Eva and Maior retreated closer to the front steps. Eva tugged on her pendant, shuddery from the fear tugging her in one direction and the thrill of using her geomancia pulling her in the other.
“We won’t fail,” Celeste said fiercely before running down the hilly path toward the approaching horde. When neither Javier nor Reina objected to splitting up, Eva assumed she was doing it to gain ground.
Reina gripped Maior by the shoulders and told her, “Stay near the house. If they invade the grounds, run up to the highest room and hide. Do not let them bite you.”
With glistening eyes and red cheeks, Maior nodded.
“Until then, please use galio to support us from afar.”
Maior clutched Reina’s wrist before she could follow Celeste. “But how?”
“Just numb us if we get hit, like you did to me in La Cochinilla—as long as we don’t feel the pain, we’ll be fine.”
“And take comfort in knowing there’s no better way to learn than in battle,” Javier added, always with his amused condescension, even in times like these. “Because if Reina dies, it’ll be me you’ll have to deal with. Eva—”
Eva made a point not to let her terror show. She chewed on the insides of her lips and nodded. “I know what to do.”
Javier and Reina followed Celeste, plunging into darkness. The mass of tinieblas swelled with every heartbeat. They were amalgamated animals snarling and snapping in a mad sprint, all horns and grins.
Eva’s insides vibrated, the panic molding into excitement. Javier had saved her from them. And there were Reina and Celeste. We can handle this, she told herself. I can handle this.
She pressed her hands together and shoved her spirit into that vast universe. There everything was safe and endless and unbound. A warmth like Galeno’s lapped her forearms. The thrumming hoof steps were hushed by the energy flowing into Eva, sloshing like the soft waves on a lake. The starlight came to her. She was born to seduce it, and when it was in her, she nestled herself into reality.
A ball of light grew in the space between her palms. She stretched the distance, letting the ball grow bigger and wilder.
Maior gaped at her. “I can’t see the tinieblas.”
“It’s all right,” Eva told her. “I won’t let them touch you.” She released the energy in the direction of the horde, a fallen star illuminating the hills. The blast took out a good dozen.
Ahead, Javier unleashed a flurry of blows as he dueled at least five. They leapt and slashed at him, their elongated claws dangerously close to ripping through clothes and flesh. The other side of the field flashed in flurries of red as Celeste twirled the scythe all around her. She whirled to her left and parried a slash, slicing an attacking tiniebla in two. To her right, an opportunistic tiniebla leapt out of the horde, mandibles wide for a bite.
In that split second, Eva knew Celeste wouldn’t have time to evade.
The starlight came to her hands instinctively, heat licking her palms and flushing her fingertips. She screamed as she shot it, and luck was on her side, the ball blasting the tiniebla in the chest before it could strike Celeste.
Celeste’s stunned gaze met with Eva’s. She nodded once, her thanks, then continued her onslaught.
Near the conuco entrance and closer than ever before, Reina screamed as a tiniebla’s talon sliced her side. She collapsed to her knees, blood trickling past her hand.
“Reina!” Maior’s panic was thick and cloying. She foolishly ran to the conuco, tripping on a gnarling brush but catching herself from falling. Gesturing her hands in a circle, she muttered an incantation that sent threads of amethyst light shooting at Reina. They wrapped around Reina’s torso, easing the expression of pain.
Eva ran after Maior, screaming for her to stop. A throaty cackle seized her attention. Eva whipped around to see crazed eyes and flared fangs hiding within the cornstalks. Then the tiniebla lunged at Maior.
The incantation for a litio barrier came to Eva’s mind like a godsend, and she flattened her palms together.
Maior screamed as the tiniebla crashed against the glittering dome with a thud. Clumsy and disoriented, the creature rolled off to the ground. But when it got up, it was joined by a second attacker.
Eva summoned the power of starlight a third time, producing a ball with flames that licked and spat in the space between her hands. She willed the litio barrier to disintegrate a second before she shot the fireball. The tinieblas caught the attack head-on, exuding the stench of charred meat before disintegrating into darkness.
Maior sent the healing power of galio at Celeste and Reina and Javier, who inched closer to the house with each kill as the tinieblas encroached around them. A great crash came from behind Eva as Reina hurled a tiniebla into the larder with a strike, the splintered door impaling its black body. With a grunt, Eva willed a protection around Celeste just as a tiniebla’s talon swiped for her neck. The talon didn’t split her skin, hindered by the litio coating her, but it sent her crashing against the front door window, shattered glass shooting in all directions.
A stray group of three tinieblas turned their attention to Maior, who twirled her hands like a baker kneading dough as she supported the others. Heart hammering, Eva wrenched Maior’s forearm and jerked her to the front door. “Run!” Eva’s mind whirred for the right spell to use in this moment. Should it be a barrier or a fire? Should she pump their calves with bismuto to make the getaway swifter?
Treacherous like an uncoiling viper came the void spell, of winding iridio to reach into el Vacío with the leash that could rein tinieblas to do her bidding. As Javier had advised, now was as a good a time as any.
Eva tugged her pendant with the words clear and bright. “Tiempo que pasa no vuelve!”
Time flashed and stopped. Her spirit split into two. One version of her was tethered to the mountains, and another was plunged into a vast space of inky black. Light-sucking black. Never-ending black.
El Vacío.
Despite the darkness, she could see the horde of tinieblas as outlines of shadow and light, some near, some far away, all horns and limbs. They were as static as her, waiting. And the intent purled around her, the uttered spell inviting her to command the tinieblas to her whim. Telling her she could make them her marionettes.
Eva thrust herself back to the present plane. The passing of time resumed. With her return came the knowledge that the tinieblas were under her thrall.
She commanded her pursuers to fight each other until their own killing blows disintegrated them into nothingness. Commanding the three tinieblas burned the last of her iridio.
All at once the remaining tinieblas noticed her, angered at her nerve. They rerouted toward her like a flock of crows. Snarling and enraged that she’d dared control them.
“Oh—no,” Eva muttered a second before bolting toward the house, pulling Maior along with her.
The creatures stomped the vegetable garden muddy. They were faster, and the closest caught up to her, a four-legged capuchin-and-jaguar amalgamation with bulging muscles that yanked her by the leg. Eva fell screaming. Maior grabbed her arm and tugged with all her might as Eva desperately kicked and cried. Its mottled capuchin hand closed around her ankle, its jaguar fangs snapping foamy spittle as every tug brought her leg closer to its mouth. Eva sucked in a fat breath as she stomped on the head with her other boot, and the skull caved in with a sickening crack.