CHAPTER FOUR

  The Finger and the Stinger

  II

  A hemisphere of glittering black eyes and snapping yellow pincers pressed in upon the three defenders, who fought desperately with their backs to the common center of the trapdoor. The perimeter around it rapidly constricted so that only a small circle of hornet-free space remained. They were in trouble. Gramma’s lightning flashed less frequently, each strike feebler than the last. Ez’s arms grew leaden. Only Thoralf fought with real vigor, his hooves flying like cannonballs. He bucked and kicked and reared up on hind legs to clobber hornets from the air, striking left and right, forward and backward in a whirlwind, wreaking tremendous carnage, yet not once did he so much as graze Gramma or Ez. The two of them would have been killed a hundred times apiece without him, for their fatigue rendered them increasingly ineffective.

  Ez struggled to maintain her footing in the quagmire of gore, vaguely aware that her left leg was not cooperating. She might have been injured, but she felt no pain or strain, only a dull, irrefutable force dragging her down, slowing her movements ever more. The battle seemed to have been going on for hours, though it couldn’t really have been more than a few minutes. The onslaught of hornets was relentless. It was all Ez could do to dodge and parry as they forced her backward step by step by—

  She backed into something.

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  Whirling, she almost disemboweled Gramma. The two women were pinned, elbow to elbow against Thoralf’s flank. One look at the older woman’s face and Ez knew it was over. They were beaten. There was no room to maneuver. There was nowhere to retreat. The only thing left to do was die. The buzzing of the swarm had reached a fever pitch; it was in Ez’s head, behind her eyes, drowning out her thoughts—erasing her.

  Gramma howled right by Ez’s ear. The words were meaningless to Ez, but the sound cut her to the quick. It was a cry of fury and frustration, a raw, savage refusal to comply with destiny—the sync.

  There was a great whoosh of emerald fire. Ez blinked through the afterimage and found herself standing in the center of a charred circle. Every vexpid in a twelve-foot radius was gone. A haze of ash hung in the air. She turned in time to see Gramma sway, then keel over like a felled tree. Her cane landed next to her. She didn’t pick it up. Thoralf took a protective stance over her prone form as fresh vexpids rushed to fill the space Gramma had cleared. The spell had taken every drop of her remaining strength, and it had only postponed the inevitable for a few seconds.

  Ez’s hands were slick on the handle of the axe. I'm sorry, Wilburn, she thought. Maybe Jack would be waiting on the other side. Her left leg spasmed uncontrollably. But her resolve was firmer than her feet as she planted them upon the trapdoor, vowing to slay at least one more vexpid before exiting the stage of life. And here they came. The distance closed. Ez yelled, raising her weapon high—

  Then she went flying. A sudden jolt of a force had thrown the trapdoor upward, shearing off the latch and flinging her like a projectile from a trebuchet. She cartwheeled over ranks of vexpids and crashed down right in the thick of them. She tumbled to a halt, battered and dazed, amidst a forest of bristly yellow legs. Her axe was nowhere to be found. She fumbled at her belt for the small knife—then froze. The room had gone silent. The vexpids stood still as statues. They were all focused on the same thing, and it wasn’t her.