A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(105)

And yet . . . the monsters still kept coming.

Nan struck, and struck, and struck until her arm felt like lead and her breath burned in her throat. She longed for a chance to rest, but the never-ending torrent of monsters gave her no chance. And just when she was certain things could not get worse, the strange chant of the seven girls rose several notes and took on a tone of urgency.

She looked up from the struggle in front of her for a moment . . . and was sorry she had.

The Queen herself had appeared, slithering through the open portal.

The hood of its robe had been cast back, and its eyeless face was in full view. It was the color of rancid butter; its head was covered with a nest of ever-moving tendrils, like wire-thin worms. Where its eyes should have been were shallow pits; it had no nose, either, just two slits in the middle of its face. In place of a mouth, there was a round, lipless orifice ringed by needle-like teeth, like that of a lamprey.

It moved with a curious gliding motion, and what emerged from the sleeves of its robe were not arms. Just as Nan had guessed, what served it for upper appendages, and probably lower ones too, were something very like tentacles.

A thing with a head like a skinned panther charged at her, and Nan was forced to take her attention off the Queen. When she looked again, it had not moved; it seemed to be surveying the battlefield. Looking for what? Nan couldn’t imagine.

But that was when she noticed it was surrounded by an almost-invisible bubble. Like the shields against magic she had seen the Elemental Masters produce—except that this shield, as evidenced by the sparks when bullets struck it, was impervious to physical attack.

Oh no—how can we counter that?

It appeared it was not sharing its protection with its underlings, but that was the only bright spot in this increasingly hopeless fight. She wanted to try and back out of combat to see if her mental powers could be used as a weapon, but she couldn’t do that without putting people behind her at risk.

Superficially this was a stalemate. In actuality they were going to lose unless something changed in their favor. The enemy had an ever-renewing source of monsters. They only had those who had assembled here.

In desperation, Nan reached out to the only person who might be able to come up with an idea at this point.

She sought for, and found, Holmes’ mind. He had exhausted all the ammunition for his revolver and had resorted to his singlestick. We have to shut the portal! she thought as hard as she could at him. And then a thing with giant, razor-sharp crab-like pincers lunged for her, and she spent the next couple of minutes dueling with it for her life.

It was Roan who finally dispatched the beast from underneath; as it collapsed, she glanced up again to see the creature’s shield momentarily drop, as it lashed out a tentacle to ensnare Grey. “Grey!” she screamed in warning—not that she could have been heard over the riot—but Grey was smarter than that, and dodged up into the ceiling where it couldn’t reach her as Neville dove in and slashed at the extended tentacle with his beak in passing. He scored a hit too, severing the tip right off. The creature uttered a piercing, keening cry of pain, which redoubled as a handful of bullets struck it. The shield snapped up again immediately, and the monster howled its rage and pain.

So, you can be hurt! Evidently some of the soldiers had seen that as well, for a ragged cheer came up from along the walls.

But being wounded only infuriated the thing more. It howled, which seemed to have the effect of redoubling the other monsters’ fury. That was when Karamjit’s guard dropped for a split second. He was hit badly, collapsed, and was pulled back to safety by the psychics behind him—and a moment later, Agansing was knocked unconscious and likewise rescued.

They’re doing it. They’re wearing us down. Taking us out of the fight one at a time.

We can’t win this. . . .

Despair flooded over her for a moment. Then her resolve hardened. Then we’ll end it like the three hundred Spartans.

But just as she steeled herself for a mad rush at the monsters, the strange high-pitched chanting, which had carried right over the sound of the fighting, faltered.

And the monsters paused for a moment; every gaze, whether friend or foe, turned toward the sheltered area behind the Queen Monster where the seven girls had been chanting.

One girl sagged in the arms of the rest. Next to her, Holmes was jabbing a hypodermic needle into the neck of the next, while Puck waited beside him on the huge black “horse,” standing guard so no one could touch him. Neither the Queen monster nor her minions seemed to understand what he was doing, nor how to counter it.

It was over in moments; the last girl collapsed and Puck pulled Holmes up onto the back of the pooka—for that was obviously what it was now that Nan got good look at it—and the three of them executed an impossible leap that brought them to the side of the room and the line of soldiers there.

And the void vanished.

With a hellish screech, the Monster Queen sent her minions hurtling back into battle while she turned her attention to the prostrate girls. But Holmes must have given them an enormous dose of morphia or some similar drug; no effort the Queen expended revived them for more than a second. Furious now, the Queen turned back to those opposed to her, just as Sarah caught Nan’s attention with a frantic wave.

Nan fended off four of the legs of a spider-thing and opened her mind to her friend’s. Busy!

The spirits say that the girls’ souls are in the Queen.