Total Eclipse

And these used to be human.

I couldnt believe what I was seeing at first, because my brain refused to process the information. It was too disturbing, too sickening. I had to face it once the first of them scaled the wall, way too quickly, and used its human hands to pull itself up over the lip and its scorpions feet to race toward me. The human face on the thing had rolling eyes and a lolling, foaming mouth, but being driven mad clearly hadnt affected its razor-sharp reflexes. I dropped the juice box I was sucking on and pulled down lightningoverkill, but this thing was completely disturbing, and my skin crawled with the idea it could even exist in the same time and space with me.

I zapped it into a blackened mess when it was still fifteen feet away. My ears rang with the blast, and I felt singed and disoriented, but oddly better for ridding the world of it.

That was before I heard the clattering, and realized that there were a lot of these monsters, and they were climbing in steady, relentless streams. As I watched, stomach dropping, I saw that two more had already cleared the ledge on one side, and at least three on the other. At least the damn bear/lion creatures had been slower.

The roof wasnt going to work any longer.

I started fires around the roof line to give myself a little time as I stuffed things back into my bag. The fire should have slowed them down, and maybe it did, for all of fifteen seconds or so, but then they ran shriekinghuman shrieksthrough the walls of flame and came straight for me with those deadly stingers upraised and ready.

No time for anything fancy. I had to evacuate.

I levitated myself up on a strong updraft, andapprehensivelyover the flames and the struggling, snapping chimeras that were swarming up the building. This wasnt something even most hard-core Weather Wardens were good at doing; short bursts of this kind of thing were fine, but if I faded now, Id be dropping myself into a boiling mass of these things at the base of the wall. I had to keep going. I had to hope that it would take them time to realize I was gone and to find me.

Personal levitation is exhausting, sweaty work, and my pack quickly felt like it increased in weight from ten pounds to fifty, to a hundred. I breathed in ragged, gasping breaths, holding diamond-hard focus on keeping the forces in delicate balance as I sped along, skimming over the desert at the speed of maybe thirty miles per hour. Not exactly fast, but I didnt dare push faster. Every bit of forward motion I added made it harder to compensate on all the other, constantly shifting energies. Id never done this for longer than a minute, at best.

I held it for almost fifteen minutes before my concentration snapped, and I tumbled out of the sky toward a razor-sharp stand of brush cactus. At the last second, I altered course and landed in sand instead, and hit the ground ru

Fire ants. My very touch on the ground was bringing them boiling to the surface.

Not just fire ants, either. The deserts defenses were on high alert, and I had to dodge swarms of smaller, nonchimeraed scorpions as well as some tarantulas crawling out of their holes ahead of me. Ru

My breath was burning in my lungs, and I knew Id have to stop soon, or at least slow down. But I wasnt sure how I could, considering the fierce antibody reaction to my passage. Not only that, but as I looked back over my shoulder I saw movement about a thousand feet behind me. Chimeras, and they were catching up.

Las Vegas was a long, long way off. It looked drab and overbuilt in the desert shimmer. I realized that no planes were flying in or out, and although there was a road up ahead, about a half a mile out, there were no cars on it. It was eerily quiet.

No sound except for the overhead shriek of hunting birds, which made me realize how vulnerable I was to attack from that avenue. I didnt want to have to kill more birds. I didnt want to kill anything, except maybe those awful chimeras, but I didnt think I was going to have a choice. Mother Earth had declared war, and I was going to have to fight back, hard.

Except that I wasnt sure anything I had would really keep me alive for long.

I put on a burst of speed, pulled from Earth power, and outpaced the scuttling pursuers, heading for the road. Not that the road was safe, given that it had already eaten my damn car, but it was flat and clear of fire ant burrows, at least.

What it wasnt clear of were hornets. They boiled up out of nowhere from the side of the road, a bomber squadron of inch-long furious insects, and headed straight for me as soon as my feet hit the asphalt. I gasped and instinctively swatted at them with a blast of air, driving them back as I kicked my run into even higher gear. I was dripping with sweat now, gasping like a fish out of water, but I couldnt slow down. I could hear the relentless buzz of the insects zipping closer.

I came to a sudden halt, closed my eyes, and formed a hard shell of air around my body. The bugs hit the windshield with vicious force, leaving gruesome splatters, and those that didnt die immediately jabbed their stingers into the barrier, over and over, trying to get to me with their last breath. A few, warier than the others, backed off and circled, looking for an opening.

I couldnt wait forever.

I dropped the shell and ran for it, and the remaining hornets dashed in pursuit. The first one came close enough to smash with another gust of air that sent it tumbling, stu

The first hornet got me, and it felt like being hit with a bullet. A bullet dipped in acid. I yelped, slapped a hand down on my arm, and felt the insects body squash under the slap. The sting hurt, and then began to burn. I gritted my teeth and stopped again, pulling down my windshield. Three more hornets met their gooey death, leaving only two who were smarter than that, or slower.

The ru

The sole survivor dive-bombed me relentlessly, and score two more stings before I finally managed to kill him, too.

I windmilled to a gasping, gagging stop on the hot asphalt, barely able to keep upright. My left arm, where the first sting had landed, felt hot and swollen; so did the back of my neck and my leg, where the others had scored hits. But I wasnt going to die of that.

No sign of the chimeras behind me.

No new threat racing up out of the desert to confront me.

There was even a cool breeze ruffling my hair, and I lifted my chin, grateful for anything that lessened the misery I was in . . . and then my eyes snapped open, and I saw the dust devil dancing out there in the desert, a sinuous rope shape made visible with all of the sand it was sucking up. It was mesmerizing to watch as it twisted, bent, and got darker.

I dropped down into a crouch, hardened the air again, and covered my head with my hands as the dust devilno, dust tornadoraced toward me with the fury of a freight train. It hissed at first, and then, once it was on me, the hiss rose to a blinding roar. I could feel the sand scouring over the shell that protected me, and the heat increased. I couldnt stay in the shell long without making it gas-permeable, but that meant opening myself to the dust storm. Id suffocate, one way or the other. My only hope was to disrupt the dust devils delicate, powerful structure.