Page 102 of Fatality on the Field

I dive further down, letting a small blast of electricity loose at it. The mist sizzles away, leaving the two kids blinking in shock before they scramble free and disappear into the safety of the tunnel. I’m about to gain altitude again when I catch a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye—two more bodies, this time heading straight for Slade from behind. He’s too focused to notice; they’re almost on him.

Instinct takes over and I fold my wings to dive, hitting the turf with enough force to crater the sod and send a wave of mud and shredded plastic to the sidelines. The first zombie hits my foreleg and shatters. A second tries to pivot and run, but I backhand it with a talon, sending it cartwheeling into a sign advertising discount insurance. Planting myself between the siren and the oncoming wave, I lower my head to the ground. Even in this form, I can still talk, but what comes out is more growling than words.

“Move. Now.”

Slade staggers backward as his coveted boyfriend whips around to drop a spell circle. It feels like it boosts my electrical field. They both gri at me wildly, before the siren says, “Thanks, Kas. I’ll buy you a drink if we make it out alive.”

Huffing, I push off the ground to get back in the sky where I can use that little gift from the mage to get to a ‘finish him’ level of power. The mist is thicker now and the shadow knots up more tightly, as I soar through the atmosphere determinedly. I brace, letting the current wind through every scale as I fly faster and faster. When I feel ready, I head for the stands, landing on the seats in a way that will destroy them but give me a much better vantage point to perch. Once I note the ground team scrambling away, I open my mouth and roar—not the warning, not the signal, but the battle cry. It’s the sound of a thousand years of rage, of blood and storm that runs through my family like water in the oceans of time.

Electricity escapes on the next bellow, engulfing everything around me and crawling over the metal and plastic of my landing spot to spread outward. The ground ripples on the field and the shadow thing condenses into a single, massive tendril, aiming straight at me.

I’m not scared of a big shadowy fucker nor am I worried about it now—I know I can hurt it.

The impact of its first hit is brutal—a cold that goes past my scaled armor to fill me with an emptiness that tries to turn me inside out. But I’m a storm dragon accustomed to the cold of the upper atmosphere and my soul was hollowed out by my ex fiancee. So I just huff a breath of cold air and grab the tendril in my teeth, clamping down as I channel every volt I’ve stored up to transfer directly into the shadow. The effect is instant—the mist ignites, not with fire, but with raw, white light like a negative sun. My power scorches the field and blasts the mysterious motherfucker back in a spiral of dissolving black shadows and smoke that smells disgusting.

For a breath, it’s over and I feel victorious. I shake the numbness out of my jaw, looking up to see the rest of the team—Morgana, Liam, the Fae, the caladrius, and even the harpy eagle monkey combo—readying for round two. On the ground, Iggy is already drawing a new circle while Slade is winding up another siren song. Even the hellhound is stalking the perimeter, looking for stray dead things to chomp while this damn thing writhes and reforms into two separate parts as my dragon screeches in irritation. Taking off, I head for the highest point I can reach to get ready for another pass, hoping the others can deal until I return to their sight line.

We’re battered and we’re not winning, but we’re still here, and that’s enough.

sixty

MORGANA

Lightning rips the sky above the arena into a strobe-lit battlefield, each flash freezing the chaos below in a tableau of pure insanity. There are bodies everywhere, most of them twitching; shadows rippling like black ice over the field; and my family and friends are scattered across a football stadium in battle mode.

The universe, as always, has a killer sense of irony because I thought maybe we’d make it through this unscathed for half a second earlier.

My wings are screaming with the effort to stay airborne through wind shear that could flip a tank, and the rain is coming in sideways like water needles intent on burrowing into my stony skin. Every joint aches from my last few dives—one of which sent me headlong into the black mass of magic like a shoulder-mounted aerial missile. I pick out the next cluster of shadow spawn and dive anyway, hoping to harm the thing that’s still kicking the ass of a cadre of powerful supes like it’s child’s play.

