Ten blue-robed, white-painted sorcerers, their ears sprouting tufts of long white hair, were already taking their seats. Ringed around them were scores of Goblins, large and small. Britton recognized tiny children, as cute in their minority as they were ugly as adults. Females stood around the perimeter of the circle, wearing brown shifts that exposed single, long brown breasts. Some of them had the nipples pierced with a sparkling jewel of some sort, their faces painted with dotted patterns. The other females clustered around them in deference.
The huge spear bearer stood forward and began a speech in his language that seemed to go on for a long time, while the seated Goblins listened, nodding occasionally. Britton turned to Marty to ask him what was going on, but was silenced with a wave. Whatever was happening, he was not to interrupt. At last, the spear bearer gestured back to Marty, who stepped forward, cutting him off. He launched into his own speech, bowing and tapping his eyes.
The spear bearer bristled at his words and started forward, but Marty intercepted him, reaching a hand down to the sole of his foot, then placing his hand against the spear bearer’s chest. The assembled crowd gasped collectively. Whatever Marty had done, it was a grave insult or a challenge.
Britton stepped forward, unsure of what was going to happen, but Wavesign’s voice rang out from the gathered tribe. “Okay, looks like everyone’s here.”
Humans and Goblins alike froze, the Goblins fixing him with angry stares. Wavesign grinned and raised his hands, flashing them his middle fingers. “That’s nice, you fucking rats. Suck on this.” The boyish uncertainty was gone from his voice. He sounded cocky, commanding.
“Wavesign, what the hell are you doing?” Swift asked.
And that was when Britton noticed that the young Hydromancer’s perennial vapor cloud was gone. He could feel the boy’s current, steady, disciplined, gathering solidly around him.
Wavesign produced a small black box from his waistband and thumbed it. A red light blinked on the surface, emitting a regular beeping sound. The group backed away, but Britton knew that whatever it was, it was too small to be a bomb. It looked more like a pager.
Or some kind of transmitter.
Britton’s mouth went dry.
“You sold us out, you bastard,” Britton said.
Wavesign grinned, his fists shrouded in a cloud of whirling ice crystals. He nodded to Britton, the confidence in his eyes making him appear much older. “Just following your lead, sir.”
He leapt aside as a massive gate slid open behind him. Through it, Britton could see Billy, his mother gentling his shoulders. Around him, a SOC assault team was scrambling to their feet, racing forward, chambering rounds.
Harlequin led them through the portal, his body wreathed in crackling electricity. Shadow Coven followed, Fitzy grinning at its head.
“Too smart by half, Oscar,” Harlequin said. “You forgot you’re not the only one with a gate.”
Then he leapt airborne, the storm erupting around him.
CHAPTER XXXIV: LAST STAND
— White House Briefer to the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Twenty-five soldiers burst through the gate, carbines leveled. Along with Shadow Coven and Harlequin came two more SOC Sorcerers, pistols drawn and ready.
Marty barked an order, pointing, and the Goblins surged forward to meet them, brandishing spears. Several of the white-painted sorcerers sprang from their chairs, leaping into the sky or bursting into flames.
But it was Fitzy who fired the first shot. His pistol belched smoke and spun Pyre in a tight circle. The Pyromancer sat down hard, gripping his stomach, blood flowing from between his fingers. Britton cursed and Therese shrieked, rushing to Pyre’s side as more carbines cracked, throwing back escapees and Goblins alike. A patter of bullets churned the ground between Therese and Pyre, and she was forced to throw herself in the opposite direction.
Britton raced forward, slapping down one of the carbine barrels so the soldier fired uselessly into the dirt. He snapped open a gate directly in the middle of the soldier, slicing him neatly in half, his dissected body sliding slowly apart. Britton leveled the gate horizontally, sending it arcing through the ranks of the SOC assaulters. They threw themselves to either side, but not before three more were cut in half. He pivoted neatly and crouched as one soldier moved past him, grabbing his ankle and yanking him off his feet. The soldier grunted as he went facedown in the dirt, his helmet flying off. Britton opened another gate and dragged his leg back through it, closing it like a cleaver about the man’s hips before turning to lunge for Fitzy.
But Harlequin appeared overhead and dove at him, lightning springing from his fingertips. Britton opened a gate to receive the burst and began shifting it into the Aeromancer’s flight path, edge turning outward toward him.
Then suddenly he was freezing. Wavesign grinned at him, hands extended. A cloud of swirling frost cloaked Britton, numbing his limbs, his teeth. The Hydromancer’s voice was confident, precise, mature. All of his uncertainty, his childlike affectation was gone.
Britton recognized it as the voice of a trained solider.
“Once a traitor, always a traitor, I always said,” Wavesign said. “I knew we couldn’t trust you, Keystone.”
“I’m the traitor?” Britton yelled at him, his teeth beginning to chatter. “You sold out everyone who trusted you!”
Wavesign shook his head, his wry smile reminding Britton of Harlequin’s. “I’ve never betrayed anyone,” Wavesign said. “I’ve been carrying out my assignment, just like good soldiers do. But you wouldn’t know much about how to be a good soldier, now would you, Keystone?”
The cold began to overwhelm him and Britton swore, shutting the gate and opening another one on the sauna in the Air National Guard base where he’d been assigned. He dove through it, but not before a bullet whined past his head, tearing a notch out of his ear. An inch to the right, and he would have been dead. He slammed against the cedar wall and collapsed, shivering, willing the heat from the stifling chamber into his frigid bones.
He looked up at another soldier who sat, wide-eyed on one of the wooden benches, clutching a towel over his privates. Britton smiled at him, working his fingers and stamping his feet, feeling sensation slowly drift back into them. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
The soldier got to his feet and ran past Britton, bursting out the sauna door and yelling for help, admitting a blast of room-temperature air that felt freezing to Britton. Britton took another moment to suck in the hot air, the silence, the pleasant smell of the cedar. The heat was as delightful as the absence of battle around him. No time for that. He opened a gate behind where Wavesign had stood a moment before and stepped back in, reaching for his neck. But the Hydromancer had moved on and he grabbed empty air, then suddenly Britton’s magic rolled back, and his head rocked forward, somersaulting him face-first into the dirt.
As he rolled over, he caught a glimpse of Harlequin and Swift grappling in midair, with Swift getting the worst of the beating, his skin blackening with electrical burns from each of Harlequin’s charged punches.
“Thought you’d get away, didn’t you?” Fitzy said, stomping at Britton’s face. He rolled out of the way, catching the chief warrant officer’s boot and kicking up to catch him in the small of his back. Fitzy winced and fell on Britton, dropping an elbow into his shoulder joint that knocked it out of socket. He howled in pain and threw Fitzy’s bulk off him, scrambling to his feet. Fitzy was up in time with him, pointing his pistol at Britton’s face. A grim smile
