so intense that the rune-carved implement itself exploded into a cloud of glowing splinters. It hit the far- above stalactite with a thunderous concussion. Beside me, the Ick rose up and reached for my skull with one enormous hand.
I threw up my hands, hissed, “Aparturum,” and, with the last of my will, ripped open the veil between the Erlking’s hall and the material world, tearing open a circular opening maybe four feet across—and floating three feet off the ground and parallel to the floor, oriented so that its entry point was on its upper side. Then I curled up into a fetal position beneath that opening and tried to cover my head with my arms.
Tons and tons of stone tumbled down with slow, deadly grace. The Devourer’s heartbeat redoubled its pace. Then there was an incredible noise, and the whole world was blotted away.
I lay there on my side for several moments, not daring to move. Stone fell for a while, maybe a couple of minutes, before the sounds of falling rocks slowly died away, like the pops from a pan of popcorn just before it starts to burn. Only, you know, rockier.
Only then did I allow myself to lift my head and look around.
I lay in a perfectly circular four-foot-across tomb that was maybe five feet deep. The sides of the tomb were perfectly smooth, though I could see from all the cracks and crevices that they were made from many mismatched pieces of rock, ranging from one the size of my fist to a boulder half as big as a car.
Above me, the open Way glowed slightly. All the stone that would have fallen on me had instead plunged through the open Way and back into the material world.
I took a deep breath and closed it again. I hoped that no one was hanging around wherever it was that Way emptied out. Maybe in the FBI cafeteria? No way to know, except to go through and look. I didn’t want to face the collateral damage of something like that.
My sane brain pointed out that there was every chance that we weren’t talking about falling stones at all. As matter from the spirit world, they would transform to simple ectoplasm when they reached the material world, unless ongoing energy was provided in order to preserve their solidity. I certainly hadn’t been trying to pump any energy into the stones as they hit the Way. So odds were that I just dumped several dozen tons of slime onto a random spot in the FBI building—and slime that would evaporate within moments. It would grossly reduce the chances of inflicting injuries on some hapless FBI staffer.
I decided that my sanity and I could live with that.
I closed the Way with a wave of my hand and an effort of will, and slowly stood up. As I did, I realized that I felt a bit creaky, and that I was shaking with fatigue. But what I didn’t feel was . . . pain.
I tried to dust myself off and get a good look at my injuries. I should have broken ribs. Ruptured organs. I should be bleeding all over the place.
But as far as I could tell, I didn’t even have whiplash.
Was that Mab’s power, running through me, wrapped around me? I didn’t have any other explanation for it. Hell, when Susan and I had run from the FBI building, she had been the one to get winded first, while I felt no more need to breathe heavily than I would have had walking out to my mailbox. For that matter, I’d outrun the Devourer during this fight.
I thought I should probably feel disturbed by the sudden increase in my physical speed and toughness. But given what I’d had to pay for them, I couldn’t feel anything but a certain sense of satisfaction. I would need every advantage I could get when I went to take Maggie away from the Red Court.
I looked up as the green fire of the fighting circle began to die away, and as it did the goblins of the hall erupted into an earsplitting, spine-chilling symphony of approving howls.
I climbed out of the hole, then over and around a couple of dump trucks’ worth of rubble, and hurried over to Susan’s side on the opposite end of the ring.
She lay limp and still. There were small cuts and bruises all over her. Her leather pants had hundreds of little holes in them—the shards of bone from the