Des has gone full murder noodle around my head and my scales flare with every surge of adrenaline. My snakes are hissing so loudly I can feel the vibration in my jaw, not that I can blame them. Our enemy is a dense, seething knot of necromantic shadow and ancient fury that it’s impossible to tell if we’re making headway on killing it or not. No one in their right mind would try to petrify something that’s technically already dead, but I’m fresh out of alternatives and time.

“Let’s fucking goooo,” I mutter through my teeth, and punch both fists forward as I drop.

Lucas would be proud of me for that.

The right-hand shadow mass is at its thickest near mid-field and it looks almost fluid from a hundred feet up. Closer, it’s a congealed scab of smoke and bone, and I swear it’s growing with every body it pulls down. I try not to think about the logistics of necromantic mass accretion, and instead focus on stoning whatever passes for almost alive as they emerge from the damn thing.

“Des,” I say, “get ready.” She coils so tightly her body’s a steel cable under my chin. “We’re gonna hit it hard.”

Just before impact, I let all my gorgon power loose. Focusing all of my female rage into a single, withering glare at the heart of the thing, I scream my frustration into the air like it’s my last stand on earth. For a heartbeat, there’s resistance—like the entire mass of shadow is fighting back with the will of a thousand dead assholes—but then something inside it fractures. The core pulses, shifts color from midnight to ashy gray, and a ring of brittle, stony crust ripples outward from the impact zone. For a fraction of a second, it’s beautiful, and I realize this likely means it’s getting more vulnerable.

Hell fuck yes, that’s what we need.

That’s when the crust shatters, and a jet of cold air explodes up through my wing membranes, numbing every inch of exposed skin. I claw for altitude with Des tearing at the air with her fangs, and nearly tumble as a tentacle of shadow snaps at my trailing leg. Gathering my gargoyle-ness, I push my body to lift further into the sky to get away from it, barely getting away by the skin of my teeth.

“Missed me,” I bark tauntingly as I torque left in time to catch the updraft off the burning scoreboard. The wind nearly yanks my wings off, but I ride it, banking hard into a sharp vertical until the world below is a swirl of rain, shadow, and two fast-moving points of gold and white.

Once I’m aloft again, I spot Liam with his wings flared out so wide they catch every flash of light and the runes on his forearms are lit up like subway graffiti. He’s not as fast as Kaspar in a straight line, but the bastard is nimble. Even through the haze and rain, I can see how tired he is, but he doesn’t stop. The set of his shoulders is off by just a couple of degrees, a subtle droop that says he’s burning more magic than even a Fae prince should.

We have to beat this thing before it stomps us all into a paste and then rampages off to splat the city.

I push hard, my wings straining again as I make for his position. Every pass of oxygen I suck in feels like it drags glass shards through my ribs, but I don’t slow down. I refuse to lose to something I can’t name, especially when I’m certain it was sent by a bunch of clowns no realm took seriously. Morgana LeCiel is not a loser by nature, but she’s definitely not going to give up the ghost for some bullshit dollar-store Cthulhu run by a fucking necromancer; I don’t give a shit where the motherfucking thing came from.

Panting, I glance below to see the folks on the field having a much worse time than I am. Lucas is swinging chunks of stadium debris like a caveman to knock away the multiplying zombies. Every time he connects, a spray of dark mist splatters across three yards of turf, but more advance on him. Slade’s singing at a frequency so violent the shadow zombies shake apart at the joints and I’m not sure how he’s keeping it from hurting everyone not part of our family, nor do I have time to ask. Iggy appears to be sweating blood as he hurls spell after spell, each one a little sloppier than the last, and I wonder if the effect is because he’s doing that shit he shouldn’t be.

Jolene’s saucy familiars are running pick-and-rolls between the fallen and trying to buy the last groups of survivors a little more time to reach the exits. I have no idea why there’s anyone left at this point, but since not a single Society guard or campus security goon has come down from the upper decks to help, it makes sense.

Cowards, every last one, and they will pay for that when this is over—that is, if I’m alive to stone them all into my new art garden.