the world spun around her. Caul’s shrieks rang in her ears. The brilliance of the air around her, shifting and distorted with magic, made the floor difficult to locate. But she found it.
Stanton’s face glowed stark white, his body burning like the sun.
“Get away!” he screamed.
Caul was expanding to such a size now … bigger and bigger, blacker and blacker, exuding the smell of a field of rotting corpses under a hot summer sun. He was reaching for her, black slimy paws fumbling to grab her. Dodging him unsteadily, she threw herself against a far wall, where one of the gas fixtures glowed softly. She waited as he got closer, until he was almost on her, reaching for her throat …
Then she turned up the gas full blast, the sudden high flame catching a corner of his sleeve.
She dove for safety as he exploded in an inferno of light and color and heat, white and blue and red. Heat battered at her as she rolled behind the dissecting table. The smell became that of fat blood-fed flies roasting in the flames of Hell.
Caul stopped screaming; instead, he crumpled, a slow collapse punctuated by sprays of sparks. Finally he stilled, and then there was just the sound of whistles and bubbles and pops, and flames licking the ceiling and smoke filling the room.
Then, there was a loud crack.
From the center of the flaming mass a huge fountain of silver light shot up to the sky, blasting the roof outward in a hail of wood and plaster and tar paper. Looking up through the destroyed ceiling, Emily saw that the night was velvety black, salted with stars.
The fountain of light shot up, expanding like a reversed funnel as it rose, broad and thin and shimmering like the clouds of luminous stellar gas Emily remembered from the memories of Ososolyeh. The colors of it were so beautiful: resonant basso reds, deep echoing blues, shimmering, soaring yellows. The multihued light cloaked the sky in heartbreaking radiance.
Then it began to rain.
Coruscating drops of power sizzled down like tiny comets, phosphorescent glitters like dying fireflies that made the ground glow where they hit. The brilliant shower quickly doused the flames, clearing the smoke from the air, revealing Caul’s charred corpse. Kneeling, his fists were pressed against his forehead.
Emily did not realize how silent it had become until the hollow clank of the empty chrysohaeme container resounded through the room. Emily’s eyes found Stanton’s. No longer wreathed in power, he looked thin and tired. He swayed, gave her a nod, then collapsed heavily to the floor.
She went to him, falling to the ground beside him. Pain jolted through her as she reached to touch him with a hand that was no longer there.
“Mr. Stanton,” she said. The raindrops of iridescent silver brilliance fell all around them, making the air glow with released power. The whole world around them shone like an illuminated manuscript, brilliant colors made precious with bright nacreous gems. The raindrops glowed in Stanton’s hair, leaving marks of light where they fell on his pale, upturned face.
“Mr. Stanton?” she whispered, brushing drops of brilliance from his face. “Dreadnought?”
He opened his eyes. They were entirely black, from lid to lid.
“I like it better with the ‘dear’ after it,” he said, distantly.
“Are you all right?” she breathed. “Please say you’ll be all right!”
“Of course I’ll be all right,” he said. “Though I am a bit hungry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Man Who Saved Magic
Dreadnought Stanton stood proudly over the infamous sangrimancer, the blood fiend who clutched and scrabbled miserably at his feet—a wretched spectacle.
“I die … yes, I die! For you have defeated me in all truth, and the great engines of evil that were at my command! And you have defeated me twice over, for you battled fairly against my methods, which were deceitful and dishonorable! Truly I lose to a better Warlock, and a better man!”
And letting out a final, foul breath, the blood fiend reclined, expiring.
“Such terrible dangers shall never again threaten our great nation!” Dreadnought Stanton said firmly, regarding the formidable enemy who lay dead at his feet. “The great goals of credomancy shall uphold the virtues of this land, the honor of its women, and the innocence of its youth!”
Emily closed the book, repressing an almost unbearable urge to salute.
The book was fresh from the presses of Mystic Truth Publishers. It had an eye-popping chromolithographed cover that featured Dreadnought Stanton boldly fending off rotting zombies, fearsome sangrimancers with blood dripping from the corners of their