched my upper arm. "He is not evil."

I didn't feel like getting into this conversation again, and her touch reminded me of the shield. "How did you help me with the barrier?"

Mom raised an eyebrow as if processing the sudden change in topic. "I don't know. I had planned to channel a shield of my own, but I wanted to reassure you I was there, so I touched you. Instead, it seems I channeled into you and bolstered your spell."

"I wondered about that," Elyssa said. "It looked certain Justin was about to fold. I still don't know how he held up against that." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder toward ground zero.

"Maybe it works the same way we're able to recharge flying carpet or camouflage armor," I said.

Mom shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Can Brightlings channel Murk?" Elyssa asked.

"Only a trickle." Mom held her thumb and forefinger apart, sending a weak stream of ultraviolet light from one to the other. "Certainly nothing useful."

Elyssa pursed her lips. "If Murk is creative energy, and Brilliance is destructive, does that mean Murk is better for shields and barriers?"

"In general, yes." Mom nodded. "But only because the quality of the barriers are different. A barrier of Brilliance destroys attacks against it."

"Fighting fire with fire," I said.

"Precisely." Mom stepped around a particularly nasty mud pit with an arm sticking straight up out of it. A battle mage must have fallen in during the battle. "Murk tries to absorb attacks much like a rock absorbs heat from a fire."

"I've seen Nightliss kill with Murk," I said, remembering a fight at the Templar compound where she'd vaporized someone about to pulp my skull with a sniper rifle.

"Do not mistake creation for preservation," Mom said. "Brilliance burns and incinerates, whereas Murk can literally deconstruct." She looked at me. "Both are agents of change, they simply go about it in different ways."

Elyssa regarded the swath of destruction. "These guys sure didn't have fun storming the castle." She turned toward the wrecked interdictor. "We've got to recover this thing and get it back to El Dorado somehow."

The unconscious bodies of the battle mages lay nearby. I walked over and examined them. They weren't wearing badges like the Enforcers. One wore a gaudy watch. The other had a silver bracelet with the Cyrinthian letters for "Protect" engraved in it.

"Can you hold Ivy?" I asked Mom.

"Of course." She took her daughter.

I bent down and looked the mages over. It was then I spotted the one commonality. Each one wore a gold ring with a clear jewel, perhaps a diamond in the setting. The man who'd hit me with the chaotic blast spell wore three rings, and the man who'd launched the flaming meteor wore two. "Looks like they've improved the design of the charms that let them cast spells in the interdiction field." I pulled off the rings and pocketed them. "Maybe Shelton can tell me if these work the same way."

The main castle gates opened and a force of Templars on horses galloped our way.

"What's with the castle and horses?" I asked Elyssa. "Isn't that a bit old fashioned?"

She pointed out a road sign which had been flattened during the battle and now lay between two wrecked generators.

Welcome to Dark Ages Dinner Theatre!

"It's one of those restaurants with all the jousting?" I said with a snort.

"That's the disguise," she said. "They hide in plain sight. Apparently it was too hard to stay close to Sydney and keep a low profile since the government is so snoopy over here."

Commander Taylor and her entourage reached us. "Are you okay?" She looked us up and down. "We saw the explosion. I'd feared the worst."

"They were trying to launch the equivalent of a nuclear device at the castle," I said. "We think once their plans to capture it failed, they decided to wipe it out."

"Typical Daelissa," Mom said. "If she can't have it, nobody can."

"I bloody told you we shouldn't have entered negotiations with these people," a thickly muscled man next to Taylor said. He rubbed his shaved head and glared at me. "It's your fault we were attacked."

"That will be all, Lieutenant Wilson," Taylor said in a stern voice. She turned back to us. "Shortly after we heard the explosion, the remaining vampires fled."

I looked around at the wide-open grassy terrain. Scraggly trees and scattered rocks were the only other decoration. In the distance, I saw forested mountains and rocky formations. "They ran into the mountains?"

She nodded. "This area looks remote, but we're only about fifty kilometers from Sydney."

"Can we get some help recovering this?" Elyssa pointed out the Tesla coil. "It's very important we take it back for study."

"Of course." Taylor motioned a young man over. "Fetch some rope."

"At once, Commander." He spun his mount and raced toward the fortress.

"We shouldn't let them take anything," Wilson said. "Beg your pardon, Commander, but if anyone should study this thing, it should be us." He turned to Elyssa. "What does it do, girl?"

"You are speaking to Sergeant Elyssa Borathen," Commander Taylor said. "Daughter of Thomas."

Wilson didn't look impressed. "Just because she's got Borathen blood doesn't make her a princess."

"That guy has been an incredible ass during the entire negotiations," Mom whispered in my ear. "And he never shuts up."

"Wilson, that is quite enough," Taylor said through her teeth. "We've all been through quite an ordeal here, and I would like some civility."