For a while Johnis just stared, refusing to accept the meaning of this sudden turn of events. They were trapped. There was no way out from here, was there?

He set his jaw and strode past the others, suddenly furious at how it was all ending. He’d believed the Roush and crossed the desert and risked his life and found Teeleh’s lair. All for this?

Johnis faced the black beasts, thrust both books into the air as Teeleh had done, and screamed at the sky.

“I have them!”

The words filled him with courage.

“These books belong to Elyon, not to Teeleh! I have them. Go ahead, you filthy beasts, try to take them. Step forward and see what Elyon makes of his books.”

As one, the Shataiki crept forward onto the field, like a thick carpet of oil. They pressed toward the platform, one step, then two, then on, plodding slowly, silent and deliberate.

“Now you’ve done it, Scrapper,” Billos said softly.

Johnis walked calmly to his horse, stuffed both books into the saddlebag, and withdrew his sword. He’d yet to swing it, he realized. Now was as good a time as any to baptize the blade with blood.

Shataiki blood.

He raised it and pointed at the bats who were still approaching like a slow-moving tide.

“For Elyon, you filthy beasts. When you take up against us, you take up against Elyon!”

First Silvie, then Billos and Darsal, stepped up beside him, blades by their sides.

“This is it,” Darsal said.

“Yes, this is it.” Silvie breathed out. “This is definitely it.”

Billos swished his sword once. “Duck, dodge, kick.”

“Karate,” Darsal said. “Watch their fangs and claws. Go for their soft underbellies.”

Silvie nodded. “You do realize there are too many. Way too many.”

“Yes, too many,” Darsal agreed.

“They’ll kill us,” Silvie said.

“Yes, they will,” Billos said.

The black throng stopped no more than thirty paces off, red eyes glowing, waiting for what, Johnis didn’t know.

“The books are mine,” a gravelly voice growled from high on their right. Johnis saw Teeleh for the first time, perched on the stadium’s lip. “Rip them limb from limb!”

The Shataiki threw themselves forward with a chorus of shrieks. Johnis braced himself, ready to cut through.

As if drawn by the onrushing Shataiki, white smoke began to pour over the eastern lip of the stadium, where black trees had stood tall just an hour ago. It spilled in silently, a blanket of fluff, coursing over the rings of seats carved from stone, flying low and fast and boiling with power.

Johnis caught his breath and nearly forgot about the front line of rushing black bats—because this wasn’t white smoke flooding the stadium.

This was white Roush.

Thousands of them, so thick you could swear they were a flood of cotton balls, so silent you’d guess a drifting cloud.