by K. F. Breene
“Now blow it up, Penny,” Reagan said, letting go of Emery’s hand. “Then run like bloody hell.”
34
I didn’t wait, and I didn’t hang around. I shoved in a combination of Reagan’s fire, my own blend of magical heat, and Emery’s lightning, then I turned and sprinted.
“Wrong way.” A large, strong hand gripped my upper arm and whipped me around. Cahal gave me a little shove. “Now run.”
“Go, go, go, go,” Reagan yelled as she sprinted back toward the trees.
The shifters and vampires, temporarily short on enemies as the large group behind the ward readied their spell, watched in clear confusion as we ran through them, away from the mages. Darius and Vlad were the first to follow. Roger led his lot after them.
“This way,” Reagan said, turning left and running along the tree line.
Seek and destroy.
“We have a—”
Reagan whipped out her sword and stuck it up into the air, cutting through the spell filtering down.
“You got it,” I finished.
“Where are we going?” Emery asked, keeping up with me as I barely made pace with Reagan. Cahal loped easily by our side, and his perpetual ease was starting to get on my nerves.
I wiped sweat from my face. “Following her.”
Darius caught up to Reagan and looked at her.
“They took forever to get organized,” Reagan said as an explosion of air, sound, and color blasted out at us, the ward and all the spells attached to it coming down in intense splendor. The force lifted me off my feet and threw me. Emery landed before I did, and I crashed into him. A wolf went rolling past. Then a warthog.
“It is really weird fighting with shifters.” I pushed myself off the ground as Cahal swung up his legs and hopped from his back to his feet in a fluid motion. “Definitely starting to get annoying.”
“We need to keep moving,” Reagan said, pushing to her feet. “The ward is down, by the way. In case you missed it.”
She turned and ran for the compound as an undertow of power shook my bones. The force of the intent fused my jaw shut and tensed every muscle in my body.
STUN!
I staggered, almost fell. Emery steadied me.
“Loo—” I pointed behind us. Shifters and vampires lingered back there, taking up the rear. They’d get hit first. “Nnnn!”
My mouth still not working properly, I dragged Reagan out of the trees and into the clearing as the magic thundered down on us.
“Fucking turdswallop!” she said, dropping her sword and shoving her hands out in front of her.
“Get behind us,” Emery yelled at the vamps and shifters. “Hurry!”
A fog of thick, dense magic moved out from the compound, slow and strangely intelligent. It would track us, I knew. Sure enough, after a brief pause, it started drifting our way in no real hurry. No plans to dissipate until it met its mark.
“Fire,” Reagan said, her eyes sparking. “Fire!”
“Your fire or my fire?” I asked, leeching some of her magic. Fusing it with mine. Spinning a weave.
Emery pushed in beside me, working with my efforts. Taking what I created and building it. Shaping it. Basically, bedazzling it.
“Anything,” Reagan said. “Everything. It needs heat.”
“And life,” Emery said. “You were right, Penny. This organization is working with death. Decay. Magic works in opposites.”
“So much for the theory that they’d only use spells from a book,” I said, a trickle of sweat running down my back.
“This is from a book,” Reagan said. “Everything they do is from a book. And I sure as hell hope we don’t destroy the building it’s housed in before I get to see the beast.”
“Opposites,” Emery said, his face screwed up in concentration, the artificial lighting of the compound barely reaching us. “Balancing spells makes them stronger. Harder to break. Clearly the originator of the spells they are using didn’t know that rule. I didn’t know that rule until I met you.”
“I don’t understand how. It’s pure logic.” I added another layer to the spell, feeling the beast bear down on us. Fire rolled between Reagan’s fingers. She was going to use us as a cover to openly use her own magic.
“We can do it without that, Reagan,” I said, knowing that the right people would know mages couldn’t make fire like hers. Not even dual-mage naturals. Not even angel-touched dual-mage naturals.
“No, you can’t,” she said softly. “I made a choice to be here. So if my old man comes for me, you better back me up.”
“Done,” Emery said.
“How horrible is he?” I asked.
The beast of a spell had us in its sights, though I had no idea how it had identified us. The magical fog sped up, thundering toward us now, churning power and malevolence.
“Now!” Reagan yelled.
Emery and I shot off our spell, horribly small in comparison to the behemoth bearing down on us. It hit the mages’ spell, turning and spinning within it. Fire erupted around it, a great flame that then reduced in height but not width, spreading across the underside of the spell like flame crawling along a ceiling. Little sputters and sparks shot out of it, licking up the sides. Thank goodness we had Reagan.
“In this, you have excelled,” Cahal said.
“Not now, peanut gallery.” Reagan made a circle in the air with her finger. “Let it work. Let’s go.”
“Wait, you don’t—we don’t need to stay and—”
Reagan cut me off by shoving me along. “Let’s go. Let’s circle around them while they think we’re dying a horrible death.”
As Reagan ran past the vampires, Vlad turned and watched her go, looking awestruck.
He clearly knew what she was, and he clearly wanted her.
I did not like that at all.
“Come on, Turdswallop, you can pick a fight with that elder later.” Emery plucked at my sleeve to get me moving.
