by Zoe Chant
Fire spread behind Ash like wings unfurling. “Release my mate now.”
“Or what, Blaze? You’ll burn me?” Corbin shook his head. “If I die, she dies with me.”
“Not if I free her first.”
“Go ahead.” The warlock stepped to one side, sweeping his hand in Rose’s direction in invitation. “There she is. I can’t stop you. Burn her animal.”
No! Rose screamed silently, as Ash’s head turned in her direction. No, kill him, kill us both. Take my life, but don’t take who I am.
Ash stood there, motionless. Corbin laughed.
“I knew you would not be able to do it,” the warlock said, with an ugly, gloating smile. “There is only one option left, Blaze. Even I can only bind one shifter at a time. So who will it be? Her, or you?”
The flames died, all at once. In the sudden darkness, she heard Ash speak.
“Me.”
No, no, no! Rose cried out in her mind—and then, as the bindings around her swan loosened and fell away: “NO!”
Too late. The runes wrapping her right arm shimmered and faded as the warlock released her. The sudden lack of pain such an intense relief that every muscle in her body went limp. For a moment all she could do was gasp for breath, as though she’d been drowning.
“Yes, yes!” Fire flared again—not Ash’s pure white flame, but demonic hellfire. It twined around Corbin’s upraised hand, illuminating his face with a baleful orange glow.
The warlock flung his head back, expression transfigured in bliss. “My power, mine again at last, yes!”
Rose tried to push herself back up, to fling herself at the warlock while he was still distracted, but her limbs were still shaky with shock. She had to clutch at the bar just to stay on her feet. She groped for something to throw at the warlock. A pint glass, a bottle, anything.
Soft laughter froze her hand.
It didn’t come from Corbin.
Runes wound around Ash’s forearm, on top of the old scar. He’d fallen to his knees at the warlock’s feet, hands braced in the rubble, head hanging. Blood slicked his wrist, spreading across the blackened floor.
Yet still he laughed.
Corbin’s arms dropped from his exultant pose. He frowned down at Ash, brow creasing in suspicion. “What?”
Slowly, as if fighting against a great weight, Ash raised his head. “You’ve made a mistake.”
Corbin crooked his fingers, and Ash jerked as though struck across the shoulders with a barbed lash. “You cannot fight my will. You are mine again.”
“Yes.” Ash’s teeth bared in a triumphant, agonized smile. “But they aren’t.”
Red scales filled the hole in the wall. Rose instinctively ducked, shielding her head, as an enormous horned head shoved through the charred stones. Emerald, cat-slit eyes narrowed as they focused on Corbin.
“Now, Dai!” Ash shouted.
“No!” Rose screamed, as the red dragon drew in its breath.
Panic gave her strength. She ran forward, flinging herself in front of the opening jaws.
The dragon’s eyes widened. Its mouth snapped shut, smoke gouting from flared nostrils as it choked back its flame.
“Rose, move!” Ash shouted. “Get out of the way!”
Rose held firm, not letting the red dragon get a clean line of sight on the warlock. With a growl, Dai drew back. A glimmering white shape leaped through the gap instead, pushing past Rose. The unicorn leveled its horn at Corbin, the gleaming length bright as lightning.
“No, Hugh!” Rose flung her arms around the unicorn’s neck, grabbing hold of its sweeping mane. “If you kill him, Ash dies as well!”
The unicorn’s head jerked up. It stared at Ash, ears flattening. One silver hoof stamped the ground in indecision.
“Just kill him!” Ash’s voice cracked in desperation.
“Rose.” John’s deep voice shook her bones. His huge hands closed over her arms, lifting her away as easily as if she was a child. “You must go.”
“No, no, no!” Rose tried to scramble back the moment he released her, but a gleaming black wing barred her way. “Chase!”
The pegasus snorted, nudging her toward the hole in the wall. Then it swung round, flanking John. A great golden griffin guarded the sea dragon’s other side, lithe and powerful. The red dragon’s horned head loomed above them all, lips drawn back from razor-sharp fangs. The mythic shifters fanned out, trapping Corbin.
