Twenty yards from the enemy, the south line wobbled again. Then tightened.
“They know!” Quantum yelled as the gap closed.
Bishop saw their formation—human compression three bodies deep. “We need a door!” he yelled.
The Triplets shot out ahead of them.
Fetch launched into the air first and punched the ground at the enemy line, a seismic boom buckling the earth beneath them. Fathom came in airborne, fists of sizzling light hammering the bodies on the front line, dropping a dozen.
Fin entered the half-carved doorway and slammed his hands together. Blood punched out of noses, eyes, and mouths, before the cluster hit the ground.
“Widen the gap!” Bishop yelled, aiming for the jagged opening.
Verthur blades slammed the right edge, ripping through flesh, and Bacon’s militia hacked bone on the left as Bishop sailed cleanly across the bloody opening into the interior ring.
He gripped his eighteen-inch blade in combat-lock, his body cinching around the weapon for close-up war. His vision locked in for hyper-kill and his knife found every point of weakness—throat lines, spinal seams, hip joints, femoral arteries.
A yell broke through the mayhem. “They’re killing them!”
Bishop’s vision snapped with the sudden change in his architecture. He spun and found a human-demon on a woman, teeth buried in her face. Bishop leapt across the slain and caught it by the back of the skull and ripped it off her.
Flesh came with it.
The screams tore through his battle sequence, flipping from kill to protect. His vision now mapped the refugees.
Too many to protect.
The Triplets closed around him.
“Bite him!” Fetch ordered, shoving a human-demon at him.
Bishop grabbed it and sank his fangs into its shoulder. Blood hit his tongue and he tore free, spitting flesh.
Fetch shoved his arm in front of him. “Show us!”
Bishop held it tight and bit.
Fathom and Fin grabbed hold of Bishop, their powers closing a circuit.
His architecture rapidly adapted for maximum impact as electrical charge built under their skin, dragging the enemy signature out of Bishop’s blood.
The Triplets detonated their power, and Bishop hit the ground with his face—teeth cracking together, sound shattering into jagged waves then rushing back in.
Handy hauled him upright and his architecture rebooted, the battlefield snapping back in with signatures. Refugees alive. Enemy army down. His men standing—bodies heaving, blades covered in blood.
Bishop’s gaze moved over the slain. Each one had a baseball sized hole punched clear through the chests from the electrical blast.
Something rumbled under his boots.
“A second wave!” Quantum yelled.
Panic hit his blood and his vision sliced through the dark.
“Coming from the north!”
Bishop saw it.
Holy fuck.