I had no idea how he’d read my thoughts.
Once again, we ran through the shifters and vampires, the numbers, thankfully, not terribly thinned by the latest assault. Just as thankfully, they hadn’t become a disorganized horde—they waited for their respective leaders to start after us before filing in.
Reagan sprinted for the Guild compound, laid bare without that horrible spell suffocating the life from it. As we entered the compound, it felt as if it were taking a big breath.
Two mages ran from behind a corner of a building, harried and frantic, glancing over at us and staggering. One fell; the other regained her feet, turned, and ran the other way.
Emery zipped off a spell, catching the one trying to get away. It hit her in the back, making her arch and fall forward. Reagan was on the other, a knife in one hand, and a sword in the other.
“What’s the plan?” I yelled, because any sense of direction was better than running around with our heads cut off.
The beast of a spell, now half the mass it had been, moved toward us still, stopping where we’d turned and slowly changing direction to follow us. The fire continued to eat it alive, defusing it a little at a time. Still, it wasn’t gone yet, and the shifters at the back of our group knew it. They ran forward, spreading out around us, fur for miles.
Darius moved up with Reagan, looking at her. She shrugged and glanced back, their communication silent.
“Literally anything, you guys,” I said, bouncing from one foot to the other. “Anything at all.”
Emery, still holding Plain Jane, handed over my phone. A text message glowed on the screen.
I read it aloud. “‘Cut off the head. Sweep out the legs. Reap what you sowed.’
“What the hell does that mean?” I yelled at the screen.
“Penelope Bristol, just because you are in a battle, does not mean you can start swearing,” Reagan said in a terrible impersonation of my mother. “What’d she say?”
One of the wolves started to whine.
The intent of that beast of a spell throbbed
into my back. “Yeah. We gotta move.”
“Head—the High Chancellor,” Emery said, grabbing my hand and pulling me along. “The feet must be the peons at the bottom. Though I’m not sure why that would be the case. Why wouldn’t we go for the upper tier? The power players?”
“I’m sure they’ll get hit in the crossfire.” Reagan started a jog, moving right through the center of the compound.
“Split up,” Emery said, motioning away our reinforcements. “Their forces need to be pulled apart. Fractured. Take away their— Oh. Cut off the head. Cut off their ability to think. We need to separate the horde from the mages who’re orchestrating these big spells.”
“Raise chaos,” I said softly.
“On it.” Reagan picked up speed, and I ran after her. There was one surefire way to turn everything on its ear—Reagan and I trying to work together.
Darius kept pace as well, but Vlad peeled off, joined by another vampire.
“I don’t know that it’s wise to let him roam around on his own,” I murmured as we turned a corner.
“Now you’re thinking like a true magical person,” Reagan said, slamming on the jets. “Found some bad guys.”
Ten mages stood facing the opposite direction. At Reagan’s voice, they turned, all holding ingredients, magic billowing around them. Without warning, Reagan took off running, sprinting right at them. Darius was with her a moment later, claws out like Wolverine, mouth open.
I shot a spell ahead of them, felling three mages. Emery took out two more before I felt a tingling at my back. A haze clouded my vision, interrupted by a red spell headed straight toward me…but when I blinked, it evaporated.
Emery pushed me to the side and Cahal grabbed me around the waist and ran, bumping up against the wall and shielding me with his body. A mage popped out from around the corner of a building up the way, got a shot off, and ducked back down. It was the same color I’d seen. The same event.
“He can feel traces of my ability to read intent, and I can see traces of his premonitions,” I said, momentarily tingly inside. That lasted a nanosecond. I elbowed Cahal and pushed out of his grasp. “I was fine. Save it for when I’m actually in danger.”
I darted out and zipped off a quick spell to down the last guy in Reagan and Darius’s fight before catching up with Emery, who was running around the corner after the other mage. A shifter got there first, sneaking up behind the mage and launching at his neck.
A lion’s roar seemed to shake the earth beneath our feet. Another deep-throated roar followed. Wolves took up the call from the other direction. That crazy warthog ran by, alone. If there wasn’t more than one confused warthog, then Roger really needed to have a talk with that guy.
“Keep going,” Emery said, running toward the records room that we’d broken into before.
Mages jumped out and spoke magic to life. Before they could get it realized, I countered their spell. Emery followed up with a spell to take them all down. From the other side, three more mages broke capsules and shot them at us. Reagan jumped in front and slashed with her sword, killing the spells before yanking out her gun and shooting the casters.
“I’m pretty sure that’s cheating,” I said, feeling winded and knowing we still had a ways to go.
“Cheat to win.” Reagan ran through the middle of the quad, and two vampires skirted in to join Darius. Marie and Moss, if I had to guess, though I was no expert at deciphering monster forms. Shifters filed in behind, in packs or alone, depending on the animal. One of them was limping.
Magic throbbed somewhere to my right.
Obliterate!
“They aren’t trying to capture us anymore,” I said, grabbing a hold of Reagan and pulling her back. “They’ve got another monster spell brewing.”
“Unless they are making it while having a parade, this is a different group than the last,” Reagan said, clearly better at directions than I was.
