Wicked War of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 9) (30 page)

"Despite the contract, I am ever on guard against you," Mom replied in an even voice.

Fjoeruss's expression remained impassive. "As always, I will adhere to the letter of the contract."

Mom flashed a sarcastic look. "A contract, to you, is a puzzle to be untangled and rewoven into an advantage. If only you had a care in the world other than yourself."

"Such hurtful words, Alysea." Fjoeruss smiled coldly. "As it happens, I do care for my sister."

I held out my hands to ward off any more insults. "Don't make me put you two in separate corners, okay?" I huffed. "We have a difficult battle ahead and we can't have any distractions."

Mom looked a little ashamed and hurt. "I'm sorry, son."

Fjoeruss simply shrugged and took a position in the back of our Seraphim formation.

Thomas came over to me. "Justin, the troops will be under your command for this operation. I'll remain here and ready our main force to defend the compound."

I nodded. "Once Daelissa takes the bait, how long should we wait before escaping through portals?"

"Wait until you see her army. If you retreat too soon, she might realize the trick and turn her troops back toward Atlanta." He looked at an arctablet. "According to the news, the evacuation from the southern part of the metro area is proceeding. The longer you delay Daelissa, the fewer the nom casualties."

"Understood."

Thomas shook my hand. "Good luck, Mr. Slade."

"Same to you, sir."

Templars standing next to the two portal zones marked by yellow squares painted on the hangar floor raised their arms. Portals sliced the air vertically and blinked open horizontally.

I turned to Elyssa. "Call the troops to order, please."

She turned and bellowed in a commanding voice, "Attention! Form up!"

Dad turned to the Daemos under his command and relayed her orders. Colin McCloud loosed a blood-chilling howl, and his packs gathered, the felycans organizing behind him. I saw the huge felycan man say something to McCloud and press a hand to his shoulder before forming up with others of his kind. I felt encouraged watching the friendly exchange—a stark difference from their attitudes at the Grand Nexus.

I held up my arm and swung it forward. "Move out!"

The battalion split into two equal rows and raced through the portals until everyone was in the control room at La Casona. The Templars stationed at the omniarches closed the portals and opened new ones to the outskirts of Thunder Rock. I gave the signal and, once again, our people threaded through the portals.

I waited until the other factions made it through before motioning my Seraphim squad to follow. We ran into a field choked with the remains of weeds and clumps of snow. Several hundred yards separated us from the mounds of rock and earth guarding the border of the quarry pit. A forest of pine trees surrounded the field. The cold wind rattled dead leaves and burned the air in my lungs.

Using a program on my arcphone, I brought the hundred ASEs with the recordings of our fake army through the portal behind us. I switched them to loop playback mode and sent them to hover another fifty yards in front of the tree line behind us. Our virtual army flickered into being. Up close, it didn't look very convincing, especially since most of the soldiers stood only as high as my stomach. The tall weeds made them look even shorter.

I scrambled the location of the ASEs to hide the duplicates the best I could.

"How do they look?" I asked.

Dad put a hand to his chin and stared. "I think dressing them up as clowns might have worked better."

McCloud looked at the mounds of earth around the quarry pit several hundred yards away. "From that distance, they'll look big enough." He knelt and peered over the weeds. "Have the ASEs raise the holograms off the ground a couple of feet. The weeds will hide the fact that they're not on the ground."

The idea was so simple I wished I'd thought of it. "Great idea."

Once I made the adjustments, our virtual army looked a whole lot better. I hoped it was enough to fool the enemy.

I rubbed my hands together to ward off the cold and put on my most confident smile. "Take your positions, people. It's time to poke the hornets' nest."

Chapter 26

Elyssa led the Templars into the tree line to our left while the lycan and felycan forces melted into the forest on the right. The Blue Cloaks set up illusionary blinds and hid behind them, ready to strike when the enemy showed its ugly face.

I led my Seraphim entourage to the earth embankment bordering the quarry. We walked up the side and peered over the ledge. A road wound down the sides of the granite cliffs and ended at a gaping pit where a lake had once been. With the lake bottom gone, it looked like a black pit of doom. Aside from a few guards walking the perimeter, there didn't seem to be much activity. Unfortunately, this angle offered a limited view of the pit.

