“Let’s wait a minute; make sure that no one is following us. Then we’ll head after her again. I don’t want to catch up with half of Kane’s minions behind us.”

  “Agreed,” Garraldi said. “And if your magic works on the Fell magic, which apparently it does since you freed the kid in a minute, maybe you should take the lead from Frannie.”

  Victor shook his head. “No, she still has better sight for seeing the traps. Besides, if I miss one and step in it myself, who’s gonna bail me out?”

  “Good point,” Garraldi said.

  Victor scanned the park and street behind them, but saw nothing.

  “Garraldi, do you or Bullock see any pursuit?”

  “No,” Garraldi replied.

  Bullock shook his head.

  “Then we move,” Victor said, rising to stand. “Frannie, you’re on point. Then Danny, me, Garraldi, and Bullock.”

  The group started off with Frannie in the lead. At the edge of the park, Frannie pointed at the ground and the faint golden motes of Winnie’s trail. Frannie walked faster.

  They jogged along until they reached a residential street. The trail ran halfway down the street before doubling back and heading up the stairs on a nearby building.

  Frannie stopped and pointed to where the path doubled back.

  “I can see a trap. Winnie must’ve seen it, too. She stopped when—”

  Danny was already running. “She could be right over there.”

  “Danny, stop!” Victor called out. “Slow down and think!”

  Danny either didn’t hear or wasn’t listening.

  He reached the top of the steps and flung open the door.

  Then he was windmilling, about to fall.

  Danny caught himself against the doorframe, barely. “There’s no floor in here, just a pit,” he called out.

  The others ran over to join him. Victor looked past Danny, up at the open shell of a building, then back at the street.

  “That’s not the trap,” Victor said, pointing to the street. “That’s meant to lure someone into this building. The trap is in here. See the attachment points on the walls around the pit? They had a tarp or net or something to catch whoever ran inside. There’s a set of similar attachments above as well. I think that’s rigged to drop something on whoever falls inside.”

  “Where’s Winnie, then?” Danny asked.

  “She must’ve fallen inside. But look.” Frannie pointed into the pit.

  Victor looked down. And there it was: an exit, crudely dug in the corner. The passage appeared to slope down, to the city’s sewers or maybe a subway tunnel.

  “I can see a faint trail heading through that passage,” Frannie said. “Whoever took Winnie must have gone that way after they caught her.”

  Danny started to climb down. Victor reached out to grab him.

  “Stop. We do this wrong and they kill her soon as we’re down there. Think, Danny.”

  Danny swallowed and nodded. “You think she’s still alive?”

  “Why move her if she was dead?” Victor kept the less-positive answers to himself.

  “She’s alive or there wouldn’t be a trail,” Garraldi said. “It’s tracking her life force.”

  “Alright,” Victor said. “So how do we go in there after her?”

  Frannie pointed to Bullock. “He’s the best at cloaking himself. Only Winnie is better.”

  Victor looked at the large man. “You up for scouting our path?”

  Bullock nodded.

  “Then it’s Bullock, Frannie, and me, then Danny and Garraldi. Sound good?”

  Everyone nodded.

  Victor looked over the edge and into the building’s shell. The foundation’s sides were smooth. The descent would be tricky, at least without someone getting hurt. The last thing they needed was a broken ankle among them.

  “Ideas on getting down safely?” Victor asked.

  “Lower me down as far as you can and I’ll drop the rest of the way,” Frannie said. “Then Danny. He’s the next lightest. We can help the rest of you drop safely once you lower yourselves over the edge.”

  Victor wished they had a line of some kind. But unfortunately, this was their best option. His connection to Winnie had weakened, enough to make him wonder if they were already too late.

  Victor nodded. Frannie sat on the edge of the pit and turned to lower herself over the edge. Bullock and Garraldi each lay on the edge, grasping hands with Frannie, extending their arms down as far as they could go.

  Frannie dangled about eight feet above the floor. “Drop me, I’ve got this,” she whispered.

  “On three,” Garraldi said. “One, two, three.”

  The men released their hold on Frannie and she dropped to the floor.

  Frannie fell to her hands and knees, then a few seconds later, she stood and waved.

  “I’m fine. Send Danny down.”

  Danny came next and he and Frannie helped to break the others’ falls. Once they were all safely on the ground, Victor led them toward the passageway.

  But they were stopped by a series of guttural shouts above them.

  Victor looked up and had to muffle his own cry.

  A group of fifteen winged beasts the size of large dogs were perched around the building’s shell. The largest of them yelped, pointing down at the cornered group.

  “Run,” Victor hissed. “It’s a trap!”

  But it was too late. The beasts screamed then dove as one.

  Chapter 30

  The pack of flying-dog creatures dove towards them, jaws wide, exposing vicious sets of long, pointed teeth set in a double row lining their mouths. Their wings were feathered and raggedy like a buzzard’s, with hook-like talons extending from the edge of each wing.

  Victor brought his rifle to bear on the first of the beasts approaching from above. He fired a burst but missed when he ducked to avoid the snapping, gnashing teeth.

