Crossroads Read Free Page B

hand and flung the invisible spear at him with all of my strength.
    The powerbolt lanced across the distance between us at the speed of thought, only to splatter against an invisible shield of magical power that surrounded Crosetti and his victim like a cloak. Crosetti flinched as the power of my attack battered him, but it couldn’t get through his shields.
    Damn, he was powerful, more powerful than I thought. I started to worry for myself as well as Mary Beth Tyre.
    “Is that the best you can do, Talon?” Crosetti sneered. “You cannot match the power Ant gives me. Your magic is weak. If you want the girl, you have to come and get her.” With that, he dragged the struggling Mary Beth down the stairs and disappeared into the dark maze of machinery below.
    I leaned heavily on the railing of the catwalk, gasping for breath. The effort of the spell had taken more of a toll on me than usual. I’d let my anger get the best of me again. I wanted to goad Crosetti into casting a few more spells so he might exhaust himself. I figured my own defenses could handle it, but instead I’d ended up falling for the same tactic I’d been using. Now both of them were down there with whatever Crosetti had brought into this world from the depths of the astral plane.
    I listened to the humming and clicking for a moment and tried to get a better look at what was down there, but it was too dark to be sure. I took a deep breath to steady myself, then vaulted over the railing and dropped toward the ferrocrete floor some ten meters below.
    The force of my will reached out, slowing my fall as I bent the laws of physics with the power of my magic. I landed on the floor of the factory as light as a feather, then dropped the levitation spell, alert and ready for anything. The smell I detected up on the catwalk was much stronger down here. A kind of musty, dry, organic scent, with a sickly sweet tang to it.
    I transferred the slivergun to my other hand and drew Talonclaw from its sheath at my waist. The edge of the dagger gleamed in the dim light, winking off the runes cut into the blade and the fire opal set into the hilt. I felt the chain-wrapped hilt almost come alive in my hand, a warm tingling that spoke to me of the dagger’s magical power. It would likely be more use against whatever was down here than my gun, or any other mundane weapon.
    With a few whispered words, I cast out with my magical senses, searching for Mary Beth Tyre. The atmosphere within the factory was thick with the putrid essence of Crosetti’s magic, but I could sense Mary Beth not far away and began to move through the darkened rows of machines toward her. As I came around the corner of one of the huge presses, an ant tried to take my head off.
    That was even stranger than it sounds. The thing was the size of a pony, standing nearly face to face with me. As I dodged to the side to avoid the snapping mandibles, a detached part of me took note of the incredible detail visible on so large an insect. How hairy was its rough hide, how large and reflective its eyes and, most of all, how sharp and powerful its jaws and pointed legs, looking capable of ripping a human limb from limb. Ants are creatures capable of carrying thirty times their own weight, and the one in front of me must have weighed a hundred and fifty kilos, if it weighed a gram. It was more than capable of crushing me. Had I been a mundane, that is.
    The ant warrior lunged toward me with a high-pitched chittering sound. I dodged to the side again and struck at one of the flailing legs. My dagger connected, and the leg fell to the floor in a pool of pale yellow goo. The ant spun faster than anything so large had a right to and slammed me across the narrow aisle into one of the machinery banks. I managed not to drop Talonclaw, but my slivergun clattered across the floor somewhere.
    There was no time to worry about it because the thing was on me again in an instant. One leg struck me in the chest like a baseball bat