work.
I didn’t have the kind of power it would have taken to do what the genius loci did. The energy I’d had to pour into the incantation had simply been to release a portion of the spirit’s power—like turning the key in an enormous, stiff, stubborn lock. Demonreach was not meant to be used by the weak-minded or the uncertain, and the effort it had taken to set it into motion was not one I would care to repeat on a regular basis for exercise.
The crystal flared with light. It bathed Thomas so brightly that I could see his bones through his skin.
And then my poor, battered brother began to scream. It was a thin, shrieking sound, a sound that embraced more emotion, more agony, than his broken body could possibly bear. It ripped at me, that sound, causing me pain that the Winter mantle could do absolutely nothing about. I had just condemned my brother to a punishment that I would have been terrified to face myself.
Thomas screamed and screamed, and the vast form of the genius loci towered over him, bending down.
And then the screams ended.
The light vanished.
I stood alone on the cold stones.
Where my wounded brother had been, there was nothing but a very faintly glowing cloud of green mist, dispersing rapidly, sinking into the stone and earth of Demonreach.
I sagged, dropping down to one knee and bracing my arms on the ground.
Stars and stones.
What I had just done … there had been no choice, especially not now.
But my brother.
I heard a single low cry, raw and ugly with pain.
I turned to see Lara land on the dock and rush toward me, a pale blur of supernatural speed, something that gleamed and caught the moonlight in her hand.
35
Lara Raith didn’t like to fight—it was what made her such a deadly opponent when she had to do it. Once the knives were out, she didn’t let pride come into it at all. If she decided to kill you, it was going to happen as quickly and efficiently as she could arrange, and that would be that.
I had personally seen her walk through a battlefield full of ancient foes armed with nothing but a pair of long knives. She hadn’t just beaten them—she’d made it look easy. She was older than my brother, and she’d taught him to fight. Thomas had walked into a svartalf fortress and damn near assassinated its chief executive, through all the security, all by himself. Lara was faster than my brother, stronger than him, and more experienced.
And now she was coming for me.
I got it. I mean, this was the only place on the planet I was sure Thomas would be safe, but if she’d known the details she’d have fought me on it, and there just hadn’t been time. For all she knew, I’d just disintegrated her brother. If I’d been in Lara’s shoes, I’d have been freaking out, too.
She probably didn’t realize she’d chosen her ground even more poorly than my brother had.
Demonreach had been constructed by Merlin. The Merlin, the original, Camelot and Excalibur, that Merlin. He’d broken at least one of the Laws of Magic to build the place, romping about through time in order to lay a foundation strong enough to bear the supernatural weight of the prison. As a result, the island absolutely seethed with power—and if one knew the layout of the defenses, and the painstaking geomancy that had gone into laying all that energy into usable patterns, it was possible to use that energy at almost no cost to one’s own store of personal power.
Behind Lara, Freydis and her shotgun vaulted off the ship and onto the shore, the Valkyrie following her boss into battle.
Except it wasn’t a battle.
It wasn’t even close.
I made a gesture, hissed part of a word, and the soft ground beneath Lara’s feet abruptly gave way and then snapped back, sending her into a sprawl in the air. She hit the ground, and the brush and grass of the island wrapped her swiftly and completely.
I made a swatting gesture with my right hand, sent out a mental command to utilize some of the waiting energy of the island, and a hickory tree that towered above the landing site abruptly swept down like an angry giant and slammed an enormous branch into the ground a few feet in front of Freydis. The impact knocked the Valkyrie from her feet—and at a second gesture the tree hit her hard enough to send her flying