The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)(120)

Martin’s panting breath roared in Quentin’s ear like a lover’s. He still looked mostly human, but at this range he was pure animal, snuffling and growling and reeking of alien musk. Tears started from Quentin’s eyes. It was all ending now, this was the big finale. Eaten alive by a Chatwin, for the sake of a button. It was almost funny. He’d always assumed he’d survive, but everybody assumes that, don’t they? He thought it would all be so different. There must have been a better way. What had been his first mistake? There were so many.

But then the pressure was gone, and his ears were ringing. Alice had her pale fingers wrapped in a double fist round Janet’s blue-black revolver. Her face was white, but her hands were steady. She fired two more shots, broadside, into Martin’s ribs; then he turned to face her and she fired straight into his chest. Pulverized bits of the Beast’s suit and tie spun and floated in the air.

Quentin thrashed forward, a primordial fish heaving itself up onto a sandy bank, sucking wind, anything to get away. Now the real pain was coming. His right arm was numb and dragging and not quite as firmly attached to him as he was used to. He tasted blood in his mouth. He heard Alice fire twice more.

When he thought he was far enough away, he risked a look back. His peripheral vision was going gray around the edges. It was closing in in a circle, like the final moments of a Porky Pig cartoon. But he could see Alice and Martin Chatwin facing each other across ten empty paces of sand.

Out of bullets. She tossed the revolver backhand to Janet.

“All right,” she said quietly. “Let’s see what else your friends taught you.”

Her voice sounded very small in the silent cave, but not afraid. Martin regarded her with bemused curiosity. He cocked his head at an angle. What was she thinking? Was she really going to try to fight him? Ten long, still seconds ticked by.

When he rushed her, glance passed between and the simply gAlice was ready. She was the only one. There was no warning: he went at her from a standing start—first he was still; then he was a blur. Quentin didn’t know how she could react so fast, when he could barely track Martin’s movements, but before the Beast was even halfway to her she had him up in the air, his legs churning pathetically, gripped in an iron kinetic spell. She slammed him to the ground so hard he bounced.

He was on his feet again almost at once, smoothing out his suit, and he came at her again without even seeming to set himself. This time she stepped to one side like a matador, and he blew past her. Alice was moving like the Beast now—she must have sped up her own reaction time, the way Penny had with the arrow. With a massive effort Quentin pushed himself up till he was half sitting; then something gave in his chest and he collapsed back down again.

“Are you following this?” Alice asked Martin. There was a growing confidence in her voice, as if she were trying bravado on for size and finding that she liked it. “You didn’t see it coming, did you? And this is just straight Flemish praxis. Nothing else. I haven’t even gotten to any Eastern material yet.”

With a crack the Beast snapped off a stalagmite at the base and whipped it sidearm at Alice, but the stone spear burst in midair before it reached her. Fragments whined away in all directions. Quentin wasn’t tracking it all, but he didn’t think she’d done that. The others must be backing her up, a phalanx with Alice at the head.

Though Alice was way ahead of them. Maybe poor Penny could have followed what she was doing, but Alice was in a place Quentin hadn’t known she could go. He was a magician, but she was something else, a true adept. He had no idea she was so far beyond him. There was a time when he might have felt envious of her, but now he felt only pride. That was his Alice. Sand rushed hissing from the floor in a shroud, like a swarm of enraged bees, and wrapped itself round Martin’s head, trying to penetrate his mouth and nose and ears. He twisted and flailed his arms frantically.

“Oh, Martin.” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. It was almost wicked. “That’s the trouble with monsters. No theoretical rigor. No one ever made you iron out your fundamentals, did they? If they had, you certainly wouldn’t fall for this …”

In his blinded state Martin walked straight into a fireball à la Penny that burst over him. But Alice didn’t wait. She couldn’t afford to. Her lips never stopped moving, and her hands never stopped their fluid, unhurried motions, one spell rolling right over into the next. It was high-stakes blitz chess. The fireball was followed by a glimmering spherical prison, then by a toxic hail of Magic Missiles—she must have taken apart that spell and supercharged it so that it yielded a whole flock of them. The sand she’d whipped up from the floor gathered and fused into a faceless glass golem, which landed two jabs and a roundhouse punch before Martin shattered it with a counterpunch. But he seemed disoriented. His round English face was an ominous flustered red. A colossal, crushing weight seemed to settle on his shoulders, some kind of invisible yoke that took him down to one knee.

Ana?s projected an ochre lightning strike at Martin that left behind a bloodshot afterimage on Quentin’s retinas, and Eliot and Josh and Janet had joined hands and were sending a hail of rocks that beat on his back. The room was full of a babel of incantations, but Martin didn’t seem to notice. Alice was the only one he saw.

From a half crouch he lunged at her across the sand, and some kind of phantasmal armor materialized around her, like nothing Quentin had ever seen before, silvery and translucent—it flickered in and out of visibility. The Beast’s fingers slid off it. The armor came with a shimmery pole arm that Alice spun in one hand, then set and thrust at Martin’s stomach. Sparks flew between them.