Hard chunks of glistening monster shell clattered against yet another shield Cheyenne raised in front of her mom. The in-between monster, or what was left of it, shrieked and withdrew into the flashing multi-colored lights.
“Fucking die!” Bhandi fired round after round of fell ammunition into the portal.
Jamal had opted for the one fell cannon the new FRoE team had thought to bring to the Summerlin estate. With a grunt, he hefted the launcher onto his shoulder and fired. A thick green burst of light flared around him and the heavy weapon as a concentrated fell rocket blasted into the portal ridge.
The monsters screamed together in dozens of voices, tentacles flailing and whipping around, claws and pincers and strangely shaped teeth clicking and breaking off. Squeals and creaking groans rose from the Border portal, then every remaining in-between creature slithered, thumped, or skittered back into the darkness between the jutting stone columns.
The wall of shimmering, flashing light flared once with blazing intensity, then winked out.
L’zar snarled and paced back and forth in front of the ridge, his golden eyes blazing with battle rage. He was the only one who didn’t turn to look at Jamal, who dropped the fell launcher into the dirt and grunted.
The black flames racing across Cheyenne’s body snuffed out, and she blinked at the superpowered FRoE grenade launcher in the grass. “Please don’t tell me that’s the most effective way to beat these things back.”
“What?” L’zar hissed and spun to face the ogre, his eyes widening as he realized the portal ridge had shut down.
“Ha! Look at you, you giant fell-damn brute!” Lumil punched Jamal’s upper arm and grinned.
He grunted, gave her the barest hint of a grin, and shoved her back. With a shout, Lumil flew away from him and skidded across the grass.
Byrd cracked up, one arm wrapped around his stomach as he pointed with the other at the goblin woman. “It’s like you’ve never fought an ogre before!”
She sat up, shook loose grass out of her floppy yellow hair, and thumped her fist into the grass before her spinning red runes reappeared. “Sounds like you wanna get knocked the fuck across this portal too, dae’bruj.”
The FRoE agents joined Byrd in his amusement, snickering at the goblin woman on the ground. Even Payton cracked a crooked smile, but it disappeared as she stepped back and lowered the fell rifle strapped around her neck and shoulder.
“It wasn’t the fucking bazooka,” L’zar growled.
The laughter stopped. The O’gúleesh rebels waited for him to say more as the FRoE agents, including Rhynehart, stared at the drow thief finally on his feet and joining in their unlikely get-together.
“Then what was it?” Corian asked.
L’zar sneered at the columns of black stone, gazing from one jagged tip to the next. “They were called back.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Cheyenne shook her head. “You think Ba’rael—”
Bianca let out a strangled moan behind her daughter, and Cheyenne spun as her mom stopped seizing and crumpled to the grass.
“Mom!” She darted toward Bianca.
“Cheyenne, don’t!” L’zar shouted.
At the same time, a deafening crack filled the air and echoed around the valley below the Summerlin estate. The ground trembled violently, then the black pillar in front of the unconscious Bianca split and started to fall.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Cheyenne reached toward her mom, black tendrils snaking from her fingers. She coiled them as gently as she could around Bianca’s arms before dragging the woman swiftly away from the crumbling pillar of stone. The top half of the column crashed into the grass with a thud mere inches from the soles of Bianca Summerlin’s feet.
Retracting her tendrils, Cheyenne raced toward her mother and risked touching her. When the curse didn’t blast her away, she lifted her mother in her arms, and turned away from the crumbling stone. “Mom?”
“Cheyenne,” Corian called. “Get her to the house.”
The ground bucked beneath them all, and every other thick, jutting black spear on the portal ridge trembled and splintered. Muted black light grew between them, buzzing and flashing in a way that seemed to suck all the dawn light out of the valley. Cheyenne turned toward the house and almost dropped Bianca when the ground shook one more time. The black light ballooned up from the portal ridge, then was sucked back through in terrifying silence.
Yurik raised his fell rifle in both hands. “What the—”
The portal ridge exploded, roaring like a violent windstorm and sending chunks of shattered black stone in every direction. The agents turned away, despite the helmets they’d tugged on before the fight. Their dampening vests afforded them little protection. Corian, Maleshi, and L’zar darted away from the worst of the blast. Cheyenne gritted her teeth and raised a huge shield between the exploding portal and the magicals who could no longer fight back. She slipped into drow speed with Bianca in her arms and raced away, then gently lowered her mom to the ground.
“I’ll be back,” she whispered. “I promise.”
She sent her black lashing tendrils whipping at the suspended debris to shove it aside and away from the others. Magic burst faster than it should have from within the crumbling portal and struck down her shield.
Then she saw the blight.
It was moving as quickly as they’d seen it consume the mountain village in Ambar’ogúl, snaking out from between the shattered chunks of stone to spread black sludge and shrivel the grass in its path.
Cheyenne saw Corian and Maleshi slipping into enhanced speed beside her, and their eyes widened when they saw the blight spreading from Ambar’ogúl through the in-between onto Earth. “What do we do?”
Corian gritted his teeth. “Get everyone as far away from that as we can. I told you to take Bianca to the house.”
“There has to be something we can do.” They all took a step back as the blight moved with surprising speed away from the shattered portal.
“We don’t have time to look for alternatives, Cheyenne!”
“There’s no
