“There you are!”
As the words thundered, the Lord of Storms vanished in a flash of light. Miranda flinched back against the wooden wall, blinking madly against the echo of his power throbbing through her mind. As she struggled to get her thoughts back in order, she felt almost sorry for the demon.
Poor thing wouldn’t know what hit it.
CHAPTER
15
Get back!” Eli shouted, waving frantically at Josef.
The swordsman was already on it. He scooped Nico’s limp body into his arms and dashed for the shelter of the rocky outcropping at the center of the dry creek bed. Her coat curled around his shoulders as he ran, the cloth circling him like a black tide.
That was dangerous, Eli realized. With Nico out, her coat might mistake Josef for a threat. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the luxury of taking that line of thought any further since containing the mess in front of him was taking every ounce of his attention.
He was standing at the edge of Slorn’s dry creek, his spirit roaring open all around him. He’d stretched himself to the edge of his strength, reaching as far as he could see until he felt as thin as a thread, and it still wasn’t enough to hold back the forest’s madness.
Madness was the only word for it. The trees of the Awakened Wood fell on each other like tigers, branches ripping and clawing while roots shot in all directions, breaking everything in their path. They screamed as they tore at each other, their overlapping voices too jumbled to make any sense, but it wasn’t hard to guess what they were saying. They’d said only one word since the madness started: gone. Something was gone, something fundamental, and they were left behind. Open as he was, Eli could feel the grief that fed the tree’s fury, the enormous loss running beneath the anger. What he didn’t understand was why.
“What’s gone?” he screamed, pouring power into the words so they could be heard. “What happened?”
The forest ignored him, or maybe the trees were too far gone to hear even a wizard’s words. They were lost in madness, consumed by it. The only thing stopping them from ripping themselves to bits was Eli’s will. He stood with his boots planted in the sand, slamming himself down on as many trees as he could reach. And it was working, mostly, but he couldn’t keep it up forever.
Sweat poured down his face and plastered his shirt to his back. Holding his will this wide over such a large area was burning his stamina hot and fast, but letting go wasn’t an option. He couldn’t let Slorn’s trees destroy themselves, not while he was watching, and certainly not before he knew what was going on. As his knees started to wobble, Eli thought bitterly how much easier this would be if he still had the Shepherdess’s mark. Her command could have stopped this idiocy the moment it began.
Eli thrust that line of thought away with a snarl. Nothing was worth going back. Nothing. For all he knew, this madness was Benehime’s doing, a ploy to make him miss her power. After the fiasco with Nara, he wouldn’t put any cruelty past her when it came to manipulating him, and that was exactly why Eli could never let her get under his skin again. No bait or barb was going to drag him back to her ever again. So, with a silent apology to the poor, mad trees, Eli dug his heels into the sand and opened his spirit wider, hammering the trees down with everything he had.
It was stupid to give so much, and he would pay bitterly for this later, but Eli couldn’t stop. If this was Benehime’s ploy, then he couldn’t let her win again, and if it wasn’t, well, they were still Slorn’s trees. He’d be a poor friend indeed to let them die just because he wasn’t willing to spend a little time on his back.
Gritting his teeth, Eli kept going as the minutes stretched into eternity. The panic went on and on without end, but he braced his legs and held, pushing the forest with his will until they found a sort of balance. Eli took a strained breath, adjusting himself to the pattern of push and push back. But just as he was settling into the rhythm of the forest’s madness, another complication appeared.
A white line opened at the center of the dry creek bed. That alone was almost shock enough to collapse Eli’s overextended spirit. The League was more bad news than he could handle. But shock became confusion when the figure who stepped through the hole in the air wasn’t a black-coated man with an awakened blade but a middle- aged woman in a long red robe. Though the glittering rings on her hand identified her profession as clearly as if she’d shouted it, Eli’s poor, overworked brain still took several seconds to piece together the obvious question.
Why was a Spiritualist using a League portal?
Sadly, he never got his answer. The woman had emerged not five feet from where Eli was braced in the sand, and she froze when she saw him, just as surprised by his presence as he’d been at hers. She recovered much more quickly than he had, though, her expression of startled recognition shifting to smug triumph in a flash.
“Eli Monpress,” she said, raising her hand, the ruby on her index finger sparking like a firecracker. “Of all the luck.”
Eli cursed and swung his spirit in preparation to block whatever it was the woman was about to launch at him… and realized too late that this was one battle too many.
The moment he took his power away from the trees, the forest overwhelmed him. The trees burst through the line he’d held at the bank, their roots plunging into the dry creek bed with mindless screams. The spindly trunks followed, whipping like snakes. The roar caught both Eli and the Spiritualist by surprise, and they turned together, throwing their spirits open in unison to meet the mad tide of the trees. But it was too little, too late. The Spiritualist vanished beneath an avalanche of splintering wood before Eli could even shout at her to move. He cursed and fell back toward the rocks where Josef and Nico were, thinking that if he could just keep them safe, this whole stupid battle wouldn’t have been for nothing.
Ignoring the throbbing pain of his overextended soul, Eli pulled inward, shaping his will into a bubble around the shelter of the rock. He didn’t need much. He wasn’t trying to stop the trees now, just make a barrier that would force the madness to flow around the three of them. But as he turned to run toward Josef, something hit him hard from the left.
Pain exploded through his head, and he was vaguely aware that the impact had sent him flying. That he was, even now, about to land face-first in the sand. It seemed like a minor concern, though. Everything was a minor concern compared to the flashing lights going off in his head.
He should have told Josef to run, he realized as he slammed into the streambed. How arrogant could he be? Telling the swordsman and Nico to hide by a rock while he tried to hold back an entire forest. It would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid. Eli only hoped his ego didn’t get them all skewered. It would be a crying shame if the greatest thief team in history died to trees.
And with that happy thought in his mind, Eli fell into the dark.
The first thing Nico saw when she opened her eyes was Josef, holding her. The second thing she saw was Eli getting hit over the head by what looked like a walking tree. She was about to dismiss that last bit as a fatigue delusion when she felt Josef’s chest contract.
“Eli!”
The scream made her ears ring, and then she was dropped on the ground as Josef lunged toward the falling thief. She scrambled in the sand, fighting to get her feet beneath her. The haze in her mind grew thinner with every movement, and she realized with a start that the cold mountain air was filled with terrified screams. Her head shot up so fast her neck snapped, searching for the source of the sound as she willed her coat to cover everything but her eyes.
A sound that terrified had to be demon panic. Had she let something slip? The exhaustion of the jumps hung over her like a pall. It wasn’t unthinkable that her control had faltered, but she didn’t feel the demon’s presence nearby. Utterly confused, Nico looked again at the forest, and this time what she saw froze her solid.
The Awakened Wood was thrashing. The trees spirits, usually a calm, green color, were now a sickening burnt yellow. She could smell their terror in the air, bitter and sticky in her nose, but worse than the smell or the color was the way the trees moved.