“Cut off the head,” Emery said, marching forward with determination. “Swipe their feet. Ruin their concentration and careful planning with absolute chaos.”
“Take them from behind,” I said, adrenaline running hard through my body. Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky started to vibrate. Emery had tucked Plain Jane into his utility belt, but even though it wasn’t on my person, I felt the deep drumbeat of its power pulse to life.
“This is where it gets hairy,” Emery said. He grabbed my upper arms and stared down into my eyes. “If things look bleak, if you don’t think we can make it through, you run, do you hear me? You let Cahal take you out of here.”
“No.”
He shook me a little, a deep pain moving in his eyes. “Please, Penny. For me. Get yourself clear. Get yourself safe. Live, Penny. I need you to live.”
“You will be pampered. Looked after,” Cahal said. At my hard stare, he did the first human thing I’d seen him do. He put his palm to his chest and, with wide eyes, said, “Not by me.”
I barked out laughter. I couldn’t help it. The super-old druid, who’d seen it all, did not want to be shackled to a nut case like me.
“Join the club,” Reagan said, and I realized I’d said that out loud.
“Penny,” Emery said again, pleading. Willing to sacrifice himself for me. Wanting me to live above all things.
My heart twisted in my chest. I held his gaze, everything in me breaking.
The world went silent for a moment, but my resolve only strengthened.
“No,” I said, tired of other people telling me what to do. Tired of living a life someone else had chosen for me, and a path someone else had made me walk. Now I was carving out my own future, and I would choose the direction my feet walked. “You stay, I stay. We’re a team. We’ll finish this together.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but a knowing gleam lit those beautiful Milky Way eyes. A grin tickled his lips. “Watch out, world, here comes Turdswallop.”
“Why does everyone I know always ruin great moments?”
He grabbed my cheeks in his strong hands and smashed his lips to mine.
“Come on, Romeo and Juliet, we have a battle to start,” Reagan said.
Emery pulled away, storm clouds raging in his eyes. Wildness rose in him, unruly and unchained. Electricity pooled between us before spinning higher and spreading out, joined by Reagan’s complex and beautiful magic. Shifters had gathered, waiting for direction, and the hair on their backs stood on end. Vampires shifted in their monster form and clicked their claws in anticipation.
“Let’s cut off some heads,” Emery shouted, leading the charge.
35
“It has taken them this long to get this one spell in motion,” Emery said, cutting right and running down the side of a building. The magic grew to our left. Had we kept going straight, we would’ve run right into the building Obliterate spell. “The team that already loosed their spell is probably regrouping with another. They’ll do it in shifts. After we take this spell down, we need to cut out the leader. We have to do that for each of them.”
“Get oder roup,” Darius said through his mouth of fangs. He needed to practice more to speak as well as Vlad in his monster form.
“Get the other group,” Emery said quietly as he turned to one of the shifters in the group. “Get people, doesn’t matter who, on the first group of spell workers we encountered. Cut them down now, while they are rebuilding.”
The wolf darted away, two reinforcements with him.
“Let’s go around this way,” Emery said, running across a walkway and over dusty ground that might have once been grassy. I felt a pull to the next building. Confused, I glanced down, not sure what I was feeling or why. “Here we go.”
I pushed the weird feeling away and refocused, slowing down with everyone else. My heart quickened as I once again sensed the magnitude of the spell that was brewing. Obliterate. Emery and Reagan were both looking at me.
“How close is it to being done?” Emery asked.
“Close,” I whispered. “It’s a monster, like the last one.”
Reagan looked at Emery with a flat expression, then me. She winked.
“No, no, what are you—” She was already running around the corner with a sword in hand, and Darius took off after her. “Dang it, I hate when she does that.”
I felt a familiar hand grab my arm. I sent a pulse of electricity through my body, through the hand, and into the stack of man attached.
Cahal flinched away and staggered.
Don’t mess with a woman on a mission.
Emery and I followed Reagan at a fast run, moving straight toward the spell casters, and though I wanted to skid to a stop and about-face, I turned up the speed instead. There they were—another large group of mages, waiting in a line, staring up at nothing, hands full of ingredients and no feelings in their hearts. They were magical drones, attempting to let loose a spell they probably scarcely understood.
Even as we stood there, the spell rose and swelled, becoming a force unto itself. It puffed up and hovered above everyone, seeking its target.
A target that was among them.
I kicked the first guy, punched the second, and smashed three more with a thick weave that sliced right through them. Reagan hacked through their ranks with her sword, looking up with tight eyes, knowing that thing would drift right back down at any moment.
“Gun. This would be a good time for my mother and her gun.” I speared someone with magic and barely dodged an attack by someone else—a rare mage who was thinking for herself. I knocked that woman out, because I didn’t think she truly belonged here, not with a brain of her own, and magically slashed another.
It turned out I was excellent at close combat, magical style. Thank you, Reagan, for those many horrible hours of training.
Someone hollered as they flew over the crowd, and suddenly Cahal was by my side. The guy he’d thrown skimmed the spell above us. His holler turned into a garbled scream before cutting off. He fell down in a clump, the area that had been in the fog eaten away.
