The Blackstaff itself pulsed and shimmered with shadowy power, and I got the sudden sense that the thing was alive, that it knew its purpose and wanted nothing more than to be used, as often and as spectacularly as possible.
I also saw veins of venomous black begin to ooze their way over the old man’s hand, reaching up slowly, spreading to his wrist. He grimaced and held his left forearm with his right hand for a moment, then looked over his shoulder and said, “All right!”
The farthest grey figure, tall and lean, lifted his staff. I saw light gleam off of metal at one end of the staff, and then green lightning enfolded the length of wood as he thrust the metal end into the ground. He took the staff back—but the twisting length of green lightning stayed. He drove the staff down again about six feet away, and again lightning sheathed it. Then he removed the staff, reversed his grip on it, and with a sweep of his arm drew another shaft of lightning between the two upright columns of electricity, bridging the gap.
He was opening a Way.
There was a flash of light, and the space between the bolts of lightning warped and went dark—then exploded with black figures bearing swords. For the first moment, I thought that they were wearing odd costumes, or maybe weird armor. Their faces were shaped something like a crow’s, complete with a long yellow beak. They were wearing clothes that seemed to be made from feathers—and then I got it.
They actually were beak-faced creatures, covered in soft black feathers and carrying swords, each and every one of them a Japanese-style katana. They poured out of the gate by the score, by the hundreds, and began to bound forward with unnaturally long leaps that seemed only technically different from flying. They looked deadly and beautiful, all grace, speed, and perfection of motion. The wild light of the One-woman Rave glittered off of their blades and glassy black eyes.
“The kenku owed me a favor,” Ebenezar drawled. “Seemed like a good time to call it in.”
With sharp whistles and wails of fury, the strange creatures bounded up out of the ball court and began to engage the Red Court in numbers.
It was too much to take in. Sorcery flew beside bullets on a scale larger than anything I’d ever seen. Stone weapons clashed against steel. Blood flew: the black of the vampires, the blue of the kenku, and, mostly, flashes of scarlet mortal blood. There was too much terror and incongruous beauty in it, and I think my head reacted by tuning out everything that wasn’t threatening my life, or was more than a few yards away.
“Maggie,” I said. I grabbed the old man’s shoulder. “I’ve got to get to her.”
He grimaced and nodded his head. “Where?”
“The big temple,” I said, pointing at the pyramid. “And about four hundred meters north of the temple, there’s a trailer cattle car,” I said. “It was guarded the last time I looked. There are human prisoners still in it.”
Ebenezar grunted and nodded. “Get the girl. We’ll take care of the Red Court and their Night Lords.” The old man spat on the ground, his eyes alight with excitement. “We’ll see how the slimy bastards like eating what they’ve been dishing out.”
I gripped his hand, hard, then put my other one on the old man’s shoulder and said, “Thank you.”
His eyes welled up for an instant, but he only snorted and squeezed back. “Get your girl, Hoss.”
The old man winked at me. I blinked a few times myself and then turned away.
Time was running out—for Maggie, and for me.
Chapter 47
“Godmother!” I shouted, turning toward the pyramid.
Lea appeared at my side, her hands now filled with emerald and amethyst light—her own deadly sorcery. “Shall we pursue the quest now?”
“Yeah. Stay close. We’ll round up the team and move.”
Molly was nearest. I went to my apprentice and shouted in her ear, “Come on! Let the birdmen take it from here! We’ve got to move.”
Molly gave me a vague nod, and finally lowered the little wands as the kenku’s charge drove into the Red Court and took the pressure from our flanks. The tips of her wands, both of them made of ivory, were cracked and chipped. Her arms hung limply and swung at her sides, and she looked even paler now than she had going in. She turned to me, gave me a quivering smile, and then suddenly sank to the ground, her eyes rolling back in her head.
I stared at her in shock for a second, and then I was on my knees next to her, my amulet glowing as I used its light to check her for injuries. In the chaos, I hadn’t seen that one of her legs, at midthigh, was a mass of blood. One of the wild shots from the security goons had hit her beneath the armored vest. She was bleeding out. She was dying.
Thomas crashed to the ground next to me. He ripped off his belt and whipped it around her leg as a tourniquet. “I’ve got this!” he said, looking up at me, his expression remote, calm. “Go, go!”
I stared at him for a second, uncertain. Molly was my apprentice, my responsibility.
He regarded me and his calm mask cracked for a second, showing me his tension, the fear he was holding in check at the scale of the conflict around us. “Harry,” he said. “I’ll guard her with my life. I swear it.”
I nodded, and then clenched a fist, looking around. That much spilled blood would start drawing vampires to the wounded girl like bees to flowers. Thomas couldn’t care for her and fight. “Mouse,” I called, “stay with them!”
The dog rushed over to Molly and literally stood over her head, his eyes and ears everywhere, a guardian determined not to fail.
Then I ran to Murphy and Sanya, who both bore small cuts and abrasions, and who looked like they were about to charge into the nearest portion of the fray. Martin tagged along with me, apparently calm, and by all appearances unaware that he was in the middle of a battle. Say what I would about Martin, his blandness, his boring demeanor, and his noncombative body language were very real armor in this situation. He simply didn’t look like an important or threatening target, and he was untouched.
I looked around them and picked up a sword that had been dropped by one of the warriors they had killed, a simple Chinese straight sword known as a jian. It was light, razor-sharp on both edges, and suited me just fine.
“We’re going to the pyramid,” I called to Murphy and Sanya. A group of thirty or forty kenku went over us, witch shadows against the rising moon, and entered the fray against the jaguar warriors who still stood between us and an exit from the ball court. “There!” I said. “Go, go, go!”
I suited action to my words and plunged toward the opening Ebenezar’s allies were cutting for us. There was a surge of magic and a flash of motion ahead of us, as another vampire noble tossed another flare of power at me. I caught a small stroke of lightning on my mentor’s staff—it was shorter, thicker, and heavier than mine—conducting the attack down my arm, across my shoulder, and out the tip of my newly acquired sword. The lightning bolt chewed a hole in the belly of the Red Court noble. He staggered as I closed on him. I spun the staff to the horizontal, and checked him in the nose as I went by, dropping him to the ground.
We went past the remains of the temple and out into the open space between the buildings. It was chaos out there. Jaguar warriors and priest types were everywhere, and most of them were armed. Mortal security folks were forming into teams and racing toward the ball court to reinforce the Red Court. I realized that at some point Murphy, her clothing shining with white light, her halo a blaze of molten gold, had begun racing along on my right side, with Sanya on my left. The brilliant light of the two Swords was a terror to the vampires and half-breeds alike, and they recoiled from that aura of power and fear—but that wasn’t the same thing as retreating. They simply fell back, while other creatures closed a large circle about us, drawing it slowly tighter as we moved toward the pyramid.