“They could hardly have sent less,” Sir Myron said as he frantically dug through his pockets. “You’re talking about the pair who killed Algonquin’s most famous dragon hunter. She’s not going to make that mistake twice.”
“I don’t think she’s allowing for any mistakes,” the general said, her eyes squinting past the floodlights despite the fact that Marci couldn’t see a thing. “There’s enough Algonquin Corp firepower out there to level this place twice over, and I think I see a second anti-mage task force in the back.” She turned to the spirit on her shoulder. “How many battle mages are we dealing with?”
“Too many,” Raven squawked. “But they’re not what I’m worried about.”
At this point, Marci was afraid to ask, but someone had to. “What’s worse than an anti-mage task force full of battle mages?”
Rather than answer, Raven just looked up. Shaking, Marci followed suit, grabbing the wet brick window ledge as she looked up.
And up.
Andup.
“Oh boy,” she whispered, her eyes wide as she finally realized what the giant dark shape looming over them in the rain belonged to. “That’s not…”
“The Leviathan?” General Jackson finished grimly. “It is.”
“But it can’t be,” Sir Myron hissed, shoving Marci over to get a spot at the window. “The Leviathan hasn’t been seen on shore since Algonquin first flooded the city.”
The general gave him a flat look. “Do you know anything else that big that works for Algonquin?”
Myron didn’t answer this time. Marci couldn’t either. She was too busy trying to make sense of what her eyes were seeing.
Even with the rain and the dark, the sheer size of the Leviathan made it easy to see once you knew it was there. It truly was as big as a mountain, a towering, bulbous mass of glossy, shark-like black flesh riding on a bed of constantly moving tentacles. Given how huge it was, Marci expected it to be loud, but the Leviathan made no sound at all. When it moved, she saw why. Despite looking solid, the Leviathan’s body passed through the houses surrounding theirs like it was made of smoke, which was the only thing that explained how something that big could have snuck up on them. That struck her as pretty impressive, but given what she’d seen Raven and Ghost do, she supposed phasing through houses was par for the course for a spirit.
That’s not a spirit.
Marci jumped and looked down to see Ghost crouching low in her arms, staring up through the broken window at the Leviathan with something very close to fear. “It’s not?”
“No,” Raven said quietly.
Any annoyance Marci might have felt at the bird spirit butting into what was supposed to be a private conversation was crushed under a tide of fearful curiosity. “Then what is it?”
“A problem,” Raven replied, turning to Emily. “We need an exit. You can’t fight that.”
“I don’t know,” the general said, tilting her head back. “It’s notthatbig.”
“Fine. You can’t fight the Leviathanandthe tanks. Happy?”
The general’s shrug was way too calm for Marci’s growing level of panic. “What are we going to do?”
“What we always do,” General Jackson replied, pushing away from the wall. “We’re the UN. We’re going to negotiate.”
“Negotiate?” Marci cried.“Withthat?”
“Diplomacy is the first, best option in every situation,” the general said sagely. “We’re rational people, Miss Novalli. Not monsters.” Her lips curled in an odd smile. “That comes later.”
Before Marci could ask what she meant by that, the general turned to Sir Myron. “Make a ward.”
“Way ahead of you,” he said, flexing his fingers as his odd, twisting magic began to spider around the room.
When it was clear he was well underway, Emily took a deep breath, pulling herself to her full height before she stepped out to stand in the empty basement doorway. “I’m General Emily Jackson of the United Nations,” she shouted, raising her empty hands for all to see. “Stand your forces down, and we’ll come out to negotiate—”
There will be no negotiation.
Ghost cringed in Marci’s arms at the words. Marci cringed, too, her ears popping. Just like Vann Jeger’s, this voice was not at all human. But where the fjord spirit had sounded like grinding sea ice, this voice was musical, lovely, and oddly terrifying, like having your head held under gently flowing water until you drowned. Marci was still trying to wrap her brain around the contradictions when the falling rain in front of Emily began to shimmer.
It changed as she watched, the water moving and coalescing in the glare of the floodlights until it had formed a person. A woman, to be precise, whose face and body were the perfect reflection of General Emily Jackson.
