Earth's Hope by Ann Gimpel

focus the unmaking spell on a group of them. It should blow through their wards and smear them to kingdom come.”
    Bran eyed him as if he’d lost his mind. “If it works. That was what we were tampering with when ye and I ended up on Perrikus’s borderworld—trapped.”
    “’Twas the strange energy in that house,” Gwydion grunted. “It sat on psychic fault lines and perverted my magic.”
    “Quick tutorial,” Timothy barked. “Is that the one where you mix mostly fire with a bit of earth and stoke air in once it’s percolating?”
    Gwydion jutted his chin upward. “Aye. ’Tis the air part that’s tricky. If ye add it too fast, the whole thing can blow up in your face.”
    Aislinn bolted upright and trotted to where she could see around the corner of Fionn’s house. Rune stuck to her like a dark, furred shadow.
    “Holiday’s over,” she called. “They’ll be on us before I can count to three. Son of a bitch,” she muttered and Nidhogg felt her summon power and anchor herself within in.
    “Are you with me?” Gwydion asked.
    “We’d be fools to quit now,” Corin said.
    “Who do we target?” Royce asked.
    “The first bunch that shows their nasty, reptilian snouts.” Arawn’s voice held a flat, dead tone. “I tire of this.” He raised his voice in a chant, and Gwydion and Bran joined in.
    It took a moment before Nidhogg recognized both the language and the incantation. It was Enochian, a perversion of Celtic mixed with Hebrew, but the combination held massive amounts of power. He added his magic to the mix, as did Dewi. The humans picked up the chant and magic jumped to their command.
    Kra took to the air with Dewi, Royce, and Vaughna. The four engaged in an aerial ballet, dive-bombing the Lemurians to divert them from what the Celts were cooking up. Nidhogg was impressed. The dragons other than Dewi may have been absent, but they’d maintained their intuitive edge during their lengthy exile. Power blasted from the Lemurians. So much power, it shocked Nidhogg. They hadn’t been this strong just a few moments before.
    Truth chewed a hole in the back of his mind. “Hurry,” he urged. “One of the dark ones must be close.”
    Gwydion focused his gaze on the dragon, blue eyes pulsing with tension, and nodded, but never stopped chanting. The air developed a shimmery hue, and cracks formed in the damp earth as power oozed upward. Between them, Gwydion, Bran, and Arawn shaped the energy as it rose to their call. When it became an amorphous, pulsing mass, they heaved it at the nearest group of six Lemurians.
    Nidhogg held his breath. Would it bounce off, just like his fire had done? For a long, wrenching moment, nothing happened, and then audible cracks, piercing as gunshots, rose in a rapid tattoo that pounded his sensitive hearing. As if it were sentient, the mass pressed forward, coating each Lemurian once its warding dissipated.
    The timber and pitch of the Celts’ and humans’ chanting escalated. All of them were shouting, and sweat streaked their faces, creating runnels in the soot and grime that smeared across their flesh. Their muscles bunched into hard knots as if they fought a physical foe. The Lemurians were slow to respond, but then they always had been. It was probably why their race was dying out. Just before the first one exploded in a shower of red and greenish blood, sinew, bones, and bits of grit, its kin recognized their doom and tried to run, but the unmaking spell had them in its grip and they couldn’t get away.
    One by one, the six lead Lemurians shattered, splattering everything within reach with gore. Rune and the other bond animals were in their element, lapping up blood and guts. Nidhogg would have smiled, were their situation not so tenuous.
    “Do it again,” Gwydion shouted. “Borrow power from the Earth if you need to.”
    Breath hissed through Aislinn’s teeth. “At this rate, it will take days to knock off these sorry sons of bitches. Can’t we hurry it