Collision: The Alliance Series Book Three (28 page)

I lashed out with a kick, sending magic through the heel of my foot to propel the man backwards with second level magic.
Bastard.
They were child-killers and vicious monsters. I bared my teeth, pure rage taking control as the second enemy raised a hand to send magic at me. I dodged and slashed with my dagger, barely noticing as blood spattered my face. The enemy fell. It wasn’t enough. I wasn’t going to leave any of them alive. A voice seemed to whisper in my ear, urging me on, feeding into the blazing white lightning around my hands.

Magic flared. The last summoner dropped to the ground, dead.

Silence. Breathing heavily, I stepped back. My dagger slipped in my sweaty grip, blood glistening on the blade. Kay, crouched on the ground, stared at me. Like I was a stranger.

I felt sick, and swayed on the spot as the adrenaline drained away. Kay stepped over the fallen summoners towards me, and an odd impulse seized me, to tell him to stay back. Even though the monsters were gone. But I was…

It’s over. They’re dead.
“Kay,” I said shakily. “Did I get all of them?”

He nodded. “Every one. Come on, we can’t stay here.” He took my hand, though I didn’t need it to become invisible, but the support stopped me from sinking to the ground in horror. I squeezed his hand back, and a sharp pain shot up my wrist. I hadn’t even felt when I got cut, but now blood seeped down my wrist and my face stung, too.

I stopped dead. The children hid behind the trees. They’d fled from the fighting. I swallowed. Wondered what, even if we spoke the same language, I could possibly say now. They probably thought we were monsters.

A little girl hesitantly approached us, head bowed. She wore pale cotton-like garments, like the others, her bright-yellow hair a splash of colour. Kay stiffened as she reached to touch my bloodstained hand with the end of an odd, stick-like object. A weapon? It might have been. She pressed it to the cut on my arm, and I was the one to go still.

Small, twisting vines emerged from the end of the stick. I stared, mouth falling open, as they touched my skin, causing magic to spark to life again. The vines withdrew as swiftly as they’d arrived, like a flower petal folding into itself.

The cut on my arm wasn’t there anymore.

“How… how?” I glanced at Kay, who looked as astonished as I felt.

“Xanet,” the girl whispered, and touched my face with the stick, in the place where it stung.

Again, magic sparked. The cut healed.

Xanet was the deity of life. One of the deities was on our side.

Despite everything, I smiled at the girl, and tears pricked my eyes. “Thank you,” I said. And she seemed to understand.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

KAY

Ada appeared to be in a state of shock, walking mechanically as I guided her back into the city, small tremors running through her body. Maybe magical aftershock. I wasn’t feeling too steady myself. Especially when I pictured the shadow that had fallen over Ada when she’d used magic.

A familiar shadow. It wasn’t an aftereffect of the magic. And there had been no backlash, not even when she’d hit third level.

I hadn’t pieced it together when I’d first seen the carving, or the symbol. But I remembered too clearly. And now it hit me: the symbol and the deity were one and the same, and one that had appeared behind Ada when she’d used magic. Veyak.

And it was too similar, far too similar, to those magic-creatures we’d fought in the Passages.

I couldn’t even begin to think what it might mean. Except we were in way, way over our heads.

“What the
devil
were you thinking?” Raj stepped out from behind a tree root, grey-faced with panic and rage. “Did you both want to get yourselves killed?”

“You were about to let those summoners sacrifice those kids?” I said, with a glance at Ada. “It wasn’t deliberate–the magic, that is. She somehow channelled the deity.”

“She
what?”
Raj gaped at us. “We were trying to get a jump on those magic-wielders, but they moved too fast. No way could we get close to that magic. What were you doing out there, burning the forest down?”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Where’s Mathran?”

“Here.” Mathran appeared from the doorway of a house. A frightened-looking woman withdrew into the shadows inside the hall as she saw us—and two of the kids. “They ran from the magic.”

Well, at least he was doing something more useful than hiding.

“Iriel?” I asked Raj.

“She went after you,” he said, through gritted teeth. “She’s not with you?”

Shit.
“I didn’t see her.” But we about-turned and followed the path back into the forest all the same. It wasn’t hard to track down where we’d fought. Crater-like holes in the ground marked the spots where Ada had used magic. She seemed reluctant to go near them, tugging her hand out of mine to walk alone.

As someone appeared from behind a tree, four hands drew weapons–and Iriel stared at all of us.

“What?” she said. “I thought we were all running madly into the unknown jungle.”

Raj walked over to her and shoved her in the shoulder. “You’re all
mental,
” he said. “Where the hell did you go?”

“To look at the trail of destruction,” she said. “Ada, when you channelled the deity–don’t look at me like that, Raj, you know that’s what happened–it left marks.” She pointed.

Damn, she was right. The area around where the lightning had struck had been torn up, the ground split… in the shape of a symbol.

Veyak. Again.

Ada crouched to examine the markings. Her eyes were wild, and blood streaked her face from the healed cut. She tilted her head up to face me, swallowed, and said, “The doorway. Has it closed?”

I turned around. This part of the jungle appeared unfamiliar, but we’d fought the summoners right here. The doorway had closed, leaving nothing but thick trees and torn-up ground in the spot where the summoners had opened it. The only trace of the doorway was the haze of magic hovering around the body of the summoner who lay in the spot where, just minutes before, a canyon had been visible.

“Doorway?” Iriel wore a faintly puzzled expression. “Isn’t our door over there?” She pointed.

“Let’s get out,” said Raj.

