'You don't seem properly impressed.' 'Oh, I was impressed. That bullet shield is a real powerful trick, but I've got a few of my own.'
She dropped her aim to the floor by his feet and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. The first explosive bullet shredded the carpet and pitted the floor. Its concussive force tossed the archdruid from his feet. The second bullet chewed through the flooring and into the subflooring, and the third punched through the ceiling of the floor below. The destruction was so rapid that the stages were indistinguishable to he eye. When gravity reclaimed Glover, it pulled him through the new hole. As he passed through the opening, Hart saw the shock and surprise on his face, but he looked physically unhurt. She was surprised at the effectiveness of his protection spell.
Hart approached the gap cautiously, carefully testing the footing before trusting her weight to the weakened floor. Looking over the edge, she saw Glover lying on top of a pile of debris. His clothes were dusted over by late- falling chunks and settling dust. She had hoped the fall would kill the archdruid; it hadn't. He was dazed though and had dropped whatever spells he was maintaining. As a mage herself, she knew the strict concentration necessary to maintain powerful spells.
'Are you awake, Archdruid Glover?'
He groaned. Conscious, but not composed enough for magic.
'I actually came loaded for bigger game, but a good hunter never passes up an opportunity.'
She fired three more times. Without the protection of his spell, he was just meat. Then, he was no more.
Sam crashed into things as he ran. He needed time to gather his wits. Walls and furniture that were impediments and bludgeoning obstacles to him did nothing to slow the corrupted building spirit; it just walked through them as if the object wasn't there. The only things it detoured around were plants and the thieves' cache of art objects scattered around the residence. Fortunately, the spirit was moving more slowly than he, as its summoner, knew it could. Under control of the wendigo, the spirit seemed inclined to play with its prey.
Gunfire from one of the drones reminded Sam of Willie. The plan had called for her to concentrate on dealing with physical threats while he handled the magic, Her drone's lack of success against the wendigo in his Hyde- White guise had put the monster in Sam's purview. Sam hoped she was doing better against the security guards who were probably storming up the stairwells by now.
Collision with a musty tapestry told him where he was in the maze of the residence. The wendigo's sanctum was hidden behind the hanging. Its magical barrier would probably stop the spirit, but the small room would be a trap where the wendigo could deal with him at leisure.
But, he realized, what would halt the spirit would blind it as well. In a desperate burst of speed, he cut around to the side of the sanctum, placing its barrier between him and the spirit. A groan like overstressed steel told him that the spirit had lost sight of him. If it hadn't been limited by the manifestation, he would never have been able to pull off this little trick. Sam ran down the first hallway and cut right, trying to keep the sanctum between him and where he thought the spirit was. The longer he could keep it up, the further away he could get. Breathing heavily and lungs burning, he stumbled into one of the few enclosed chambers of the residence floor.
For now, he could run no more. He leaned his back against a wall and let himself slide down to the floor. Opening the seal on his leather jacket, he reached inside and closed his hand on the tooth. Peace, he told himself. Peace to find the center. His breathing slowed and his fear-fogged thoughts began to focus.
He envisioned the building spirit clumping toward him. He visualized the strings of power that bound it to the building. Tracing their flow from the essence of the structure, he followed the threads to the spirit's manifestation. Because he had summoned the spirit, he knew how those mana threads were twined and knotted as they stretched to twist through the boundary of astral space. Without such a connection, the spirit would not have been able to manifest on the mundane plane. Sam felt along the strands of power, seeking to untangle them.
Sooner than he expected, a groping, handless arm thrust through the partition. A second limb followed, then the rest of the spirit emerged through the wall. It was only a meter away. Sam could smell the mold and rotting garbage odor of it as it cocked one arm back to smash him.
He tugged on the astral strings.
The manifestation jerked. Sam tugged again, harder. The spirit staggered back a step and lost a bit of its substantiality. Digging mental fingers into the strands of power, Sam pried and pulled. As he unraveled the binding of the spirit's form, its physcal shape lost coherence, returning first to the liquid mist and then to nothingness. He had banished his summoning. It was a short-lived victory.
The wendigo trotted through the door to the chamber. He betrayed no surprise. Having been in control of the spirit, he would have felt its dissolution.
'An excellent banishment, if unexpected. You rebuke my nonchalance, and rightly so. She is coming and it will be better for all of us if you are dead by then.' The wendigo bared his fangs and advanced, taloned fingers extended. 'It is time for the end.'
Sam knew he was no physical match for the threemeter monster, but he scrambled to his feet, anyway. He crouched, presenting a smaller target. He hoped. The wendigo was stronger and faster than he was. Staring death in the face and having no better idea, he dove forward, surprising the wendigo and slipping beneath the outstetched paws. But Sam was not fast enough to escape unscathed. The wendigo whirled and raked Sam across the back, slicing fringe into a scattering of leather scraps and cutting through to shred the jacket and its lining. Four rows of fire burned into Sam's upper torso. The impact knocked him to the floor and beneath of the sweep of the wendigo's second swipe.
Sam rolled away, trying to gain enough room to get to his feet again. Pain seared through him as he flexed his muscles to keep moving. Each time his back hit the floor, the agony spiked.
An immense vise closed on his right ankle and he knew his maneuver had failed. The wendigo lifted him by his ankle and he dangled in the monster's grip. The Ares Predator slipped from its holster, whacking Sam's elbow as it fell. His arm went numb.
'I thought you were Dog, not Rabbit,' the wendigo scoffed.
Inexplicably, the wendigo howled in pain and flung
Sam away.
Sam was parallel to the floor when he hit the wall. Pain exploded in his chest and he blacked out for a second. He came to on the floor. His ears were ringing and he felt like he was going to vomit. His left leg was twisted underneath him. He felt no pain from it, but by the angle, he knew it had to be broken. It hurt to breathe, causing sharp stabbing pains in his chest. Ribs broken too, he thought. No more running now.
The wendigo was clawing at the back of his left shoulder as if madly trying to scratch an itch. He roared in rage and pain. Sam heard a metallic click, and the wendigo straightened up, one arm wrapped across his chest to hold the opposite shoulder. 'Over here, furface.'
With the ringing in his ears, Sam thought he did well to recognize the voice as female.
The wendigo turned to face the newcomer's voice. Sam could see blood leaking from beneath the blackskinned hand. Even through the scratches that the wendigo's own talons had made were closing as Sam watched, the monster still bled from the weapon wound.
'You too. I should have known.'
'Payback time, furface.'
The wendigo dodged to one side and a whirring metal disk rushed through the space he had occupied. The weapon buried itself in the wall over Sam's head. He looked up. It was a spoked wheel with a series of wickedly sharp curved blades along its perimeter. It was a signature design, a shuriken in the shape of a Katherine's wheel.
'Hart,' Sam croaked.
He could just catch glimpses of her beyond the bulk of the wendigo. She was a wraith in black leather, night to the day of the wendigo's white fur. Her right hand was cocked back, another of the shurikens ready to throw. In her left she carried a heavy pistol. Having watched the fruitless attacks of Willie's drones, Sam knew the gun would do little harm to the wendigo. The wendigo himself seemed contemptuous of it as well; his attention focused on the hand that held the throwing weapon. It must be the metal. Some awakened beings had allergic reactions to certain metals.
For long moments the two opponents feinted. Each seemed unwilling to commit to a move that might open an attack line for the other. Hart's hand blurred forward suddenly, unleashing a glittering star toward the wendigo. He
