Page 338

Stoker toppled through a fence, gaining a plank of wood through the neck, and crashed into a children’s playground, mangling the jungle gym’s metal frame with the force of his broken body.

Not looking so great, he had to admit. He could see Karkash in the distance, closing in for the kill.

His legs needed time to return, but he still had his arms. He removed the wooden spear from his esophagus and eyed it a moment. He grabbed the jungle gym’s blue frame and ripped out a long chunk, which he then broke into two pieces. Three objects now: one wood, two metal. He gathered all the strength he could muster into his throwing arm.

The two metal pieces went first, one after another, flying toward Karkash at cannonball speed. Each time, they slowed and stopped in the air, ineffectual before being ripped apart by the invisible magnetic field. The third piece, however, flew straight and true, and gored Karkash through the chest. Stoker had conditioned him to expect metal, and even though the attack was certainly not enough to stop the other servant, the surprise made the magnetic field falter, and Karkash dropped out of the sky, cracking the asphalt as he landed.

And that bought Stoker precious time.

He grabbed a handful of gravel. There was one aspect of his transfiguration ability which he had only recently developed: control over the physical state in which his hydrogen appeared. Specifically, temperature. Heated hydrogen easily melted the tiny rocks in his hand into a solid, flaming mass.

Hoyohté was simply impossible to hit at this distance, so he again launched at Karkash. And then another. And then continuously, several more times, until Karkash flung a cement truck at him.

Stoker’s legs were back, however, so he dove out of its path, leaving the jungle gym to be obliterated completely.

It was time for fog again, he decided. He had another trick up his sleeve, one that he hadn’t wanted to try earlier because it was perhaps too volatile. But now, circumstances seemed appropriately dire.