Game of Cages

without help. My head was still swimming and my skin felt scalded. I tried moving my arms and back—my ribs hurt, but I didn’t think anything had been broken. Lucky.

Another explosion shattered the windows. This one sounded different from the one in the stairwell, but my ears were still ringing. I saw a sudden flare of light and stumbled toward the office.

I couldn’t enter, but I could see into the backyard through a gap in the wall. Annalise was out there, and she was on fire. Another explosion struck the ground at her feet, and she was thrown back into the bushes. The cabin rattled with the blast.

The floating storm didn’t attack like that. I ran to a side window.

Issler stood in the falling snowflakes. He held something that looked like a massive, two-handed revolver. As I reached for my ghost knife I heard him shoot it—foof!—and another blast of firelight erupted from the back of the house. He was smiling.

He didn’t see me as he started toward the backyard. I threw my ghost knife at him.

The spell didn’t go where I wanted it to go. It had never missed before, but it turned away from him just as I had turned away from the stairs in the office.

At the last moment, I willed it toward his weapon instead.

The ghost knife cut through the top of the barrel just before he squeezed the trigger. The gun burst apart in his hands, fire flashing over his face and neck. He screamed.

I turned and staggered toward the front door. Firelight shone down at me from the ceiling. The cabin groaned as if it was about to collapse. I yanked the door inward, feeling it scrape against the floor, and sprinted into the yard. The men inside would be getting a Viking funeral soon.

I reached for my ghost knife again. It was almost too far, but it came.

I held it ready to throw as I came around the barbecue pit, but it wasn’t necessary. About fifteen feet away, Issler was kneeling in the dirt, squealing and grunting from the pain. With one hand he smeared mud into his left eye, and with his other he dug inside his mouth. I could hear meat sizzling.

I wondered if the ghost knife could hit him if I held it in my hand rather than throwing it. There was only one way to find out. I started toward him.

Suddenly, the shadows around us slid across the ground. The floating storm came over the top of the cabin and moved down toward Issler. It was small—no larger than a cantaloupe—but if it fed, it would get bigger.

I still had the gun in my pocket, but it was useless. I pressed my ghost knife to my lips. I didn’t know what would happen to me if it was destroyed inside the floating storm, but I might have to chance it.

The only thing nearby was the barbecue pit and the stainless steel gas grill. I cut through the gas hose and dragged the tank out of the bottom. I couldn’t tell if it was full or empty, and at the moment I didn’t care. It was metal and it was handy.

But I was too slow. The floating storm was already directly above Issler and moving downward.

The tank snagged on something. I tugged and twisted it, trying to tear it free. It wouldn’t come.

The floating storm was close enough to Issler that he could have reached up and touched it.

Red lightning never struck. The predator floated above him, swaying back and forth as though trying to find a way in. Maybe it was having the same trouble my ghost knife had had.

I shook the tank, making a horrendously loud noise but finally freeing it. The predator floated toward me.

I swung the tank once in a wide-armed circle and heaved it. It struck the floating storm dead center. I wished the propane had blown up like a bomb, but that didn’t happen. I had to be satisfied with a couple of sparks and a slight delay in the chase.

Damn. Annalise was nowhere in sight, and I had no one to help me. For all I knew, she was dead in the bushes back there.

But that didn’t mean I was out of ideas. Getting inside one of the cars out front would protect me from real lightning, and now seemed like a good time to try it against magic. I didn’t know what I’d do after that, but maybe I’d have a chance for my head to stop spinning.

I ran to the front of the building. The firelight was bright and the heat was raw against the side of my face. Wood cracked and crashed somewhere nearby, followed by a roar of flame. The front wall of the cabin trembled and leaned toward me.

“Ray!”

That was Annalise’s voice. I stopped and looked for her, letting the predator get uncomfortably close. I saw her silhouette waving at me from the far side of the cabin.

I angled back toward her and the heat. The little floating storm followed at about shoulder height. I could have sworn that it was having trouble staying in the air.

The wind changed, choking me with a gust of black smoke. I gave a wide berth to the porch, even though the fire hadn’t reached there. The flames were flickering along the outside of the wall, slowly spreading downward.

I rounded the corner with tears streaming down my face and nearly ran headlong into Annalise. I dodged to the side as she stepped forward, and I could only catch a glimpse of the thing she was holding over her head as she tipped it over and slammed it onto the ground.

It was the water tank from the roof. She’d dumped it over the floating storm.

Scalding hot mud shot out from under the lip of the tank. It scalded me through my pants, and I dropped to my knees in the freezing mud to leach away the heat.

“Where did Issler go?” Annalise asked. Her clothes were in tatters, exposing pale skin from her chin to her ankles. She was completely covered with protective tattoos, as I had always suspected, but what I hadn’t expected was how she looked. She always wore clothes that were large and loose, but I never expected to see all her ribs,