“We will give you one chance, honorless worm.” Even though John was still in human form, he looked no less dangerous than his shifted comrades. “Release our Commander, or you will live long enough to beg for a clean death.”
“Alpha Team,” the warlock murmured, as though John hadn’t spoken. His gray eyes swept over the threatening shifters, pausing on each one in turn. “Dragon. Pegasus. Griffin. Sea dragon. Unicorn. You brought them all.”
Corbin raised both hands. Ash’s breath hissed between his teeth as the warlock’s runes lit up.
“Don’t be foolish, Corbin.” Ash’s left hand was clenched on his right wrist. Blood ran over his fingers in a steady stream. “Even with my power, you cannot hope to defeat them all, not together. Not with me fighting your control with all my will.”
“Correct,” the warlock said, light gathering in his palms. He spread his fingers, each one outlined with eye-searing fire. “I could not.”
He slashed his hands down.
Ten glowing rents opened in the air.
“You didn’t come alone,” Corbin said, smiling, as dark-robed figures surged through the portals. “Neither did I.”
Chapter 18
He awoke shivering. It had been so many decades since he had last been cold, for a moment he thought the ground was shaking. But no—he was shaking, his bones like shards of ice. Only the barest embers of eternal flame glimmered in the darkness of his soul.
“You are awake,” said a familiar, hated voice. “Good. I feared that I had tested the limits of even the Phoenix.”
With great effort, Ash managed to raise his head an inch off the concrete floor. Iron bars crisscrossed his field of view.
Corbin sat at ease just outside the cage, foot crossed over one knee, a glass of ice water in his hand. The warlock had swapped his customary heavy black robes for ones made of silk, loose and flowing. Despite his light garments, a faint sheen of perspiration beaded his lined brow.
It’s hot, Ash realized. The cage was set in a garden courtyard, the walls obscured by overgrown vines. A fierce tropical sun blazed high overhead in a perfect azure sky. Dimly, he was aware of its heat beating down on the back of his neck, but it didn’t touch the cold filling him.
Corbin had never drained him so far before. He felt weak and shaky, as if waking up from a fever. Everything after Corbin had used his power to summon the other warlocks was a confused blur. All he could remember was fire, screaming, black wings cutting through rising smoke…
“Where?” he rasped.
“It seemed appropriate to celebrate our reunion by taking a once-in-a-lifetime vacation.” Corbin sipped his drink. “I am impressed, Blaze. Transporting so many people halfway around the world would have killed any lesser shifter outright. And yet you have recovered even faster than I calculated.”
“No.” Painfully, Ash pushed himself to his feet. He had to grip the iron bars to remain standing. “Where is she?”
“Ah, yes.” The warlock smiled thinly. “You burned your mate bond. You cannot sense her, can you?”
Corbin was wrong. Even though Ash had scorched Rose’s side of the connection to charred ashes, there was no power on earth—not even his own—that could destroy his love for her. She would always be his mate.
Ash concentrated, turning inward. In his weakened state, the mate bond was dim as a distant candle, but she was there. She burned resolutely in his heart, a single point of defiant light.
He sagged against the bars in relief. “I can sense enough to know that she is safe. You don’t have her.”
The faint
est flicker of annoyance flashed across Corbin’s face. The warlock quickly stifled it, but Ash knew that Corbin had hoped to use false threats against Rose to keep him obedient.
“The swan is irrelevant,” Corbin said, rising. The cage door opened at his touch. “Let me show you what I do have.”
Ash clenched his jaw as the binding bit into him. He allowed it to pull him after the warlock. No point in wasting his limited strength fighting it now. He had to be patient, and wait for his moment.
The courtyard was bigger than Ash had been able to see from within the cage. It was overgrown with creepers and weeds, but it looked like it had been some kind of private menagerie at some point. The high stone walls were lined with cages and enclosures; some large enough for a bear or big cat, most designed to hold smaller creatures.
Corbin led the way down the row. A black-robed warlock sat cross-legged on the ground outside large cage a little way off, hunched over a laptop. Every now and then he let out a delighted giggle.
