The glass hand went slack. Vendevorex lost awareness as he tumbled into the flowers below.
SHAY FELT AN odd sensation in his wings, a new sense he hadn't known he possessed until this moment. There was an unseen wave of energy in the air as he emerged through the gate, and his wings tingled with each pulse.
His arrival was badly timed. He seemed to be in the middle of an earthquake. The air was thick with dust. The ground beneath him shook violently. Yet, instead of buildings toppling, the opposite was happening. A structure was rising from the earth nearby. He recognized it from the books he'd studied as a Greek temple, with walls formed by gleaming white columns of marble. In scale, it rivaled the Dragon Palace. Within its shadowy confines, a giant man, two hundred feet tall, glared out. He wore a shimmering toga and sported a thick white beard and a mane of long white hair. He carried a trident, like the image of the god Poseidon.
The god did not look happy.
Thunder rumbled through the air, loud enough to rattle Shay's teeth. It took a second to realize the thunder formed words: 'Who dares silence the voices of my children?'
A golden dragon that bore some resemblance to Hex darted through the air toward the god. In scale, it was like an eagle attacking a bear. The god lifted his hand in a dismissive swat. The golden beast flew off in a streak and smashed into one of the impossibly tall towers. The force drove the dragon through the wall. Shay couldn't see if he emerged from the other side.
Skitter slithered from the gate beside him. Zeeky craned her neck toward the god's angry face. She sighed. 'I guess I'd better go talk to him.'
'Talk to who?' Shay asked.
'Him,' said Zeeky, pointing to the giant.
'Him?'
Zeeky nodded. 'I can talk to pretty much anyone. It's my gift.'
By now, the dust was starting to settle. Jazz stood beside a large spire topped with a golden disk. The granite- tiled walkway she stood on was sopping wet. For some reason, she was surrounded by hundreds of goldfish bowls.
Jazz looked as if she were dancing. Her skin was silver once more. She was whipping back and forth, her silver hair flying, raising her hands over her shoulders to claw at her back.
Shay rushed toward her and raised his sword to strike. Yet, as he neared, he realized Jazz wasn't dancing. There was something moving beneath the silver shell that coated her back, and she was trying to claw it off.
'Get out!' Jazz screamed. Or was it Jandra?
Knowing he might forever regret his decision, he swung his angel sword. The flat of the blade smacked squarely across Jazz's ear. The force of the blow tore the sword from his grasp and sent him spinning through the air.
When he stabilized, he turned to see the results of his blow. The silver-shelled woman stared at him. She didn't look injured.
'Shay,' she said, in an utterly neutral tone. 'Thanks for helping me focus.'
'Jandra?' he asked.
'Guess again,' she said. She turned her back to him and slammed her foot down onto the hilt of the flaming sword. In the center of her back there was a bulge. It looked almost like a woman's face, crisscrossed with chains. Jazz looked up at the Atlantean god, who glowered down at her.
'To answer your earlier question,' she shouted to the giant, 'I dare!'
The god shook his head slowly, as if pitying her. He crouched and reached toward Jazz with his impossibly huge hand.
'You no doubt thought I'd attempt to crack the jamming code of your signal,' the god said, his thunderous voice causing the flowers of the bushes to tremble. 'A more elegant solution is simply to destroy your antenna.'
The god's fingers closed upon the golden disk.
Instantly his fingers vanished, then his arm, then his torso and shoulders and head. Shay was again aware of a tremendous surge of energy in the air.
'Sucker,' said Jazz. 'I knew you could still control the nanites you were in contact with, since you could transmit your commands through physical connections. Touching the disk gave me access to these physical connections. I've knocked you back to your core form. And now, I'm going to flush you.'
Shay had no idea what had happened, but he was pretty sure it wasn't good. From his vantage point in the air, he could see into the giant temple. Where the god had stood, there was now a small, naked, white-haired boy, perhaps no older than five, slumped on the ground. He looked dazed.
Jazz suddenly appeared next to the boy, even though she also continued to stand by the fountain. The Jazz by the fountain looked down, as if the boy was standing right at her feet, and said, 'Underspace gates have so many uses.' The boy looked up at the Jazz in the temple, a frightened look in his eyes. 'Traveling to the moon in a blink is one. Disposing of unwanted gods in the reaches of interstellar space is another.'
She snapped her fingers. A perfectly circular rainbow appeared around the boots of the Jazz standing in the temple. A black pit opened beneath her, expanding outward. The white-haired boy opened his mouth as if he were screaming, but Shay couldn't hear him. The boy tried to crawl away, but made little progress. The only sound coming from the temple was a terrible howl of wind. The circle expanded ever outward. Shay was tugged toward the temple by a sucking wind. The black circle was now fifty feet across, and stars shimmered in its depths.
The flowers in the courtyard beneath him all leaned in the direction of the yawning pit. The boy's desperately grasping hands found no purchase on the marble. He splayed his body out, searching for any handhold, as his small form was dragged by the air rushing to the gaping void.
Shay ground his teeth and tilted toward the temple. The boy would reach the edge in mere seconds. Could he fly fast enough to save him?
Before he could find out, there was a flash of copper as Skitter raced up the steps at the side of the temple. Zeeky leaned down from her saddle, extending her hand. The boy's legs tilted over the side of the space pit and he closed his hand around Zeeky's.
The force ripped Zeeky from her saddle. Skitter slid to a halt on the polished marble floor, whipping his head around, snapping his mighty jaws shut on the back of Zeeky's tunic as she, too, tilted over the edge of the space pit. Skitter's claws left scratch marks in the marble as the wind caught him. The boy dangled from Zeeky's grasp as she dangled from Skitter's jaws.
'Oh, the suspense,' said Jazz, giggling.
Skitter's first pair of claws slipped over the edge, then the second. There was a flutter of dark motion in the shadows at the rear of the temple. Shay's heart leapt as he realized it was Bitterwood's cloak. The archer was perched in a tree on the other side of the temple, his legs securely wrapped around a branch to resist the wind. He glared at the Jazz over the black pit.
He let an arrow fly.
It sliced straight through Jazz's head and kept flying, burying itself to its leafy feathers in a marble column beyond.
The Jazz near the fishbowls winced. 'Ooh, that would have stung. Good thing Ven wasn't the only one who knew parlor tricks.'
The way Jazz turned her head as she spoke drew Shay's eyes. She was looking at the fallen body of a sky- dragon who was tangled in the twisted branches of a thorny bush. He couldn't tell if the dragon was breathing.
Jazz began to twitch.
'Calm down,' she growled.
The face on her back bulged out further, its mouth opening to scream, 'Vennnn!'
Jazz closed her fists and clenched her jaw, concentrating to push pack Jandra's ghost.
Shay was torn. Should he attack Jazz again? Last time, physical pain had helped her focus. He decided to rescue Zeeky. But when he looked back to the temple, he saw a long bright pink rope tied to the tree where Bitterwood had stood. The hunter himself was gone, but the rope stretched in a straight line to the edge of the pit, where Skitter had his claws wrapped around it. The giant beast had inched himself out of the void, dragging Zeeky, who still held the boy. They were only feet from the pit, and the wind was beating them mercilessly. Still, for the moment, they were safe.
A physical attack on the goddess hadn't done him any good. Could an emotional appeal make a difference?
