Page 91 of Suffer No Fools
"I didn't know!" Hugo stole Tovey's air weave then, turning it to ice and burying it well beneath the sand.
"The ice won't hold them for long," Tovey warned. "They'll go around it."
"It will give us time to figure out what to do next," Hugo said. Though he still looked exhausted, he ran over to where Efren and Nola stood on a rock overlooking the beach. From there, they could see to control the sharks and push the creatures back with their waves.
Hugo returned control of the wall to Tovey, and he felt the ice breaking. He let it break in the middle and reinforced the rest with air weaves, forcing them through a central doorway. Niall sensed what he was doing and stepped closer to the weak point, ready to blast them with fire when they came through.
When Niall's power started to flag, Klaus stepped forward and tapped Tovey and Stan on the shoulders. "I can do one more."
"Can you share with Vadim?" Stan asked.
Klaus shook his head. "We've tried, but our powers are too different."
Stan's disappointment flooded to Tovey through their bond. Stan had shared power with Vadim once when they were young. Unfortunately, Klaus wasn't a weaver. He didn't know how to share power, and he wouldn't know how to use a weaver's core ability to strengthen his own. It was a shame, too, because he was far more effective than anyone else against the undead.
"Vadim is having enough trouble fighting Jasmine's infection as it is." Klaus glanced over his shoulder to where she was now sitting up and grimacing as Yvette and Vadim workedtogether on her injury. "Healing takes a lot out of him. He's not as familiar with the weaves, but Yvette is walking him through it."
"That's good!" Tovey tried to sound encouraging. "She'll be all right. She's a tough one."
"She is." Klaus nodded. "I need to show these bastards, and Coryn. We won't let her hurt anyone else."
That was easy for him to say, but he was just as tired as they were after fighting the undead. Still, he managed to destroy over half of the remaining undead with one blow before he fell to his knees.
Vadim cried out and ran toward them. Behind him, Yvette pulled Jasmine to her feet. Her leg still looked a little red and swollen, but no more black marks coursed toward her knee. Tovey took that as a good sign, even as Vadim dove to the sand beside them and scooped Klaus into his arms.
"They can take care of the rest," Vadim said. "I'm taking you and the children home."
"Where are the others?" Hannah asked as they approached with bread bowls filled with gravy for Stan and Tovey.
"Surrounding the tree," Klaus said. "Beatrice, Frost, and the others."
"Go there with the children," Hannah said to Klaus. "Tell them we need Frost and Elsie at the beach. It's time to use the ocean against them."
"What do you think we've been doing?" Efren asked. He and Nola had come down from their rock when Klaus fell.
There were still so many undead, and as much as Tovey wanted to take matters into his own hands and set the ocean itself on fire with a fission weave, he and Stan continued to work with Niall as the commotion raged around them.
After several minutes, Hannah stepped up to Efren. "I'm ready to go again."
The captain closed his eyes. When he opened them, he nodded. "The sea is clear."
Hannah turned to Tovey. "Will you lift me?"
"Aye." Tovey had enough energy left to raise Hannah to the height of the rocks surrounding the beach, giving them the vantage they needed. Once they were in place, the ocean crackled with electricity. Once again, Tovey felt the number of undead creatures in the water decrease by over half, thanks to Stan's connection to the sentinel oak's alarm system.
Tovey gave Stan's hand a squeeze and gently dropped Hannah back to their feet, where they collapsed into the sand. "It wasn't enough," they said.
"We can handle the rest," Tovey reassured them, placing a hand on their shoulder.
"The tide is coming in," Hugo said as he squeezed in between Stan and Tovey and took their hands again. They'd been working for over two hours on eradicating the mass of undead beneath the waves. "I think we should let it come and pull them with it."
"You want me to lower the shoal back to where it was?" Stan asked.
"Do you approve, Captains?"
Nola and Efren nodded, though both frowned at the barrier.
"It's time to use ice," Hugo said. "It's the one element we haven't tried, beyond the barrier we dug into the sand."
