Marshall cleared his mind and forced himself to let go of the worry, anxiety, and cowardice clawing at him. In their place, he allowed the mantle of team leader to fall around him like a shield. Once it was firmly in place, he said, “Adelle, on my mark, sleep any norms you can find. The witches are probably protected, so don’t waste your time on them, but if you can take out the norms, it’ll give us some breathing room. Jack, Fourteen probably has the heir. Find him and get them both to the chapter house. Adelle will help you once she’s done giving the norms a nap, and I’ll meet you all there once I’m finished here.”
“You aren’t going up against the demon alone, ass,” his sister said firmly.
“Ditto,” Jack said.
Marshall hadn’t thought it would work, but he’d had to try. “Fine. When you get them a safe distance away, you can both come back me up. But only once the civilians are safe. Better?”
“You’re damned right, I will,” Jack said as if that had been the plan all along.
“Barely, but acceptable.” Adelle was still frowning but less so.
“You realize that I’m in charge here, right?”
“Sure you are, sweetie.” Adelle ruffled his hair. “We got you that plaque and everything.”
Chapter 20Cym
Cym’s face felt like raw hamburger as he peeled it off the ground.
He rolled over to look up at a sky filled with a mix of ash and snow and wondered what he was doing on the ground. It wasn’t just his face that was messed up. His entire body felt like it had been thrown into a dryer with a bag filled with tennis balls and set to run on high.
“That was not the best thing that could have happened,” Sterling rasped out nearby.
Cym shook his head to clear it, and his vision swam. He saw stars, moons, and entire galaxies of constellations dancing inside his head, crowding the edges of his vision. Reality was just a touch too far out of reach for him right now.
Cym sat perfectly still, waiting for the effect to fade, but dared to ask, “What happened?” Only minimal constellations flared up from the effort.
“I think someone spelled the ground out from underneath us. We only fell a few yards, but your champion is down there somewhere,” Sterling said, pointing toward a chasm a few feet away.
“Oh gods… Fourteen!” Cym leapt to his feet and promptly fell back to the ground as a supernova exploded in his head and his foot gave out underneath him. Maybe he should lie still for one tiny minute before storming to the rescue. Maybe give his brain a chance to reboot.
“I’m fine, by the way,” Hester muttered from underneath Sterling.
“Thanks for breaking my fall, Mother,” Sterling said, voice dripping with contempt. “Glad to see you can still be useful to us.”
Grudgingly he rolled off Hester, allowing her to sit up. She gave him a poisonous glare and pulled her knees to her chest. After noticing a hole in her stockings, she extended her glare to blanket both of her great-grandchildren, and Sterling rolled his eyes.
When the sparkling light show inside Cym’s head faded to an acceptable level, he sat up slowly, trying not to dwell too deeply on how much damage he’d taken in the past forty-eight hours.
The second he thought he could move without passing out, he crawled to the lip of the chasm, trying to make out Fourteen’s form. The sun had gone down at some point during Cym’s incarceration, and the fires were too far away to allow him to make out anything but darkness in the hole before him.
He thought that if Fourteen was conscious, he might be able to hear Cym, so he shouted, “Fourteen!” Something green splashed a foot away from Cym’s face and bubbled violently before burning away. He flinched and scrambled backward, setting off a new round of explosions at the edges of his vision. Cym looked up and saw two more spells—one orange, one red—detonate in the air above them. “Fourteen can’t be far if his shield is still protecting us.”
Cym didn’t get a chance to feel any relief at the realization because Sterling immediately said, “Sorry, bro, that’s me. I activated my own shield the moment the ground gave way.” His words were hesitant, like he was talking to someone delicate and breakable.
A painful wail tried to claw its way out of his throat, but Cym clamped down on it before it could carry him away. Cym wasn’t a precious snowflake. The last few weeks of his life had proved as much.
Seriously, fuck delicate. Cym had to find Fourteen and escape this hellhole first. Hysterics could come later.
Cym leaned out over the chasm as far as he dared but there was nothing to see. He sighed and asked, “Can you get me down there?”
“Not and keep the shield going, I’m afraid. Even with the power-up I got from Hester, it’s taking everything I’ve got to keep this barrage off us,” Sterling said.
As they spoke, the light show overhead intensified as dozens of spells exploded against Sterling’s shield.
“This is amazing, Sterling, I had no idea you could make a shield like this. It’s enormous.”
“It’s all thanks to Mommy Dearest, here. If it weren’t for the power I’m siphoning off her, we’d probably be dead now.” Sterling poked the woman with a finger. “I’m surprised your people aren’t worried about hitting you in the crossfire, Hester. Care to enlighten us?”
“No.” Hester turned her face away, looking sullen.
Sterling let out a surprised laugh. “Your monster abandoned you, didn’t it? I guess that’s what a few generations of betrayal gets you.”
“Sekt wouldn’t do that. He loves me. He needs me! Stella isn’t enough for him, she—” Hester broke off, suddenly very interested in fiddling with the restraints on her hands.
“She what, Hester?” Sterling shouted. “She won’t give him the sweet loving you can? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Cym ignored the argument and stared down into the dark, dust-filled pit that had swallowed Fourteen. He tried to find a way to climb down, searching for a second ledge he could safely land on, a conveniently placed bundle of roots, hell, even a slanted bit of wall he could chance sliding down would do, but all he saw was impenetrable darkness. For all he knew, it might only be ten feet deep. If that were the case, he could hang off the edge of the chasm and jump the rest of the way. Or it could be a hundred feet deep and he would die, but if it was that deep, the likelihood that Fourteen had survived the fall was slim.
Cym’s heart skipped a beat at the thought, and suddenly he was screaming Fourteen’s name like a madman without conscious effort. He made to swing his legs over the edge of the pit and came against Sterling’s shield as it shrank down and nudged him away from the hole.
“Let me out, Sterling. I need to get down there,” Cym snapped angrily.
“Sunny…” Sterling’s eyes were pained. “I know I’ve messed up in the past, but I don’t think letting you get yourself killed is a good way to make things up to you.”
“Indeed it isn’t.” A deep, lightly accented voice with Middle Eastern overtones interrupted their debate.
