Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

direction, not knowing what I’d do to help, but desperate to do so. Chunks of the hill were falling away, smashing onto the sidewalk, pelting me with shards of rock and showers of dirt. I leapt over debris and dodged a particularly large piece as it fell, sending me skidding to a halt as I slammed into the side of an abandoned scooter. The handlebar dug into my gut, and I pushed away, opposite hand windmilling to keep my balance. That was when the manna tendrils wrapped around my hand.

I pulled back without thought, and they tugged me in the opposite direction. I caught my breath, struggling not to panic, then realized I was standing above a scattering of the manna-linked coins and pebbles Guyer had used for amplification.

I gripped them, feeling the sticky spider’s thread connection between them and Guyer’s discarded megaphone. She’d used next gen manna. Why? Fighting a grin, I realized she’d been true to her word of getting next gen manna to test my ability to manipulate manna. Now it was about to pay off.

I twisted my fists, gripping the threads in my hands, and let the energy flow into me, draining it like a man wandering the salt plains drains a canteen, like a self-loathing drunk drains a tumbler of whiskey. And just like a drunk, all I wanted was more, to fill myself with magic and manna and power and—

Maybe I’d have given into that instinct if it weren’t for the surrounding chaos cutting through my mental haze. So I fought to ignore the bracing cold bands that tightened around my chest, a combination of pressure and chill, as if I’d fallen through the icy surface of a lake and plunged into freezing waters. As if I lay at the bottom of the ocean, a whale whose song would never be heard by the others of my species. I knew what I had to do to relieve the pressure.

Sprinting to Guyer’s side, I grabbed her hand, my fingers sliding over her knuckles until I touched the metal rebar and felt the faint thread that connected it to the truck. She jumped, eyes wide, and I gave her a smile that even I realized stretched too wide on my face. But I couldn’t help it. I was so cold, so excited, so hungry, and I could taste the manna that bound the rebar to the truck, even as Guyer struggled to lift it.

I resisted the urge to feed. Instead I channeled all the energy I’d taken into it. Guyer went suddenly still as I fed the connecting threads, magnifying their power. I let go, and she swung the rebar in an arc. The truck leapt away from the hole’s gaping maw and slammed into the collapsing hill with incredible force, a single stake holding the crumbling rock at bay and giving the Barekusu time to escape.

But the accelerated rate of manna use proved too much. The truck began to warp and crumble as the magical bond consumed the manna that Guyer had applied, and then the truck itself. As they always were, the magical connection was too hungry to simply stop after running out of fuel.

With a ground-shaking rumble, the rest of the hill collapsed. Huge chunks dropped away, plunging toward the ground. Guyer dropped her hand and took a step away, staring at me and holding the rebar, and for a moment I thought she’d strike me like I’d struck down Harlan Cedrow and stopped his mad rampage across the ice plains. An act of desperation that made Vandie Cedrow see me as a killer, and total strangers see me as a savior.

Guyer’s mouth hung open, and she stared at me as she screamed over the roar of the hill’s collapse. “What the Hells did you do?”

Now she understood the impact I had on magic, not just as a mental abstract. She had felt it firsthand, and realized what it meant to directly impact the ability of sorcerers like her.

We locked eyes, until I turned back to the chaos. I shouted, getting the attention of some bystanders and directing them to move back to safety. Behind me Guyer spoke again.

“Carter, that wasn’t—”

I yelled to a nearby patrol, and they waved me off as they moved to the next person who needed help.

“Carter . . .”

I ignored her, and the next thing she said was a scream. “Carter!”

I spun to face her, eyes shielded against the fires that were breaking out in the surrounding buildings, in time to hear the roar and groan of the street giving way as the cobblestones drained from beneath my feet like beans from a bag. And I tumbled into the sinkhole that was devouring my city.

20

THE FALL ITSELF WAS A blur of shapes and murky colors. I landed on my back, remembering nothing from the training I’d received as far back as the academy about how to fall without getting hurt. Instead I simply lay there, desperate to draw a breath as pain shot across my chest and throbbed around my kidneys. When the air rushed back into my lungs I sat up, barely in time to roll to my side and avoid another pile of falling debris.

Cobblestones clattered onto the spot where I’d been lying a moment before, pelting me with splinters of stone and dust. Once the deadly rain stopped I gingerly climbed to my feet, wondering if I’d managed to break anything serious. The rotten-egg scent of sulfur was overwhelming, and that, combined with the dust in the air, made both breathing and seeing difficult. My head spun, and I felt a million years from the heady mix of power and consuming hunger when I’d drawn in manna minutes earlier.

Gathering myself, I looked around. I’d landed on a ledge, in a section of the sinkhole near the center of the street. That meant I didn’t have to worry about an entire building toppling onto me, but cobblestones and vehicles were a real threat.

The ledge I