Even Millie grabbed her stomach and the wall as it filled her too.
“Please tell me this will be quick,” she said in a strained voice.
But Sam crossed his legs beneath him and sat on the ground without responding. Quiet voices whispered in his ears as he pushed those shadows out, snaking over the grounds and mingling with the damp air.
Sam listened.
The faces of the suffering entered his mind, the pleas and the aches of their dying bodies. Just a few at first as his power wretched over Firemoor.
Five centuries. Five centuries since his power had touched this land. The ground practically buckled beneath it, the little bits of plants left withered everywhere it touched—a plague upon the realm.
Death came stalking.
Outside, clouds began to darken overhead, the temperature dropping with every swirl of the wind wreathing over the barren and broken world. Thunder rumbled as it had not in so many years.
And far, far away, as the clouds stretched their terror and encompassed the sky, as people began to whisper in fear and joy of what might have come, one man stopped his pacing on broken capital building steps.
A siren blazed somewhere in the far distance.
“Sam, hurry,” Millie said at his back, and he heard the sound of her ammunition locking into place.
Sam sank further into his mind, the darkness reaching further and further along the roads, between the trees. A quiet roar of thunder skirted over the air as Sam began to lose his patience.
Where are you, he muttered to the expanse.I’ve come for you. Tell me where you are.
A jagged, wheezing and shallow gasp, filled his ears, and then he heard the woman.
Death, the woman, Tate, whispered.Please.
“I can see you on here,” Millie’s voice sounded out. “Your shadows. You have to get rid of the feed.”
She must have pulled it up on her phone. Sam turned in his vision, sending his power out over that field. He looked back to Tate, and then felt the other two stirring.
I’ve got you, Sam promised them.
Damien shouted down the shaft to them, though Sam didn’t hear what he said. He ignored the reality to focus on his demons, to get them out as he’d promised.
And just as his shadows swirled the bottom of the platform, lightning struck every tree surrounding the field.
“It’s gone,” Millie said. “Sam, hurry. They’re—“
Sam pulled himself out of the daze as his shadows swarmed those demons, willing their corporeal bodies to his side as he’d done so many before. He snapped back to reality with a heave, his eyes clearing of scarlet, and he jumped to his feet.
Millie was behind him, her gun pointed up the tunnel, now in her horned demon form.
“Two minutes,” Sam said, noting the timing it would take his shadows to bring those demons to him. He felt Millie’s heartbeat beginning to pick up. “How long for us?”
“I think you may have underestimated the General,” she muttered, not looking away from the target line. “Five minutes max.”
Gunshots ricocheted outside.
“Maybe three,” Millie corrected.
“Think they remember what rain feels like?” Sam said as his own shadows began to swarm behind him. Thunder cracked outside as Sam let go of the tether on the bursting clouds, and rain…
So much rain.
It pelted down in plops as big as his fist, as though he were slamming the earth in rage with every drop. Damien appeared again at the top of the tunnel, and he came running inside, his hand over his head, when lightning struck the tree outside.