  He heard gunshots to his left and right as the others fired wildly at their attackers. All except Bullock, who reached up and pulled one of the beasts into a bear hug. Holding the dog-buzzard with one arm, he reached up with the other and snapped the creature’s neck with a single twisting yank at its muzzle.

  Guns were useless for the most part. Frannie was the first to use magic, summoning a burst of white-hot plasma and releasing it at one of the creatures.

  The beast burst into a plummeting ball of fire and fell to the floor.

  Frannie turned her attacks on others as they flew past her.

  Several of the creatures started barking. They were coordinating their efforts by focusing on Frannie—using her magic bolts to drop attackers in a row.

  “Keep that up, Frannie! It’s working. We’ll cover you!” Victor waved the others to form a circle around her while she continued to pick off the swooping dog-buzzards one by one.

  Garraldi and Bullock fired magic at the creatures, but they lacked Frannie’s finesse and accuracy, making them only marginally successful.

  Danny had resorted to firing his rifle in short three-round bursts at anything moving above them.

  Victor thumbed the selector to the same setting on his rifle, started doing the same, and was rewarded with a hit on the next pass.

  More dog-buzzards joined the attack. While the team had managed to kill or injure nearly a dozen of the beasts, twice that number had taken their place.

  “We have to try something else!” Garraldi called. “I’ve got an idea, but you’ll need to cover me and Bullock. We’ll try to raise a shield to keep them away.”

  Victor nodded and locked in on his target.

  The dog-buzzards doubled their efforts to get at the humans below.

  One of the beasts latched its jaws onto Frannie’s arm. She screamed like her skull was being ripped from her head as it dragged her down to the ground.

  Danny dropped his empty rifle, pulled out his pistol, and fired five rounds point-blank into the dog-buzzard’s skull.

  A series of frustrated screeches and howls turned Victor’s eyes to the sky. The creatures were striking the invisible barrier and yelping with frustration.

  But those yelps were drawing more of their kind.

  “We can’t keep this up,” Garraldi grunted, out of breath.

  “Can you move while you hold it?” Victor asked.

  “I think so,” Garraldi said. “But we need to hurry, and I can’t go fast.”

  “Just hold them until we make it to the passage. Then we can collapse it behind us. Danny, help Frannie make it to the passage, then bandage that arm. We’re right behind you.”

  Danny holstered his pistol and helped Frannie to stand. She cradled her bleeding arm close to her body as she and Danny moved toward the entrance.

  Victor walked backward, keeping his rifle trained upwards just in case one of the beasts broke through the shield. They were diving in a succession of blows, talons and teeth gnashing the invisible barrier with every pass.

  Garraldi and Bullock backed into the opening, side by side, and blocked the opening.

  Victor pulled off his pack and dug inside until he found the door-breaching charges. He had an unconventional idea for their use.

  This passage was supported by a timber frame holding the dirt and rock in place. If he could place the charges on a few of those key supports, it should trigger a cave-in and block the way for their pursuers.

  Once he had the charges in place, Victor shouted at Garraldi and Bullock. “Give the things a push away from the entrance, then turn around and run past me. Fast as you can.”

  The chanters reached out, manipulating the shield enough to deliver an invisible blow to the creatures behind it.

  Then they dropped their arms and ran past Victor. He turned to follow, holding the remote detonator behind him and pressing the button with his thumb as he ran.

  The resulting explosion knocked him from his feet and hurled him into a cloud of vaporized dirt.

  Victor lay still, clearing his head. Then he rolled over and looked back up the passage. Dust cleared, revealing a pile of dirt and rock where the passage had been.

  “I sure hope there’s another way out,” Danny said.

  Victor started walking. “Not like we had a choice. It was do that or have them chasing us all the way down to wherever Winnie is.”

  “I wasn’t complaining, just making an observation.” Danny went back to wrapping a bandage around Frannie’s arm while she continued to wince.

  “How bad is it?” Victor asked.

  “I’m no mender. She’s going to need stitches eventually, but I stopped the bleeding for now.”

  “Good,” Victor said. “Frannie, can you still cast with your arm like that? We might need your skills again soon.”

  “I’ll do what needs to be done.”

  “Then we’d better hurry on down,” Victor said. “See what’s on the other end. Bullock, Frannie—same plan as before. You two cloak up and take the lead. We’ll follow.”

  Frannie and Bullock nodded and started to the front. They cast their cloak spells and faded from view. He could still see they were there from the corner of his eye. When he looked right at them, the air shimmered, like heated air rising from baking pavement.

  The two blurry shapes moved down the passage. About ten feet away, Victor could no longer see them in the darkness. He turned on his tactical flashlight to its dimmest setting and started behind them, followed by Danny, with Garraldi taking the rear.

  He walked faster, thinking of Winnie, and praying that they weren’t too late.

  Chapter 31

  Maria squeezed both triggers, alternately firing her dual pistols.

  The charging Garbarian crumpled to the ground. So did the one behind it.

  Her pistols locked open with the slides back, now empty. She ejected the magazines and loaded another two in rapid succession.

  “Push them back and finish them,” she shouted to the command unit.

