Pochi redoubled his attacks, darting in and out. But the beast wasn't done yet. It twisted and brought that broad tail around. Again, he slammed Pochi. Thunder rolled and Pochi fell toward the earth, landing on the pavement where he lay like a little bit of fluff. The winds ruffled his feathers, but other than that small movement, he was still.
A cry cracked across the heavens and Bennu’s fury filled all of reality.
Kavon pulled at Darren, but once again Darren was lost inside Bennu's anger. Pain. Grief. All of it crashed through the bond, and Kavon struggled to close off the empathy that joined them. The emotions made his bones ache, and he fell to one knee.
Then his bull was there. It stood over Kavon and snorted and shook its horns, and then it started to grow as he took the form of an ancient wooly mammoth. He towered over both of them and trumpeted a challenge.
For the first time, Kavon felt his bull’s emotions. These people were his, and he would not move from them. If he died with his people, he would move to the next world with them, but he would not abandon them to this thing that did not belong. It was alien. It should not exist here. Kavon rested his hand against his guide’s huge leg and power flowed into him.
Kavon stood, and got a hand under Darren's arm and pulled him up as well. “Run!”
“Bennu!” Darren's emotions roiled. It was almost enough to send Kavon to his knees again. However, they had to move. They couldn’t survive this battlefield.
A few mundanes clung to sheltered places—one in the shadow of an old tree, another behind a low brick wall. However, they would be invisible to a guide. They were part of Earth in a way that shamans were not. Shamans carried power from the spirit plane and the ifrit would see that power like fairy lights in the darkness.
Kavon did not want to be here when the monster decided to put those lights out.
“Move. Now!” Kavon half dragged Darren several feet before Darren started running. The protections Kavon had built into the SUV wouldn’t hold for long—not against the sort of power these three were throwing around. However, it would give them some protection as they fled.
“We have to kill it!” Darren ran at Kavon’s side.
“Great! How?”
The blast of frustration Darren sent through the bond was an answer in itself. He didn’t know how. Bennu didn’t either. They would have to figure it out later because right now Kavon wanted to make sure that neither of them ended up like those humans from the fragment of memory he’d gotten from Bennu. Those broken bodies with their dead eyes staring up at the sky had been a fairly unambiguous warning about what would happen to people who got caught between battling ifrit.
They were almost at the SUV when Kavon felt his bull ripped away. He turned, his hands up to construct a quick shield. He hadn’t replenished all his power, but using the living magic around them, he could do that much. His bull was flying through the air, his back arched as if some great hand was dragging him away. While Kavon watched, the bull stopped, and then, still in his wooly mammoth form, he fell the thirty or forty feet to the ground.
The attack took place in an unnatural silence. Neither Kavon’s guide or the ifrit monster made a sound, and Bennu’s cries had turned weak and plaintive.
When the creature turned to stare at Kavon, Kavon knew his shield wouldn’t hold the beast more than a few seconds. “Run! Get to the SUV and get it started!” Kavon yelled as he cast his power out. He made his shield resemble a net, something to cling to the ifrit and tangle around him. It would slow the beast down.
The bird monster dove toward him. When it hit the net, Kavon threw all his focus into holding the beast the few seconds it would take Darren to get the SUV started and turned around. If Darren had one ounce of common sense, he would hit the accelerator and leave Kavon behind. But he wouldn’t. Darren would wait for him.
Despite all Kavon’s efforts, the monster tore through them as if they were no more than a cobweb.
“Darren!” Kavon screamed, but it was too late. The bird had the SUV in his claws, and he threw it into the corner of an ultramodern hotel. The side of the SUV caved in and bricks fell from the damaged building.
Kavon couldn’t breathe. Fear squeezed his heart as Bennu drove straight at the creature. It turned that ugly bone face toward Bennu and then it vanished. In the space that existed between two seconds, the storm, the monster, the rain of magic and furious winds all evaporated. The cloud of debris slowly settled back to the ground, and the sounds of car alarms and screaming people filled the air.
Kavon ignored all of it. He ran toward the SUV which was gray with dust from the crumbling edge of the building. The passenger side was crushed and all the windows were blown out. Kavon scrambled up onto one tire so he could reach the driver’s door, praying with more passion than he had since childhood.
He used his own magic to rip the door open, and inside he found Darren unconscious and dangling from a seat belt that was strangling him. But he was alive. Kavon chose to focus on the sense of flickering life he could still feel from his lover’s broken body.