“Progress?” Corbin asked the man.
The warlock lifted his head. His eyes gleamed pure gold, without white or pupil.
“I can see everything,” he said dreamily. “Patterns in the data. Connections I never imagined. It’s so obvious now. Give me a week with this power, and I will see the very fabric of the universe.”
His words washed over Ash. His attention was fixed beyond the warlock, on the dark interior of the cage.
“Griff,” he breathed.
The griffin lay sprawled on the floor, wings splayed like broken fans. Many of the long golden feathers were charred and blackened. His eyes were closed, but his beak gaped open, his furred sides heaving for breath. His talons clenched spasmodically, raking grooves into the concrete.
Ash tried to contact him telepathically, but ran into the thorns of the binding. He couldn’t reach beyond his own mind. All he could do was clench his fists futilely on the bars imprisoning his friend.
“Yes, yes, very nice,” Corbin was saying to the other warlock with a touch of impatience. “Anything useful?”
The warlock shrugged. “Oh, I’ve already worked out how to increase the potency of our binding spells tenfold. Child’s play.” His golden gaze drifted back to his laptop screen again. “It’s all so obvious. Why did I never see it before?”
“You didn’t have the right source of power,” Corbin said. His lips thinned as he glanced at the unconscious griffin. “Ensure that you ration yourself, and give your familiar time to recover. It is a unique resource, not to be spent too quickly.”
“Yes, High Magus,” the warlock said vaguely, lost once more in his research. “I just need to see a little more…”
Corbin let out an irritated sigh, but didn’t reprimand the man further. He went on, and the binding forced Ash to fall into step behind him.
He already knew what they would find in the other cages.
John would have filled the entire courtyard in his native sea dragon form. Even in his human shape, he couldn’t stand straight in his cage. But that didn’t stop his frantic, maddened pacing, back and forth, hunched nearly double in the tiny enclosure. From the bruises striping his face and bare arms, Ash guessed that John must have thrown himself at the iron bars until forbidden to do so by his warlock.
The sea dragon’s indigo eyes met his, half-feral and agonized. John sang something in his own language, three chords of pure misery.
Ash’s heart constricted. John had already lost human speech. The sea dragon had been born to the freedom of the entire ocean, his soul more dragon than man. To be cruelly bound to an alien will, constrained and tied down…he would go mad even faster than a land shifter.
“Hold on, John,” Ash whispered as Corbin dragged him past. “Hold on.”
Dai was in the next cage, also in human form. He seemed to be holding out better than John, though he sat huddled with his arms around his knees, muscles knotted. At the sight of Ash, he scrambled to his feet, hastening to the front of his cage. The black runes of his binding stood out stark on his forearm.
“Commander.” Dai’s eyes were cat-slit and emerald, blazing with dragonfire. “Are you all right?“
Ash reached out to him, but they both jerked back, simultaneously dragged away from each other by their respective bindings. Dai hissed in pain, red scales rippling down the sides of his neck.
“No shifting, beast,” ordered a nearby warlock, without looking round. Bright orange flames wove around his upraised hands, gathering into a flaming sphere. Without warning, he hurled the fireball—not at Dai, but at another warlock across the courtyard.
A wall of water sprang up. The fireball hissed harmlessly into steam. The second warlock laughed as the wave splashed back to the ground.
“That all you got?” he taunted his colleague. “I told you a sea dragon would be more powerful. But noooo, you had to have the fire dragon.”
The first warlock dropped his hands, looking disgruntled. “My familiar’s still fighting me. Yours is just more docile. Once I’ve got mine properly tamed, then we’ll see who’s more powerful.”
A little way off, a dark-haired woman lounging against another cage rolled her eyes. “Boys.”
The water warlock caught sight of Corbin, and his smirk vanished. “High Magus!”
“Having fun?” Corbin asked acidly.
The first warlock whipped around. He straightened to attention, going pale. “Just, ah, practicing, High Magus. Like you told us to.”
