The fire whip expanded in length and breadth as he whipped it around his head, taking out his nearest attackers and then tearing down the street like a comet. The few war mages on their feet hit the pavement. Those who could, raised shields again. Those who couldn’t used their coats for protection, staring at him over the lapels, as if suddenly waking from a dream to find themselves in a nightmare.
Some even tried to come to his aide.
He didn’t need it.
“Stay down!” he rasped, and slung the great band of fire sideways across the street, catching a dozen figures halfway through a leap, and sending them crashing to the ground—
With their smoke blackened bodies severed neatly in two.
The sparks shed by the giant lash had caught even more, throwing the whole street into a panic, because there was nothing vampires hated more than fire.
What a pity, John thought grimly.
It was his favorite spell.
The whip slammed back the other way, catching another group of the creatures, who somehow stayed intact long enough to be smashed into the burnt and blackened side of a building, where they disintegrated into a mass of burning chunks. And then again and again, but not catching as many this time, because they were turning, they were running, they were fleeing the scene—
Or maybe, John thought, they were just getting out of the way.
Because what looked like every vampire in the world suddenly started pouring off the tops of the four and five story buildings surrounding the street, a dark wave of them like a living waterfall. John dropped the whip and threw up a shield, but felt the pull of their collective attempt to drain him nonetheless. With all that power directed at him, he was surprised they hadn’t managed it already.
But it wouldn’t be long.
He needed more fire, and he needed it now.
John screamed with effort, the power he was suddenly channeling feeling like it would burn him alive. But it didn’t; somehow it didn’t. And it worked.
The flood of reinforcements hit the smoking street just in time to meet another wave of newcomers, pouring out of the three portals he had just opened in the air all around them. Fire imps—and yes, Caleb, he thought grimly, that was what they were called—poured forth from one of the nastier hell regions. The small, blackened bodies, like hardened lava, spewed in all directions, short and squat, but surprisingly thick and heavy, and armed with two-inch-long talons they didn’t need, because their touch was enough.
Their touch was death, at least to creatures as flammable as old newspaper.
The initial wave of the vampire attack paused, not understanding what they were seeing. Not until the imps leapt onto the advance guard, and their blackened skins flashed molten red and gold, as the fire part of their name came into play. And realization dawned.
Vampires screamed and immolated, or turned and tried to flee if they were back far enough, creating a breakwater of smoke and burning flesh and churning, screaming bodies around John. And quickly, almost faster than he could see, the rest of the creatures spun about, almost as if coordinated. They scrambled up and over the buildings a lot less elegantly than the way they’d arrived, their—in some cases—still flaming bodies disappearing into the night.
Leaving just the enemy mages behind.
There weren’t nearly as many of them—the crowd looked to have been mostly vampires—but they’d had time to figure out a strategy whilst John was dealing with their allies. The huge blue shield he’d seen earlier had reappeared, glimmering at the end of the street, with the mages clustered behind it. And this time, without all the vamps in the way, John realized something: it wasn’t being generated by them at all.
The thick, blue-white wall was enormous, filling the full width of the road and, based on the distortion of the figures behind it, at least four feet thick. John stared at it, caught between awe and disbelief. Because nobody had that kind of power—
Except for people living on a ley link sink, he realized.
And then the wall started to move.
For half a second, John watched blankly as the thick shield flowed over burnt cobblestones and the blackened bricks of the buildings on either side. It looked like a wall of light, moving slowly but inexorably forward. But it may as well have been a steamroller.
John saw a peddler’s cart be flattened, along with its array of shiny fake jewelry, which fused with the soft, heated stones of the road to become a permanent part of the alley. He saw a streetlamp be taken down as if its metal pole was made out of paper. He saw a trashcan get knocked over and rolled in front of the spell for a moment, before it caught on a body and they were both flattened underneath.
Then he was moving, and shouting orders at the war mages still standing—the handful who appeared to have broken the enthrallment—to catch those who were still under and who were walking toward the light. “Get them back! Get them back!”
They tried, but the enthralled mages were fighting them, even the one with a smoking, cooked arm hanging uselessly by his side. Or the one missing half a face. Or the one with the back of his coat burnt out, the magical cloth desperately trying to mend the damage, even while the white top of a spine peaked through the fibers.
But in their enthralled state, they didn’t feel the pain, unlike their more clear-headed brothers and sisters.
Who were losing.
And that was before something happened in the street behind him.
John was facing away from it, but he saw the horror spread over the faces of his comrades and spun around. He heard a roaring in his ears, felt his eyes try to focus on what looked like a sea of blue, and then he jumped. Back out of the way, barely in time, as another wall rumbled over the stones where he’d just been standing.
He tripped over a body, and barely managed to stay on his feet, while the new wall of light shimmered across the corpse of a fallen were. It sucked him under, ground him down, and spat out something on the other side that in no way resembled human flesh—or any other kind. The roaring in John’s ears got louder, or maybe that was the sound of his people, gasping in horror and looking to him for a miracle.
Which was ironic, considering the only one on offer.
“I’m sending you to hell,” he told a tall, balding mage he’d seen around a few times, but whose name he didn’t know.
The man didn’t react, other than to stare blindly at the wall. “Aren’t—aren’t we already there?”
John struck him, hard enough to send his head whipping around. And then grabbed his shoulders when he blinked and shook him until some semblance of life came back into those eyes. “I’m sending you to the hell region known as the Shadowland,” he said harshly. “To the court of the demon lord Rosier—"
“A—a demon lord?” The man looked more confused than angry, and John couldn’t tell if that was because this was so outside his experience, or if he was simply addle pated from the spell.
And then another mage ran up.
“Sir!” The young, dark haired man actually took the time to salute. John would have belted him, too—what the hell were they teaching them these days—but the boy seemed to have a head on his shoulders. “What do we do when we get there, sir?”
“You’ll need to find Rosier’s court. I can’t send you there directly—there are wards around it to prevent that—but I’ll get you as close as I can. But watch yourself. The Shadowland is dangerous—”