Dea cocked her head to the side. "I have an idea, but it's going to be dangerous."
"Dangerous how?" Dre asked as she crossed her arms over her ample chest.
"The Collector's influence over these creatures is emotional," she explained rapidly. "It's using fear, pain, and anger to control them. But emotions work both ways. If I can flood their consciousness with positive emotions—love, hope, and acceptance—I might be able to burn away the entity's control."
"That sounds like it could fry your brain," Lia pointed out.
"Probably," Dea agreed cheerfully. "But it's better than letting them break through our defenses."
Before anyone could stop her, she walked closer to the nearest window. I felt her extend her empathic abilities toward the zombie attackers. A wave of concentrated love and human connection washed over the plantation. It made my emotions surge in response.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. Several alligator zombies stopped their assault. Confusion replacing malevolent intelligence as Dea's empathic attack burned away the Collector's influence. Some collapsed entirely, returning to the peace of death. Others turned and began attacking their former allies with the fury of the recently liberated.
"It's working," I breathed, watching chaos erupt in the enemy ranks.
The effort was taking a visible toll on Dea. Sweat poured down her face. And her hands shook from the strain of projecting positive emotions against an entity that fed on suffering. "Dea, that's enough," Lia called, but she was too deep in the empathic battle to respond.
That's when the Collector's attention focused directly on Dea. The temperature dropped thirty degrees in as many seconds. A presence pressed against our barriers with the weight of concentrated malevolence. It was searching for the source of the empathic interference.
The walls began to crack as the Collector's direct attention bore down on us. It felt like it had broken free of its prisonalready. My heart lodged itself in my throat as pictures fell from their hooks. A vice closed around my chest, making it hard to breathe when the foundations groaned under supernatural pressure that had everything to do with pure, concentrated evil.
"She's locked in from empathic overload. Form a circle around her.”Adèle’s voice was urgent. “Shield her consciousness, otherwise she can’t break free. The entity is trying to keep her bound.”
"Shit!" I barked at the same time I grabbed Lia’s hand. We moved with the kind of coordination that came from the desperation to save one of us from a magical disaster.
Phi and Dre flanked Dea's left side while Lia and I took her right. Kota was positioned directly behind our sister. We joined hands around Dea's trembling form. I didn't even have to call up my magic. It was flowing out of me and latching onto the others’. Intent was key when casting spells. That had been the first thing we learned after becoming magical. Each of us was thinking the same thing. We had to keep Dea safe. Our combined power created a protective barrier around her mind just as the Collector's malevolence tried to burrow deeper into her. The psychic backlash hit us like a freight train made of pure hatred. We were too stubborn to allow that to stop us, and our circle held.
“Now push back,”Adele instructed. “All of you, together. Drive the entity back.”
We pushed as one. Our combined will slammed into the Collector's influence like a magical battering ram. The connection shattered with an almost audible snap. Dea collapsed into Kota, gasping like she'd just surfaced from deep water.
"I've got you," Kota murmured, catching her as she swayed. "You're okay."
Had we managed to stop the Collector? Through the windows, I could see we hadn’t. Our situation continued to deteriorate. The zombie army had reorganized and was pressing against the ward line with renewed coordination. The wards were holding, but stress fractures were spreading like spider webs across the protective dome.
“The entity is learning too quickly,”Adèle warned. “It's adapting to each countermeasure within minutes. Michel must be accelerating its tactical development.”
"So what do we do?" Margaret asked. I hadn’t realized our familiar was projecting to everyone until that moment.
“Improvise,”Adele suggested. “Michel and Marcus have studied traditional Guardian methods, but Willowberry has developed unique techniques. Use what makes you different. You can use the gris-gris bags in a way they will not anticipate.”
I grabbed the preserved gris-gris bags from the vault and began distributing them. "You’re right,” I told our familiar. “We're going to do something no Guardian has ever attempted before. We're going to take the fight directly to the Collector itself."
"That's either brilliant or suicidal," Thomas observed. “I can’t decide which.”
"With us, it's usually both," I replied, checking my go-bag. "Marie should be here with reinforcements soon.” I had sent her a message asking her to come and help. “When she arrives, we're going to turn this defensive siege into the world's most dangerous magical offensive."
Outside, the Collector's army was amassed just beyond our ward line. They were preparing for their final assault. But they were about to discover that cornering the Six Twisted Sisters on our property was like trapping a hurricane in a bottle.Eventually, something was going to give way, and it wasn't going to be us.
CHAPTER 18
DEANDRA
The thunderous crack of our main ward finally giving way was like hearing the last heartbeat of a dying patient in the ICU. One moment, we had barriers. The next, we had a flood of zombie creatures pouring onto Willowberry's grounds like water through a broken dam. We were out of time.
"The wards are down!" Kaitlyn shouted from her position near the windows. Her words were unnecessary, but they cut through the chaos like a scalpel. "They're breaching the perimeter!"
“At least this means we won't have to worry about reunion guests walking into traps later,”Adèle observed grimly as another wave of undead alligators crashed through what remained of our magical barriers.
