“You stay here with Mom and Grandma.” Sidney’s voice was firm. “If this goes wrong, someone needs to be able to pick up the pieces.”
“And you?”
Sidney glanced at Ben, and he saw the fear and determination that warred in her expression. “Ben and I are going to the portal site. If there’s any chance of stabilizing the ley line before the feedback hits — ”
“You can’t.” Emily Thompson stepped forward, her hand closing around Sidney’s arm. “Sidney, if you’re at the epicenter when the feedback arrives — ”
“Then I’ll be where I need to be.” Sidney covered her grandmother’s hand with her own, and Ben saw a certain understanding pass between them, the knowledge that it was the role of the guardians to put themselves in harm’s way. “This is what we do, Grandma. This is what the women in our family have always done. We stand at the threshold, and we hold the line.”
For a long moment, Emily didn’t respond. Then she nodded slowly and released her grip.
“Be careful,” she said. “Both of you.”
Sidney turned to Ben and held out her hand. He took it without hesitation, felt their bioelectric fields merge and stabilize, the connection between them humming with shared purpose.
“Let’s go,” she said.
And they ran.
The forest swallowed them within seconds, the familiar paths that Ben had walked dozens of times over the past months now feeling strange and threatening in the crackling, electric air. Everything looked the same — the towering redwoods, the carpet of ferns and fallen needles, the occasional shaft of gray light that filtered through the canopy — but nothing felt right. The air itself seemed to hum with energy, thick and heavy and wrong, and the scars burned beneath his shirt with an intensity that made it hard to breathe.
Beside him, Sidney moved with a certainty that had nothing to do with sight. Her connection to the ley line was guiding her, he knew, pulling her toward the portal site faster than any map or memory could. She ducked branches without looking, sidestepped roots and rocks with the instinctual grace of someone whose body was responding to information her conscious mind couldn’t process.
“How far?” he asked, his breath coming harder as they climbed a ridge, his legs burning from the pace she was setting.
“Half a mile. Maybe less.” Her voice was strained, and he could see the effort it was taking her to maintain her speed while simultaneously monitoring the network through whatever sixth sense the phoenix merge had given her. “The feedback’s building faster than Eric predicted. We’ve got maybe four minutes.”
Four minutes. Ben pushed himself harder, ignoring the stitch forming in his side and the protest from muscles that hadn’t been asked to sprint uphill since his college days. The trees blurred past them, ancient redwoods and Douglas firs that had stood for centuries, silent witnesses to whatever was about to happen. A raven burst from a branch overhead, screaming its alarm call, and somewhere in the distance, Ben heard what might have been thunder…or might have been something far worse.
They crested the ridge and started down the other side, and Ben caught his first glimpse of the clearing through a gap in the trees. Green light pulsed between the trunks, sickly and wrong, and the smell hit him a moment later — sulfur and ozone and something old and sharp, something that made the primitive part of his brain want to turn and run in the opposite direction.
They burst into the clearing just as the sky began to change.
The standing stones were exactly as Ben remembered them — seven granite pillars arranged in a rough circle, their surfaces carved with Ogham letters that pulsed with sickly green light. But the ground between them had transformed. Where there had once been bioluminescent moss and soft earth, there was now a network of glowing cracks, amber and gold, spreading outward from the center like a shattered windshield. Heat rose from those cracks, dry and ancient, and the smell that accompanied it made Ben’s eyes water — volcanic and metallic and wrong.
“Oh, God,” Sidney breathed. “It’s already starting.”
She dropped his hand and moved toward the edge of the stone circle, her arms outstretched, her scars blazing with light. Ben felt the moment she connected to the ley line, a surge of energy that made his own scars flare in response, a sensation like grabbing a live wire with both hands.
“Sidney — ”
“I can feel the feedback.” Her voice was distant, hollow, her attention focused on something far beyond the physical world. “It’s like a wave, building and building. Gregory’s drill punched through something it shouldn’t have, and now the pressure’s releasing all at once.”
“Can you stop it?”
She didn’t reply right away. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible.
“I don’t know.”
The ground beneath their feet began to tremble. Not an earthquake, Ben knew — this was something much worse than that. The very bones of the earth were shaking, and at the center of the stone circle, the cracks were widening, the amber light growing brighter.
Sidney planted her feet and raised her hands, and Ben watched as light poured from her scars — gold and white, beautiful and terrible. She was trying to hold the ley line together, he realized, trying to absorb the feedback before it could reach the town.
He moved to her side and took her hand again, then felt their bioelectric fields merge completely. The pain was immediate and intense, a burning that started in his chest and spread outward through every nerve, but he held on. This was what he was for. This was why he was here.
Together, they faced the oncoming wave.
And somewhere deep beneath the earth, the Dragon began to scream.