“Put me down!” Ana shouted. When Marcus did, she dropped to her knees. She gripped the crucifix hanging from her neck and slammed her other hand down onto a patch of hard-packed dirt. The earth moved. Like an earthquake, the ground beneath them trembled and shifted. Marcus, standing high again to see, swayed. He felt for a moment like the earth was going to disappear beneath him. It didn’t, but that’s exactly what it did underneath the trench. The torn-up earth dropped away, creating a sudden, deep cavity. A massive protrusion of dirt and rock surged up into the cleared space, a tower rising as the earth was sucked from one place and thrust up in another. Most of the attackers—and more than a few fleeing soldiers—fell screaming into the abyss. The meat-hook creature managed to claw forward with his arms digging into the falling earth. He leapt clear of the trench, screaming. He flung his arms wide to pierce into Ana from both sides. Marcus lunged forward. He caught the creature by both arms and slammed his forehead into its face with enough force to smash the creature’s nose and snap its head back. He shoved it into the trench, bloody-faced as its limbs lashed at the air.

And then the tower poured down into the hole, a tidal wave of earth and stone that swept the falling creature away and buried everything and everyone it fell upon. A moment later, Ana pushed a wall of earth forward, a sheer block that more than plugged the breach in the defenses.

She was slow in getting up from her knees. When she spoke through her panting, Marcus knew she wasn’t speaking to him. “Thank you … I did what I could … It’s not going to hold them for long, Barbara. That’s for sure.” She listened a moment, and then said, “Okay.” To Marcus, she said, “Thank you. You just saved my life. I owe you one.”

Marcus rubbed his forehead. “Don’t worry about it.”

The NATO and Russian soldiers were falling back in an unorganized retreat, with Kutnesov and Lefévre shouting orders to their officers in Barbara’s ear. Barbara toggled from screen to screen; it was all the same. She reached for the toggles in front of her; the shouting voices died in her earphones. “Barbara?” she heard Ana—Earth Witch—say.

“It’s time,” she spoke into the microphone, to all of them, all the aces. “Do what you can to hold them back for as long as you can. Don’t let them have the weapons, and give Michelle and Ray the time they need. Beyond that…” There was nothing more. The plans they’d already made would work, or not. “Stay as safe as you can, and good luck to you all.”

She bit at her lip as she heard their assents. More lives risked on my orders. More deaths. How many more do I have to send?

There was no answer to that, and she could do nothing but watch.