Ty’Lis shook. The Curlesh opened its mouth and bellowed. “You lie!”
But the sorcerer knew the truth. Oliver could see it in those horrid eyes as Ty’Lis spread the fingers of his right hand and began to speak the words of an incantation in the arcane tongue of ancient Atlantis. Streaks of mist swam like tiny eels around his fingers, a cloud of vague forms that began to lengthen as they slithered away from the sorcerer’s hand, moving toward Oliver.
The storm blew past Oliver.
Ice and snow churned around him, blotting out the sun for several seconds. He heard the bellow of the Curlesh again, furious at the winter man’s attack. The transformed sorcerer raised both hands as though to defend himself. Nearly all those oil-black ribbons of shadow struck out at Frost, but the winter man had no form. He was only storm, now, and far too swift for Ty’Lis.
The carapace of the Curlesh froze solid, rimed with ice. The tendrils of shadow faltered, some dissipating into black smoke. Even with his body frozen, fresh tentacles began to extrude from those same holes in the sorcerer’s hard shell.
But for the moment, Oliver was free.
He leaped to his feet and raced at Ty’Lis. He held the point of his sword straight in front of him, hoping to crack the carapace.
Ty’Lis began to move. The moisture on the black shell of the Curlesh had frozen, but now the ice showered down, cracking and shedding.
A tall figure sculpted itself out of sand just to the sorcerer’s left. Not the Sandman, however. Detective Ted Halliwell wore the high-collared greatcoat of the Dustman, but otherwise was himself. Then he exploded in a storm of sand, a scouring flurry of dirt and grit and dust. The sand blew around the ancient monster Ty’Lis had become and began plugging the holes that the jellyfish had left behind. The ground erupted around the legs of the Curlesh and hardened around them, trapping it in that position.
The ribbons of black smoke were cut off, the holes filled with sand.
Frost took form at last, just a few feet from where Julianna lay-too still, too damned still-beneath the twitching man, the jellyfish savaging him. The winter man froze the creatures with a flick of his wrists and a gust of wind that turned them to ice.
“Collette!” Oliver shouted. “Now!”
His sister had made it within a few feet of Ty’Lis. Had she not been slightly uphill, the pixyish Collette wouldn’t have had the height for it, but she swung the war-hammer with inhuman strength-legendary strength-and it struck the sorcerer in the side of the head. The carapace of the Curlesh cracked.
“Monsters! Destroyers!” Ty’Lis roared. “I’ll kill you all.”
Oliver might have laughed at the irony. Instead, he felt sick, and determined to finish the job.
“It’s not enough!” he called to his sister. “Use your hands!”
Collette didn’t have to ask what he meant. She dropped the war-hammer and grabbed hold of the Curlesh’s torso from behind. Ty’Lis tried to wrest himself free, but the ground held his legs tightly. Magic began to swirl around his hands again, the air shimmering like heat haze. Grotesque, guttural sounds came from his throat in a terrible incantation.
Sand blew down his throat, gagging him.
And Collette’s touch began to do its work. The black carapace of the Curlesh faded to a brittle gray.
Oliver drove the Sword of Hunyadi through the center of the sorcerer’s chest. The shell cracked easily, giving way, and the blade plunged through meat and bone and punched out through the Curlesh’s back.
Collette called out in protest. He’d nearly skewered her as well.
When he pulled the sword free, Ty’Lis fell to the grass, twitched once and then was still. A small dust storm blew up and then sifted itself into the body of Ted Halliwell, wearing that long coat with its high collar. Ted Halliwell, the new Dustman.
Collette picked up the war-hammer and brought it down on the skull of the Curlesh over and over, pounding the shell and bone and flesh of Ty’Lis’s head to pulp and powder.
Oliver spun and ran to where Frost stood over Julianna and the bald man whose flesh had been ravaged by the jellyfish. He knelt and pulled the man off of her. Frozen jellyfish shattered to shards of ice as he rolled the man over and felt for a pulse.
Whoever he’d been, he was dead.
Julianna’s eyelids fluttered, but did not open. Her breathing was labored and blood soaked through a bunch of ragged strips of her shirt that had been pressed over some kind of wound in her belly, but she was still alive.
A sound came from Oliver’s throat. Perhaps a prayer of thanks, perhaps a profession of love. He took her hand, letting his pulse and his breathing slow down.
“Ovid Tsing,” the winter man said.
“You knew him?”
“From Twillig’s Gorge. He was a good man.”
Oliver nodded. “He tried to protect her.”
Collette’s shadow fell over Julianna. Oliver looked up at his sister’s sorrowful eyes.
“He’s the one who stabbed her,” Collette said. “By accident. He wanted to kill Halliwell. Julianna got in the way.”
A sad smile touched Oliver’s lips.
The Dustman came to stand beside Frost. “Bascombe…Oliver…she’ll die without real medical attention. She needs a real surgeon. A hospital.”
Ted Halliwell had been a cop for decades. From what Julianna had said, he’d been in the military as well. He’d seen his share of wounds. He knew what he was talking about.
Oliver slid his arms under Julianna and lifted her off the ground, rising to his feet.
“Then I’ll take her there.”
Halliwell shook his head. The sun glinted off of bits of quartz mixed with the sand and dust that comprised his face. “She’s one of the Lost Ones. Julianna can’t go back.”
Oliver glanced at his sister. Collette nodded.
“Yeah,” Oliver said. “We’ll see about that.”
Collette stood next to him. Without exchanging a word, they reached out together, searching for the Veil. They were Legend-Born. They were made for this. Wayland Smith had introduced their parents just to bring about the birth of children who were half-human and half-Borderkind. What that truly meant, Oliver didn’t know, but it had to count for something. They had magic on their side. Power and prophecy.
“I..I can’t,” Collette said.
“This isn’t right.” Oliver could feel the Veil. He could sense its presence there, just beyond the reach of his mind and the power inside of him. He knew the Borderkind must find it that way, but they could open a passage, they could travel through.
“I felt it in Atlantis,” he said, turning to Frost, Julianna heavy in his arms. Her breathing seemed more ragged. “I helped you open it.”
The winter man nodded. “You helped widen it, but I opened the way.”
“Then open it now!” Collette said.
Frost hesitated. Oliver could see it in his eyes. He hated all that Ty’Lis had done, but he had stood against Atlantis at the beginning because they had sent the Myth Hunters out after the Borderkind. He had saved Oliver’s life not because he wished the prophecy of the Legend-Born to come true, but because it meant defying the Myth Hunters and their master.
The winter man feared the unknown. He was afraid of what would happen to his world if the prophecy came true. Oliver saw it all in his eyes, and he understood. But this was Julianna’s life.
“If we were ever friends…” he began, but could say no more.
Frost glanced from Halliwell to Collette and back to Oliver. In the end, he reached out a hand and touched Julianna’s hair, and he nodded.
With a gesture, the winter man opened a passage. The air trembled and a kind of archway appeared, mist swirling on the other side. Through the mist, Oliver could hear the honk of car horns and the roar of engines. Somewhere children laughed, and a mother shouted at her child to stop running.