Alpha surveyed the damage from a dinghy that broke through the masses of sturgeon. Over voice-com he ordered, “Call in the second wave!”

Thirty-five elite Clan:LESS fighters jumped from a floating aerial platform high above Lake of the Torches and skydived toward the battle below. Their forms could be made out against the starry night sky.

CHAPTER 19

“Come on, where are you?” Bugz, still kneeling, whispered into the waters around her canoe. “Come to me. Don’t worry, they’re not going to find it. I need you now.”

Bugz heard the roar of motorboats closing in around her. A fiery arrow pierced the bow of her canoe and flames engulfed the birchbark, a remarkably flammable material. Bugz broke the first rule of canoeing by standing up in her vessel. In every direction she turned, she stared down barrels of guns drawn and trained on her. They would fire in an instant.

“Mishi-pizhiw, now!” she screamed.

An observer able to parse the nanoseconds from the milliseconds would’ve seen the individual laser beams, bullets, fire-tipped arrows, and buckshot closing in on Bugz from nearly every one of the 360 degrees around her. As the fire raced toward Bugz, the giant underwater serpent she’d summoned shot up from the depths below, smashing the burning canoe to embers and tossing the young woman high into the air. Bugz grabbed the supernatural being’s horns as it continued to climb in altitude. The gunfire and projectiles rammed into the monster’s ascending body and ricocheted off like sound waves from a metal wall. The beast appeared impenetrable.

Feng now thrashed in dark waters among many of his clanmates. He reached for an outstretched hand and looked in fear at Mishi-pizhiw. A comrade dragged him aboard a Zodiac and he lay on his back for a moment watching Bugz’s giant snake. He shook his head.

The paratroopers still hurtling down toward the lake opened fire on Bugz and Mishi-pizhiw as they came within a few hundred yards of the still-ascending pair. While Mishi-pizhiw’s body may have been nearly bulletproof, his face was not. The fire from above affected him: it slowed his climb, forcing him to turn back toward the water’s surface. Mishi-pizhiw’s dark body dove deep into the waters, with Bugz hanging on like a lamprey on a shark.

The Clan:LESS skydivers tore into the water headfirst, each wearing a diving suit capable of withstanding the tremendous force of their mile-high plunge. The thirty-five hunters kicked their webbed feet furiously as they chased Bugz and her partner into the deep.

In the depths of the water, like the gates of Atlantis, a ring of stones sat in a rough arrangement on the lake’s floor.

“Sir, I think we’ve got eyes on it. It must be her power source.”

“Mark its location,” Alpha shouted through the voice-com. “Maybe we’ve finally solved the mystery. The secret source of Bugz’s power.”