Ada climbed over the cratered ground, declining my offer of help. “How did they do it?” She stared at the spot where the doorway had been. “Did they really sacrifice someone to open the door?”

“We must leave,” said Mathran. “This is not our path. And the sky darkens.”

He was right. “I thought it was day time?”

“The cycles become shorter.” He shook his head. “Another sign of the end… of the chasm…”

The door the summoners had opened, the gaping hole on the other side of the canyon…Was
that
the chasm from the legend? We’d been too far away to see. But a cliff didn’t appear out of nowhere.

A beam of light cut through the trees, striking the ground in front of us. I immediately went for my weapon, and the others followed suit. What the hell now?

“It’s happening,” Mathran said. “Veyak’s storm is back.”

Purple bolts of lightning crackled overhead with bursts of thunder, emphasising his words. Not like natural lightning, not at all like Earth.

More like magic.

Ada gasped. “Did I do that?”

“Of course not.” But if the static buzzing in my fingertips was any indication, there might be a real danger of us creating a storm of our own soon.

“We must move!” shouted Mathran.

Lucky I remembered the way back to the doorway. As we ran, more lightning lit the trees, and thunder boomed so loudly, the ground shook under our feet and the trees trembled to the roots. Mathran muttered to himself, almost chanting, so rapidly I couldn’t catch the words.

Finally, the doorway appeared in front of us, mercifully untouched. I waited to make sure everyone else got safely through before closing it behind us. After the level of magic on Vey-Xanetha, I barely felt the buzz of the Passages.

“You’re not seriously going back!” said Iriel, as Mathran made for the door back to the base, which I’d left open on the opposite wall.

“I cannot stay here,” he said. “I cannot leave my world.”

“Dammit.” I checked the door. The storm didn’t seem to have reached the base yet, but given how unpredictable the deities were, we couldn’t count on it.

Mathran had already crossed the threshold. The base’s entrance was only a metre away. Raj and Iriel exchanged glances, clearly weighing the odds, then followed after Mathran.

Ada hung back, staring at the doorway, her eyes glazed.

“Ada,” I said. “We have to go.”

“I know. I can’t believe–can’t believe they took those kids. They were going to…”

“Things like that happen on Earth,” I said, my voice sounding distant even to me. “Like every world.”

“I know that. I…” She swayed on the spot. “What I did to those summoners. It’s exactly what the Royals did. They—they walked onto every world they could get at, rounded up the natives, and…”

Shit.
“It wasn’t the same,” I said, ineffectually.

“I don’t
regret
killing them,” said Ada. “Maybe I should regret blowing the Alliance’s rules to pieces, but I’d rather resign as an Ambassador than watch shit like that happen.”

“You didn’t break the law,” I said. “Mathran showed me the agreement Vey-Xanetha has with the Alliance. He was acting authority, since the police were dead…” I trailed off. I’d been far from thinking of the law when I’d gone after her. Maybe neither of us could be trusted to act rationally in the face of a situation like that.

“The mandate.” She laughed hollowly. “Yeah. That really helped my homeworld. Enzar’s authority figures are walking around killing everyone over there.” She rubbed her eyes. “Now I’ve just proven I’m no better.”

“That’s bullshit, Ada. You know it is.” Anger on her behalf burned beneath the surface. We’d saved those kids, but how many more lives would be lost before we figured out what the god was doing? Giving up went against every instinct, but right now, my only weapon was powerless rage.

I struck the wall, hard. Sharp pain jolted in my knuckles and Ada flinched away from me.

That flinch undid me. I turned my back to check all the other doorway entrances were closed. “Go, Ada.”

“Wait–Kay.”

And the way she said my goddamned name. My jaw clenched, and I wondered how in hell I’d managed to let her get under my skin like this.

“Come on,” I said, pacing to the doorway near the base. The others were inside. “We have to figure out how to deal with this.”

Veyak was clearly some kind of magic-creature, a super-powered version of the ones in the Passages. But pure magic didn’t come out of nowhere. We were missing something. If Veyak had fixated on Ada, it clearly had to do with the level of power, tied to its source.

Veyak was a living source. I was almost sure of it. But how to prove it? If someone was controlling the deity, there was no way to tell
where
they were. Unless I searched every inch of the continent. And that was just one theory. The person–if they were a person–who’d opened the chasm might not even still be on this world, anyway. If lives really did have to be sacrificed to open it… but that couldn’t be right either. I didn’t know a whole lot about the theory behind doorways, but surely it’d have been on record if anything similar had happened on other high-magic worlds. Right?

Maybe I was headed in completely the wrong direction. But the thing I least wanted was for anyone to end up accidentally getting hurt or killed by this unstable magical force.

Looked like I had to make a new plan.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ADA

I headed for my room alone, fighting tears. Shock and horror warred within me. I’d channelled magic in a way I hadn’t since I’d killed the Campbells, and this time, I’d…

Don’t think about that. Not now. Not ever.
I’d channelled one of the deities. I was sure of it. The heady rush of power, the way a voice had seemed to whisper in my ear… I’d never felt anything quite like it. But it was no deity. It was a natural magical force, like the force contained in my blood. It felt exactly the same. And there hadn’t been any backlash. I must have absorbed it, except I hadn’t fallen into a coma this time.

Whatever Kay had said, I knew beyond all shadow of a doubt he’d been as bothered by what those summoners did as I was. The look on his face when he’d seen those kids.
Oh, God.

To distract myself, I tapped the earpiece.

“You around, Jeth?”

“Ada?” The voice definitely wasn’t my brother. It was
Ms Weston.