The drop to the road below was about ten feet. I motioned to the others and lowered myself over the ledge. Stray bits of gravel rattled down the ledge. The guard patrolling nearby turned toward the noise. I blurred at him and knocked him out with one quick strike. His designer shirt and jeans gave away his affiliation as a vampire. I gagged and bound him with diamond fiber rope.

"Why not simply kill him?" Fjoeruss said.

I put the unconscious vampire behind a rock on the side of the gravel road. "He's no longer a threat." I knew plenty of killing lay ahead of me. Sparing even one life we didn't have to take didn't balance that, but it made me feel a little less like a monster.

Fjoeruss stared at the body but said nothing more on the matter.

We continued in plain sight down the road. I wasn't concerned about the guards on the opposite side seeing us since we were about to intentionally attract a lot of attention. We reached the lip of the pit. The last time I'd seen this place, it had been filled with water. Daelissa's agents had since drained the lake and turned Thunder Rock into a functional way station.

Nightliss gasped as she looked down. "Are those golems?"

The rest of us followed her gaze. Giant stone monsters stood in rows upon rows along one side of the enormous pit. Scores of enemies walked below. I saw Exorcists, battle mages, and Synod soldiers among them. Across the floor from the others was a formation of red uniforms I quickly identified as Red Cell soldiers.

I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach as I nodded. "Those are the giant golems they were building at Queens Gate."

"We won't be able to do much damage from so far away," Joss said.

I gauged the distance to the cavern floor at several hundred feet. Even with our combined might, magical attacks would disperse by the time they traversed the space to do much harm. I examined the cliff wall beneath us. "We don't need to hit them directly." I walked to the side and found a ledge jutting from the cliff. "Let's drop a few tons of rocks on their heads and see what they think about that."

I focused a beam of Brilliance at the ledge. Mom added her effort to mine. Lava bubbled from the cut. With a loud crack, the earth broke free and tumbled into the pit. Joss and Otaleon levered two boulders from the side of the road with ultraviolet tendrils of Murk and sent them rolling in right after.

Shouts and cries echoed from below as people scrambled out of the way of the falling rocks. I wedged a jagged beam of Murk into the cliff side, releasing a small rockslide. The guards on the road across the vast pit cast spells at us. Their efforts fell well short of the mark. Flying carpets loaded with battle mages rose from below, and enemy squads boarded large, flat levitators to bring them to the top.

"Time for us to go," I said.

I ran to the road ledge behind us, leapt, caught the edge, and pulled myself to the top. The others followed suit. Fjoeruss simply levitated the distance. We climbed up the rest of the switchbacks until we reached the top. By the time we cleared the earth embankment, the flying carpets were already closing in fast.

I motioned my group to take cover behind a boulder.

The first carpet rose over the gravel mound. A volley of spells from the hidden Blue Cloaks slammed into it. The carpet caught fire and left a smoky trail as it vanished beyond the lip. The next enemies were more careful, rising as a group a distance away from where their comrades had gone down in flames.

I saw the whites of their eyes as they caught sight of the virtual army behind us. I knew better than to give them time to gawk.

"Open fire!" I shouted.

We sprang from our hiding place.

Mom sliced a carpet in half with a beam of Brilliance. Nightliss and the other Darklings slammed ultraviolet orbs against other riders. Fjoeruss gripped another carpet with stasis, causing it to stop in place. The riders, however, kept going. Their screams of terror ended when they hit a slab of granite.

I spun a cloud of Murk into a gust of wind and hurtled dust toward the attackers to keep them from getting a better look at our holographic allies. Fjoeruss channeled a beam of Brilliance into my wind. Veins of white encircled the ultraviolet. The breeze gathered impetus, forming a funnel.

The battle mages on the carpets shouted in dismay as my breeze suddenly erupted into a full-blown twister. It dragged flying carpets inside. Some were hurled out with the riders still bonded to their carpets. Other mages weren't so lucky. The tornado tore them loose and tossed them in all directions.

