a page from the reactive shield spell, exploding kinetic energy outward and bowling three of them over. Not wasting a second, I jumped back down the slope I’d just climbed and ran through the gap in their lines and all the way to the bottom till my forward progress was blocked by the little river and its terminal pool. During the last week, all of the snow and ice had fully melted and the resulting water had been pulled by the water witches’ spells into the lake and river. It was kind of a raging torrent now, at least from Double D’s perspective. Going around would slow me enough for the flankers, who were running downhill after me, to catch up. I had to cross, but my dude couldn’t jump that far.
I dropped my last reactive rock on the edge of the river, backed up, and ran. My final step was onto the spell-encrusted stone and an instant later, I was sailing through the air and over the river. Over a decent portion of the remaining landscape as well.
I crash landed right in what everyone was calling Tornado Alley. The Air girls had spelled it to form a constant series of mini-dust devils that could rip a dirt dude apart.
Pulling my dude out of the sand, I turned to face into a dirt-and-pebble-nado that would have eaten me for lunch. Double D executed a rapid exit dive and rolled upright in time to dodge a second tornado coming from the other side. A fast burst of speed and I was out of the Alley and headed for the finish line. Then something hit Double D from behind and knocked me down. I stood up and looked at the ground behind me. A stone, pebble really, except to Double D, it looked like a boulder. A glance up showed two more in flight, headed right for me. I dodged left and right, missing one and getting clipped by another. Some of my dirt was gone, knocked off by the stones and by the rules of the game, I couldn’t fix D until the match was finished. I turned and jogged forward, one leg showing way too much brass. Water sprayed across me, hard enough to tear off dirt and I turned, ready to cry foul only to find two of the dirt girls standing on the far edge of Tornado Alley, lobbing balls of water from little plastic baggies tied to their hips. They threw the water blobs at two more gals, who were holding up dirt hands. A strong wind came off those little palms and blasted the water into streams like little fire hoses. People had been doing some out of the box thinking.
I ran on, my pace slowed by the eroded dirt. The gals were now all crossing the tornado section as two of the Air witches held up rune-carved clay hands that stopped the cyclones in their tracks.
Dirt was falling off in clumps and my left leg was dragging, but I was almost there. Ten more hobbling paces and I reached the stone that marked my goal. The rest of the class who had stopped to watch either yelled their pleasure at my win or Bronx cheered if they were more inclined to favor the witches. Double D fell down in a heap as I pulled my consciousness back from him and took a deep breath. Damn. These ladies were tough and learning way too fast.
“If yer done wit yer little rematch, Declan, I could use some help with these others,” my aunt said.
A few of the kids had their golems in motion, Delwood surprisingly one of them. Most of the class, however, was looking frustrated and upset, their clay avatars standing motionless in front of them.
Darina, the foreign werewolf, crossed her arms across her chest and looked angry.
“These things don’t work,” she said with a slight accent. “You made them wrong.”
I glanced at Delwood, who was making his dude dance around like a drunken clown, then I looked back at the werewolf girl. She was maybe sixteen and always wore a slightly snotty expression, at least whenever I had seen her. Jetta called it resting bitch face syndrome. It reminded me of someone from Castlebury High School, an old nemesis of mine who had once been an even older friend. He got that look when he was out of his element and even when he was… scared.
“You and your brother are from the Carpathian Pack, is