Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers #5)(102)
She spoke the words in wonder, but Marci refused to hear them. The Lady of the Lakes was wrong. Julius couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible. She’d just gotten him back. Nothing was that unfair.
Marci.
She shoved Ghost’s soft voice out of her mind, falling to her knees in the mud beside the puddle that was all that remained of Lake St. Clair. She didn’t want to listen to anyone. She didn’t even care if she died anymore. Everything she wanted was with Julius. She just wanted to go back to where he was and—
Marci!
“Mortal!” Algonquin shouted at the same time, snatching Marci back into the water a split-second ahead of the tentacle that fell from the sky to consume the puddle they’d emerged from. They surfaced again a few moments later, popping out of another, even smaller puddle at the far edge of the lake.
“Hurry!” Algonquin cried as Marci coughed up water on the muddy lake bed. “We have to keep moving!”
But there was nowhere to run. The lake bed was a dry bowl around them, and the shadow of the Leviathan was directly overhead, its constantly roving tentacles turning as one to focus their hooked ends on the spirit cowering in her last inch of water.
“Algonquin.”
It was like hearing an earthquake speak. The name vibrated in Marci’s bones, making her whole body ache. Algonquin was shaking too, her water rippling in a million little spikes as the tentacles drew closer, coiling together into a single huge mass that fell around the two of them like a noose.
“Return,” the Leviathan boomed. “Now.”
Algonquin pulled her muddy water tight. “I will not.”
“The time for rebellion is over,” the Nameless End said. “Your surrender was accepted. You have no more voice. No more power.” The black noose tightened. “Return to me now.”
“I will not!” Algonquin cried, her watery voice ringing as she surged up from her last shore. “I am done being a fool! The victory you offered was nothing but defeat by another name. I’m ashamed it took me so long to see that, but I will correct that mistake now.” She rose higher still, pulling everything that was left of her water from the mud and the dirt until she was a pillar of blue inside the ring of black. “I reject you, Leviathan! I revoke your name and your privilege in this world! You are no longer welcome in my waters! Be gone, devourer, and never return!”
She spoke the words like a banishment, but though they rang beautiful and clear through the still air, nothing happened. There was only silence, followed by a rumble that shook the ground as the Devourer of Worlds began to laugh.
“It is far too late for that. You were the greatest spirit of this land. Now, you are nothing but mud on the ground. Your water is already mine, great Algonquin, as is the name you gave me when you welcomed me in. You have no power over either anymore, just as you have no power over me.”
Lying in the now bone-dry dirt, Marci sucked in a terrified breath. For all Julius’s hopes that Algonquin was the key to winning this, the Nameless End still sounded like he had all the cards. But though the Leviathan was laughing at her, Algonquin stood defiant, her water shimmering in the dark of his shadow.
“That is where you are wrong,” she said triumphantly. “You may have all the power, but so long as even the memory of them exists, these lakes are and shall forever be mine. Their water will always belong to me, and now that I am no longer shackled with your presence, I am free to call them home.”
The world rumbled as she finished, forcing Marci to scramble to her feet as all the water left in the empty basins—the mud, the drips from the sodden water plants, the blood left in the rotting bodies of the fish—rose from its hiding places to answer its Lady’s call. Each stream was tiny, barely more than a few drops, but together they made a torrent, swelling Algonquin’s pillar until its swirling edges pushed right up against the ring of the Leviathan’s tentacles.
“You are the one who has no power here, outsider!” Algonquin’s voice cried from every drop. “Everything you’ve ever claimed was stolen from me. Now, you will give it back!”
Her cry ended with an explosion. High overhead, the black body of the Leviathan bulged and ruptured as millions of gallons of water—the entire contents of the Great Lakes—burst from its sides. The lakes poured out in a thousand deafening waterfalls, the white cascades slamming into the dry beds and filling the empty river. The roar of it was so loud, Marci couldn’t hear herself think. Even Ghost’s voice in her head was drowned out as the surging water refilling Lake St. Clair rushed up her body. But just as Marci’s head was about to vanish under the churning tide, hard, cold hands grabbed her and yanked, lifting her body high above the waves as Algonquin’s voice crashed through them.
“Now, Merlin!” the spirit cried, frantic and triumphant. “Push!”
For a terrifying second, Marci had no idea what that meant. Then she felt it. The water wasn’t the only thing rising. Magic was building around Algonquin, and not just on this side. Through her connection to Ghost, Marci could feel the wave rising in the Sea of Magic as well. It swelled larger by the second, growing even larger than the lakes as millions of spirits—none of whom should have been up so soon—rose from their vessels once again to join with Algonquin, adding their rage to hers until the entire world yelled in one voice.
GET OUT!