and peering out across the buildings toward the gunfire. He studied her for a moment, and flicked the view, searching until he found the rest of the group hiding out near the dumpster corral.
"Son of a—" he centered the image on a group of patrolling vamps and highlighted them.
I couldn't waste any more time. Keeping low, I followed the thick cables back toward the cages in the back of the room. Something hissed to my right and clanged hard against the cage. I looked up in time to see a vampire—no a vampling—straining against the bars to reach me, its eyes glazed with death, rotting lips peeled back from broken teeth. I backed away and heard a cooing noise behind me. I spun.
"Da nah," said a cherub from inside a barred cage of some kind of clear material.
The dark creature's skin glistened like oil. A round orifice lined with sharp teeth opened on its otherwise featureless face. My knees went weak at the sight and I almost fell on my butt and back into the vampling's arms in an effort to avoid the thing, even though it probably couldn't reach me through the strange container imprisoning it.
My foot found the thick cable, however, and I tumbled to the ground. Rolling away from the danger zone, I pushed myself up and looked at the creatures. What the hell was Dash doing with these things? Was he experimenting on them? I didn't have time to ponder. Turning, I followed the cables where they led into a small room in the back.
I raced through the doorway. Giant jaws snapped in my face as I nearly smacked into a creature the size of a really, really big snake strapped to the floor with diamond fiber. The breath caught in my throat as I looked down the glowing maw of the monster. It was nowhere near full size—a baby perhaps? Whatever the case, I now knew where the power was coming from.
A leyworm.
Chapter 23
Daelissa must have given Maximus more help than anyone realized, I thought as I regarded the beast. It would take some kind of crazy, supernatural powers to capture this thing. Red parietal eyes the size of my head gleamed at me above a long, lean muzzle more like that of a crocodile than a snake, complete with ridged forehead and two horns curving back atop it. It bellowed like a wounded bear, revealing a maw of obsidian shards and the bright glow of energy from deep inside its throat.
I ran down its length, all fifteen feet or so and found why the poor thing was bellowing in pain. Its scaly hide had been gouged down to raw flesh. The cables were attached to two large, silver terminals someone had plunged into the leyworm's body. It made me wince just looking at them. I reached out a hand to touch one of the terminals. Sparks flashed in my face. A magnetic force backhanded me against the wall.
What the hell?
Dazed, I staggered to my feet, grabbed a wooden rod off the floor and extended it toward the terminal rods. Either Dash had a protective spell around them, or the energy channeling through them was too much for the wood to handle. It splintered and broke without ever making contact.
Ignoring the terminals, I bent down and pulled on the cable. A wave of dizziness passed over me and a nauseous feeling clawed up my throat. My stomach felt engorged with hot acid. My head pulsed with a static feeling, as though a cat were licking my brain. I dropped the cable and staggered away before I succumbed to the madness lurking in that energy. I felt disoriented and drunk. Sick with too much power, like a go-cart burning rocket fuel.
My knees hit the floor and my vision faded to static. Forcing back the barf crawling up my throat, I tried to shake off the nausea. After a long moment, my hands against the rough stone floor came into focus. Blood welled from the palms of each one where I'd gripped the cable. Tiny bolts of lightning seemed to dance across the spots of blood.
Wiping the blood from my hands, I staggered to my feet and regarded the oversized garden snake. I couldn't free the beast. Maybe only Dash could. I peeked around the corner. The Arcane's attention lay solely on his display, monitoring a group of vampires as they raced toward Elyssa and the other Templars. I was out of time. I considered shooting him