“I ordered you to learn the capabilities of your familiars,” Corbin said in icy tones. “Not to attempt to vaporize each other. I am aware that the power is intoxicating, but if you cannot comport yourselves with dignity, there are plenty of acolytes eager to take your places. No matter how strong your familiars, I am quite capable of stripping them from you. Do not think to test my power. Understand?”
Both warlocks hung their heads. “Yes, High Magus,” they mumbled in unison.
Corbin fixed them with his stare for a moment more before turning to the dark-haired woman. “I trust you have been using your time more productively, Magus Serena?”
The witch smiled. Shaking back the sleeve of her robe, she held up her left hand. Her runes lit up with a starlight glimmer. Pursing her lips, she whistled a short, liquid trill.
An emerald hummingbird darted out of the overgrown creepers, its tiny body flashing jewel-bright in the sunshine. It flew in an unnaturally straight path straight to the witch’s hand, as though reeled in by an invisible fishing line. Its pinprick claws clutched her fingertip.
The woman stroked the trembling ruby throat. “Pretty thing,” she said fondly. “So intricate. So delicate.”
Pursing her lips again, she blew out a soft puff of breath, ruffling the brilliant feathers.
The hummingbird went rigid. It tumbled off her hand, instantly dead.
“So easy to break,” the witch said. The ground around her feet was littered with limp little bodies. She laughed, casting a scornful eye over at the two male warlocks. “And you fools thought this familiar’s power could only be used to heal.”
“Very good,” Corbin said, as the two warlocks glared daggers at the witch. “Though I remind you that I need you to be able to drop beasts without killing them.”
“I will keep practicing, High Magus.” The witch glanced into the cage behind her. “But this one has a strong will. It is difficult to maintain a light touch on the spell while also forcing enough power out of him.”
Behind her, inside the cage, the unicorn’s head hung low. Its white flanks trembled, lathered with sweat. Blood crusted the black runes winding around its right foreleg. Nonetheless, its ears were flat back against its skull, sapphire eyes blazing with hatred.
“You have a few days to break him,” Corbin told the witch. “We cannot risk delaying longer.”
“I understand, High Magus.” Turning back to the captive unicorn, the witch reached through the bars. The unicorn twitched, but was forced to hold still as she caressed its quiv
ering neck.
“Pretty thing,” the witch crooned. “Perhaps I’ll braid your mane.”
“Ash!”
He jerked at the sound of his name, managing to turn before Corbin’s will could tighten on him. Across the courtyard, Chase pressed against the bars of his cage, spitting out a chewed wad of fabric. The pegasus shifter’s mouth was bloodied and bruised. The torn remnants of a makeshift gag fluttered around his neck.
“Ash, I know where we are!” Chase yelled frantically. “It’s—”
Chase choked mid-sentence, as though a noose had tightened around his neck. He dropped to the ground, thrashing.
Corbin looked at the sky in utter exasperation. “How is that creature still talking?”
“Sorry, High Magus!” Another warlock ran up, out of breath. “I swear—I only left—for a second!”
“For Merlin’s sake, Barry, how hard can it be to lay a simple mute spell?” the witch said in irritation.
“He keeps breaking my command!” Black lightning sparked between the warlock’s fingers as he fought to control the struggling Chase. “And that’s the third gag he’s bitten through. You try shutting him up!”
The witch tilted her head. “Well, I could fuse his vocal cords. Or permanently paralyze his tongue…”
“Not until you have better control of your own familiar,” Corbin said. “And Adept, you must master the pegasus shifter. His powers are essential to ensure our success.”
“Yes, High Magus.” The warlock made a final throttling gesture, and Chase collapsed into unconsciousness. “I can do it. I just need a little more time.”
“Time is our most limited resource.” Corbin swept them all with his flinty gaze. “Even with my spells of concealment, our presence here will not go unnoticed for long. It is essential that you master your beasts. By any means necessary.”
His underlings bowed or nodded or muttered acknowledgement. The group split up, each warlock going back to his or her own familiar.
“Come,” Corbin said, without looking round at Ash. The binding tightened around his soul, leashing him to the warlock’s will. “We have work to do.”
