Behind him came a woman with steely hair and a grandmother’s clothing. She held an infant in the cradle of one arm and the hand of a small string of larger children who followed her, all holding hands.

Bradley led them down the stairs and onto the street. Butters immediately went to take the infant from the older woman, who surrendered the child with a grateful grimace and a twitch of her shoulder.

The wolves immediately took position around the children, without me telling them to. They wagged their tails and took little happy steps and generally performed the canine equivalent of pinching their cheeks and making a fuss over them. The kids were instantly enchanted by the group of doggies.

Who also did their best to keep their furry bodies between the children’s eyes and the worst of the horrors around us.

They felt like I did. That no one should have to look at that kind of thing. And that those of us who already had? We were glad when we could spare someone else the same invisible wounds.

I fell in beside Bradley, who carried his own weight and that of two other souls without visible effort. “The wolves are great kids. They’ll go with you, get you and the kids out. Two blocks south, to the park. There’re volunteers holding out at the pavilion. Tell them that the wizard sent you to see Sanya. He’s a big black Russian guy. Tell him I want him to give you an escort out.”

“South, pavilion, Sanya, wizard sent me, get the kids out,” Bradley confirmed. He eyed the wolves. “Friendlies?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He heaved a breath. Then set his jaw, nodded, and said, “Got it.”

“Good man,” I said. “You’re handling this well.”

“I am not,” Bradley said without slowing his steps. “I am not.”

“Then you are freaking out in the most useful way possible,” I said. “Keep it up.”

Bradley stared at me for a second. Then he let out a bark of crack-voiced laughter. But it was a real laugh. He hoisted Rudolph into a slightly more comfortable position on one wide, thick shoulder—Rudolph let out a groan of protest neither of us listened to—and kept walking.

“Butters,” I said, slowing my steps for a moment to drop even with the little Knight.

“It’s kids, Harry,” he said. He showed me the hilt of Fidelacchius, carried in the hand that wasn’t holding a baby. “I’ll take care of them.”

I squeezed his shoulder.

And the ground shook.

We traded a wide-eyed look, and I said, “Get them out, go!”

“Harry!” Murphy shouted from behind me.

The ground shook again.

Bradley staggered and fell. He curled his body around the child to shield her, which meant that I’m afraid Rudolph took the brunt of it. The poor man. The gun hadn’t been strapped into Bradley’s holster and it clattered onto the street.

I whirled, feet spread wide for balance, as a pair of comets shot out of a side street half a block up, whirling in an evasive helix in the haze, as the damned Jotun from before, bruised and bloodied and furious, swiped its axe at them.

“My lord!” trumpeted Toot-Toot. “I have engaged the enemy!”

The axe nearly split my major general in twain, but the second glowing globe hit him at the last second, as Lacuna slammed a shoulder into his, causing them both to veer out of the weapon’s way.

“Pay attention, fool!” she screamed.

The Jotun saw us and dropped into a low slide, legs spread wide like a surfer, slamming its axe into the street and dragging it behind like some berserk plow, rending the street with an enormous roar of breaking concrete and blacktop as it used the weapon to slow its enormous momentum.

So that it could turn toward us.

The ground shook under the violence of the Jotun’s very presence.

I rubbernecked and saw Bradley struggling to rise. Butters was hurrying the nice old lady and the children along, but their best pace wasn’t a fast walk, and they were all in plain sight of the Jotun, utterly vulnerable.

Right. That made my choice simple.

Suicidal, but simple.

I turned to fight.

Murphy sprinted past me and behind me as the Jotun roared and raised its axe from the street. As if in tandem with its rising fury, the axe burst into flame. The Jotun roared, flexed muscles the size of European automobiles, moved with the technique perfect to use the full force of its unthinkably powerful body—and flung the axe, spinning parallel to the ground like the blade of a lawn mower.

What must have been at least half a ton of hard, sharp, burning metal came whirling toward my freaking face.

Chapter

Twenty-one

   It is often surprising to people to discover exactly how strong a human being can be if he knows what he’s doing.

The Jotun knew what he was doing. Given the raw power behind that throw, there was no way I was going to stop it. I could put every inch of power I had into a shield and be unable to stop that axe’s edge.

But I might be able to deflect it.

I summoned my will and rammed it into the shield bracelet on my left wrist. It hissed and popped with stray sparks of green-gold power as the energy of my magic met the inefficiencies in the material and spells carved into the copper bracelet, and the thing heated up almost immediately, as I brought a shimmering plane into being in front of me—and then I dropped to a knee and tilted the shield back, way back, into a slope of maybe twenty degrees.

The giant axe hit my shield in an explosion of kinetic and magical energy. Literally. There was an explosion centered where the shield and the axe met, and I realized with a belated shock that the Jotun had imbued considerable power of its own into the axe.

The world went white and silent.

I was flung a good fifteen feet back across the ground and wound up slamming into Bradley, who was only then getting moving again. Rudolph, tragically, got roughed up again as a result, oh no. I lay there for a second, stunned, and watched glass from hundreds of shattered windows fall with almost dreamy slowness toward the ground. My bracelet burned hot enough to scald skin, and the Winter mantle sent me pulses of weird tingly sensations to let me know what was going on.

I shook my head and looked around blearily. The axe had hit my shield at an odd angle and skittered off to my left and up. It was buried to the eye in what looked like an office building, as if an enormous lumberjack had sunk it in so that he could spit on his hands and get to work.

Oh right. The Jotun.

I drove my staff into the ground and shoved myself to my feet, shaking my head in an attempt to get the damned bells to stop ringing.

The ground shook as I did.