"How the hell did you do that?" I yelled at Fjoeruss over the roar of the wind.

He raised an eyebrow. "There is far more to our abilities than brute force, Mr. Slade."

I gave him a look of disbelief. "I'd call a tornado pretty damned brutish, dude."

Fjoeruss flung a ball of gray smoke toward the body of a screaming battle mage. The spell stopped the man in midair. Astonishment had barely registered on the man's face when Fjoeruss unleashed a bolt of Brilliance and incinerated him.

I cringed. "Would you like another side of irony with your previous statement?"

Another sortie of carpets rose. I channeled a stream of cold Murk at the ground and envisioned it rotating. A small weak funnel rose. Using Fjoeruss's example, I wove heated Brilliance into the mix, willing the two forces to spin. Like a match to gasoline, the magical weave exploded with a life of its own. It grew exponentially until it threatened to drag my allies inside. I hit it with a gust of Murk and sent it spinning into the oncoming enemy.

"One should use caution when dabbling with nature," Fjoeruss said. "The concomitant interaction could be rather deleterious."

I gave him an uncaring look. "One should also be careful using too many ten-dollar words in a sentence." I watched like a proud parent as my tornado sucked in a wave of attackers and spat them out.

My arcphone buzzed. I spared a glance at the screen and saw a text message from one of Thomas's assistants.

Queen Bee is returning to the hive. ETA twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes, I'd learned, was an eternity when you were trying to hold off superior forces, though it seemed like an eye blink when you were in the thick of a battle. The first tornado Fjoeruss and I had created reached the earthen embankment around the quarry and roared down into the pit until it vanished. The second twister veered away and tore through the field to the west, leaving the battlefield altogether.

A wave of enemies appeared to the east. They formed up but made no move to attack.

"Can you fog the air a bit?" I asked Fjoeruss.

He wet a finger and held it in the breeze. "The air is too dry. It would be difficult to draw enough moisture for fog."

I viewed the gathering enemy through a pair of spectacles. A small group consisting of a vampire, a battle mage, and an Exorcist huddled together in conversation. They occasionally peered at our army and were obviously deciding whether to attack or dig in.

Unfortunately, twenty minutes gave them plenty of time to see our army for exactly what it was. I lowered the spectacles and channeled another stiff breeze to cloud the air with dust.

"I would caution against another tornado," Fjoeruss said. "It could very well turn on us."

The communication pendant on my armor beeped and Elyssa's voice spoke. "Justin, they're sending scouts into a flanking position to get a better look at our soldiers. I've already dispatched people to intercept and the lycans have done the same."

"We have to hold out twenty minutes," I told her.

She went quiet for a moment. "What if we split the ASEs and sent them into the forest out of sight?"

I snapped my fingers. "That might work. They'll think we plan to flank them and might entrench their current position."

"Exactly." She murmured a command to someone. "I have my people on it. Let's pray this works."

Clouds scudded overhead, gathering into ominous gray mountains in the sky. A bolt of lightning speared into the woods to the west. Thunder rumbled and a funnel cloud dove into the tree line north of the quarry.

I looked through my spectacles. "It looks like someone over there is messing with the weather."

"It would take several battle mages to change the weather," Mom said.

Fjoeruss pointed toward a group of people standing at the front of the opposing force. "It would appear they already have Seraphim here."

"They're so young," Mom said. "They must have been recently revived."

I focused my spectacles on the group. A male and female Darkling channeled a funnel of air with Murk while several Brightlings charged the air with destructive energy. I noticed two battle mages prodding the Darklings with their wands. Judging from the distressed looks on the Darkling's faces, they were under painful duress. My jaw tightened. "They're forcing the Darklings to channel for them."

Nightliss gasped. "We must do something to help them."

"Impossible," Fjoeruss said. "Need I remind you that we're here as a diversion. A rescue attempt would be suicidal."

"Don't you think I know that, Trickster?" Nightliss's voice seethed with such contempt, she almost sounded like her sister, Daelissa, for a second.