  They were still recovering from the surprise attack—a mass of Garbarians crawling out of every manhole cover in sight.

  Nearby, a young Duster comm tech wrestled herself out from under a Garbarian body and retrieved a fallen rifle to fire into the mass of rapidly approaching creatures. Some Dusters were recovering from the initial attack, but others—too many—were down and not getting up.

  Maria aimed more carefully this time and started taking head shots. She dropped fifteen more with well-timed taps to their sloped foreheads.

  That broke enemy momentum long enough for the remainder of Maria’s command team to gather their wits and return fire like the soldiers they were.

  It took several minutes but they eventually managed to hunt down every creature in the area and finish them off.

  “Get the comm windows back open!” Maria shouted. “I need to know what’s happening.”

  Elaine’s mirroring spells had worked for several hours longer than expected. But the new day’s sun had sapped the spells’ power. Kane’s forces redirected their efforts to a concentrated attack on the Dusters’ true positions.

  Luckily, Cleaver Yorke arrived with nearly fifteen hundred fresh volunteers. Maria used them to bolster the line while she and Elaine worked on a new strategy to vanquish their enemy. That was when the counterattack spilled from the sewers.

  Maria needed to know if the attack had caused enough damage to shift her forces around and compensate for any holes in the line.

  As unwounded techs returned to their positions, the comm windows opened and Maria could view the battlefield in real time. Fortunately, the surprise attack had failed to hurt them badly enough to require any on-the-fly decisions.

  “Maria,” Elaine called. “Any word from the B-Team?”

  “No, and they should have checked in by now.”

  “I understand,” Elaine said, deflating a bit at the news.

  “Don’t lose hope. If anyone can catch up to Winnie and give her a hand, it’s Victor. But we have to keep pressing, keep the enemy occupied.”

  Elaine looked around at the monitoring screens and laughed. “I think you managed that much. We have to be facing all of Kane’s available forces by now.”

  Maria pointed at two separate spots on-screen. “We’ve lost the most people in those two areas. That was where the chimeras attacked. We lost almost fifty troopers putting the first one down. Your elites were lucky with the other one.”

  “I don’t think Kane has that many to spare,” Elaine said. “They’re spread out into the countryside, fighting the dragons.”

  Maria said, “If we could call the dragons back here while the chimeras are away, we could overwhelm Kane’s defenses.”

  “What if … ” Elaine tapped her chin. “What if we concentrated everything we have, here at the center of our line?" She pushed her fingers forward, folding the line back like a spring until it formed an arrow. "Wouldn’t that give us a chance to break through and drive towards downtown?”

  “Hmmm,” Maria mused, looking over the screen and thinking about the proposal. “That might work. It’s risky, though. If they realize what we’re doing and counterattack against either of the two arms of the arrow, they could get behind the lead attack group and hit them from the rear.”

  “Well, then, we’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Elaine said. “Look, I can put my remaining chanter elites here and here.” Elaine pointed to the overhead view. "From there, they can support the flanks in case of attack while we push forward at the center. Nothing will break through and I’ll stay close by to bolster anything that needs assistance.”

  “I can’t think of anything else to do,” Maria said. “I’m about out of tricks on my end. Give me a half hour to put a few things in place at the center of the line then we’ll start the attack. It’s so crazy, they might not expect it at all. They’ve got us pretty well outnumbered right now. I figure their commander is expecting us to fold at any minute.”

  “A half hour it is,” Elaine said, checking her watch. “I’ll be ready when you give the signal.”

  Maria called for her runners. She gave each one a written order for a specific part of the line on both sides of the center. By the time the last one left, there were fifteen minutes left before the attack.

  “I’m going to the center of the line,” Maria told a group of comm techs. “Close shop here and join me there once we start moving. Stay close so we don’t leave anyone behind. We can’t come back for anyone.”

  Maria gave one last look around and then headed for the front. It was time to give the B-Team one last boost while they found Winnie and brought her back.

  She prayed that they made it in time.

  Chapter 32

  Winnie had stopped trying to free herself. The barbs bound her to the net. Movement was an exercise in searing pain across her body. She’d need a blade to free herself, but the sword on her back was as trapped as she was.

  She opened her eyes and looked at her captors from where they’d left her trussed up on the ground. The tiny creatures were about three feet tall with long sinuous tails. They were covered in fur but stood on hind legs like a person and looked like a cross between a short man and a sewer rat. Maybe that was what they were. Kane’s Fell magic had transformed so many people into beasts, why not beasts into people?

  The rat-creatures had taken the netting down and carried her away. She hadn’t seen much on the journey but remembered a long rough passage carved in the earth and supported by timbers.

  The dirt passage opened up after a while into finished concrete tunnels—a subway or sewer. Water was rushing nearby. And the stench was almost worse than the pain, so a sewer was likely.

  They brought her into a room that flickered with firelight. The walls were lined with rags and bedding. This must be their lair.

  Winnie tried again to draw in some magic, but one of the rats raised a club and clouted her over the head. The blow made her see stars. She nearly blacked out and lost all contact with the flows she’d been drawing into herself.