Mal spoke the words of power again and dropped down onto the wyrm, pressing it down into the earth again as the glimmering bars rose up around them.
The wyrm thrashed and the ground shook and rumbled from the force of its struggle.
A scream made Mal realize that the battered restaurant was beginning to groan and collapse and Scarlet’s ragged staff fled from the bar where they’d been sheltered.
The wyrm, in one final, vindictive effort, chose the most helpless of the creatures before it, and sucked in breath for a last blast of wind.
“Get down!” Scarlet cried in a great voice. “Hold on!” All of them automatically dropped to the shivering ground to cover their heads from the flying debris...
...All of them except Conall, who was not touching Gizelle and could not hear the warning.
Scarlet’s shroud of greenery rose moments too late; the wyrm’s gust caught the musician square in the chest and swept him backwards into the crumbling building.
The musician hit one of the columns, so hard that the terrible crunch of his breaking bones was louder than the storm. Jagged pieces of the restaurant deck rained down like hail over his still form.
Mal did not have to wonder if he had survived the impact; Gizelle’s scream of agony and loss would haunt his dreams forever: a thin wail of despair that threaded the music of the storm like a harmony.
The wyrm, mistakenly thinking that this distraction had bought it escape, made another bid for freedom, to face Mal bristling in new rage.
We will cage you again and bury you deep! his dragon swore. We will fulfill our destiny!
You are nothing! the wyrm snarled.
You cannot defeat us! the other head protested.
The feathered wyrm struck out with its tail, and the earth shuddered and groaned, but when it tried to lift it for a second strike, there were new trees and bushes pinning it, its entire body and both necks were being wrapped in leaves and branches like a great green cast as Scarlet unleashed her forest on him.
The storm continued to rage, but the monster was caught.
Mal landed and shifted to human form to perform the final stages of the cage.
Chapter 30
The wyrm snarled, struggling against the vines that were rising from the island. The gleaming bars Mal was building around it were semi-transparent and too far apart to hold it in, but as he chanted, the cage began to solidify and condense upon the captured monster.
Scarlet, concentrating fiercely on keeping the creature subdued and already distracted by another task, was suddenly surprised as something small dashed beside her down the steps to where Mal was facing the feathered heads.
“Gizelle, no!”
Scarlet’s first thought was that Gizelle was mad with grief and wanted revenge on the creature that had killed Conall. “Gizelle, wait!”
But the slight woman wasn’t trying to get through the bars of the cage to the wyrm in some fit of rage, she was leaping at Mal.
“No!” the gazelle shifter cried, clinging to his arm and covering his runes. “Stop! You have to stop!”
“I have to do this,” Mal said, trying to pull away from her without harming her. His teeth were gritted and Scarlet could feel the strain he was under; already he had burned through too much of the magical stores she’d refilled, and she could feel the underlying exhaustion. “Gizelle, it’s not a person, it’s a creature of destruction!”
The bars of the cage wavered with his distraction.
Scarlet had half her mind on the forest wrapping the wyrm, re-growing vines and grasping trees as fast as his sharp-edged feathers could cut through them. She flickered to Gizelle’s side, prepared to try to draw her away. “Gizelle...”
“You can’t do this!” Gizelle’s voice was big compared to her little frame, wavering but firm.
“I don’t have a choice,” Mal said between gritted teeth. The runes on his forearms flared, his concentration divided.
“No!” Gizelle wept. “No one deserves to be in
a cage!”