Helpless.
Panic swept them. They surged toward the middle, kids at the edges seeing their doom approach on swift paws.
Sam broke into a run, raised his one good hand, looked for a target, yelled. But then, the loud roar of a car engine.
He skidded to a halt, spun again. Headlights raced down the street past the church. A dusty SUV. It slammed into the curb surrounding the plaza, jumped the sidewalk, and came to a shuddering stop that sent up clods of damp dirt.
Behind it other cars, racing.
Screams as the coyotes neared the human herd.
Sam stretched out his hand and green fire lanced toward the left-side swarm of coyotes.
He couldn’t fire at the other column, they were blocked by panicky, running children, all now racing toward Sam for protection and so making it impossible for him to beam.
“Get down, get down, get down,” he yelled. “On the ground!” But it was useless.
“Save me!” said Computer Jack, falling from the SUV.
An Audi skidded to a stop in front of the church. Someone was standing up in the sunroof.
A scream of sheer terror and pain. Someone was down, struggling against a coyote twice his size.
“Edilio! Now!” Sam roared.
“Having a bad night, brother?” Caine shouted, exultant. “It’s going to get worse.”
Caine raised his hands, aimed not at Sam, not at Sam at all. Instead, he directed the impossible energy of his telekinesis at the church. It was as if an invisible giant, a creature the size of a dinosaur, had leaned against the ancient limestone. The stone cracked. The stained-glass window shattered. The door of the church, the weak point, blew inward, knocked clear off its hinges.
“Astrid!” Sam cried.
Screams, panicked screams from the plaza, mixed with snarls and wild yelps as the coyotes fell on the children.
Suddenly the impossibly loud clatter of a machine gun. Fire blasted from the roof of the day care.
Edilio running from the burned building, three others behind him, charging the coyotes.
Caine blasted again and this time the invisible monster, the beast of energy, pushed hard, hard against the front of the church.
The side windows, all the ancient stained glass and the new, exploded in a sparkling shower. The steeple swayed.
“How you going to save them, Sam?” Caine exulted. “One more push and it collapses.”
Jack at Sam’s feet, clutching him, tripping him, strangely strong.
Sam fired blindly at Caine as he fell.
“I can save you! Save me!” Jack pleaded. “The poof, I can save you.”
Sam fell hard, kicked at Jack’s grasping hands, wiggled free, and stood up in time to see the front wall of the church sag and collapse slowly, slowly inward.
The roof shuddered and slumped. The steeple teetered but did not fall. But tons of limestone and plaster and massive wooden beams fell in with a crash like the end of the world.
“Astrid!” Sam cried again, helpless.
He ran straight at Caine, ignoring the massacre behind him, blocking the screams and the ravening growls and the staccato of machine guns.
He aimed and fired.
The beam hit the front of Caine’s car. The sheet metal blistered, and Caine climbed awkwardly out through the sunroof while others Sam didn’t care enough to identify bolted through the doors.
Sam fired and Caine dodged.
A blast hit Sam, stopped him as dead as if he’d run into a wall. He searched wildly for Caine. Where? Where?
Muffled screams from inside the church joined the background roar, a noise out of a child’s hell, high-pitched cries for mother, agonized cries, desperate, pleading.
A flash of movement and Sam fired.
Caine fired back and the statue on the fountain was blown off its pedestal and fell with a splash in the fetid water.
Sam was up and running. He had to find Caine, had to find him, kill him, kill him.
More machine guns firing and Edilio’s voice yelling, “No, no, no, stop firing, you’re hitting kids!”
Sam rounded the burning Audi. Caine running ahead, leaping a fire hydrant.
Sam fired and the ground under Caine’s feet burst into flame and oily black smoke. The pavement itself was burning. Caine went sprawling onto the street, rolled quickly, got to one knee, and Sam took a massive blow that laid him flat on his back, stunned, blood coming from his mouth and ears, limbs all askew, unable to…unable…
Caine, a wild, bloody, screaming face.
Sam felt hatred burn through him and erupt from his hands.
Caine jumped aside, too slow, and the scourging light seared his side. Shirt burning, Caine screamed and beat at the flame.
Sam tried to stand, but his head was swimming.
Caine bolted into the burned-out apartment building, through the same door Sam had entered to try and save the little firestarter.
Sam wobbled but ran after him.
Up the stairs and to the scorched hallway, still stinking of smoke. The top floor was a wreckage of burned timbers and asphalt-tiled slopes of roof like children’s slides, and fragments of walls and incongruous jutting pipes.
A blast and Sam could actually see the half-wall beside him ripple from the impact.
“Caine. Let’s finish this,” Sam rasped.
“Come get me, brother,” Caine cried in a pain-squeezed voice. “I’ll bring this place down on us both.”
Sam located the sound of his voice and ran down the hallway, ran beneath the stars, firing the deadly light from his hands.
No Caine.
A creaking door, still hanging from hinges though the wall around it was gone, swung slowly.