Magic Burn: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 2)

by Catherine Vale

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that, and from the tight expressions on Galen and Quell’s face, neither did they.

  The two dragons escorted Darius to a metal gate, one that looked like it could withstand a battering ram, its foot-long iron spikes covering it from top to bottom making it far less inviting than that valley of greenery and danger. We had spent the last hour trekking through it, on high alert for more Archeri and whatever else these magical mountains held. Thankfully, there were no further monsters to battle, but we arrived at the gates of the Brisbane clan’s castle exhausted. Drained. I could barely force my legs to move, but I pushed myself, hoping that I’d be granted access alongside Darius.

  “No supernaturals yet,” one of the sentries had barked at me, and that was that. We were to set up camp outside while Darius pleaded our case to the clan’s alpha. While the Sanctius clan dragons were our shifter allies, there were more of us supernaturals than there were of them. They had been just as quick to argue with the armed escorts, demanding we at least wait inside the castle walls. After the Sanctius dragons had heard what we supernaturals had gone through to get there on foot, no one was keen on waiting in the barren, rocky mountain pass while Darius chatted up the alpha inside. Brisbane security was having none of it, so here we were—waiting.

  Darius met my eye right before the gates swung closed. Although he said nothing to me, I sensed that he wanted me to stay strong. To watch the others. To not panic. He’d be back.

  He would always come back for me.

  I gave the slightest nod, hoping he saw it before the wrought iron doors slammed shut. Just being near them made me nauseous, and I instructed the militia’s fae population to set up camp as far from the doors as possible. If we had to be out here for the night, there was no sense in weakening some of my best fighters in the process.

  “What do we do now?” Galen whispered. He and Quell cornered me as the others started to set up camp, the rustle of pots and pans ever present with all the hungry bellies to feed.

  “We wait,” I told him. “That’s all we can do.”

  Something moved in the corner of my eye, and a quick glance up to the looming mountains around us, told me that not only were there eyes watching us from the castle’s walls, but there were dragon shifters situated all around us. Cloaked in gray, they perched on ledges, sizing us up, assessing our threat level, keeping a close eye on our activity.

  “They’re pretty damn fortified for this being a summer retreat,” Galen noted, and I nodded.

  “Khalon knew Abramelin was after them before we arrived.” Quell sighed. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the Brisbane clan had already started arming themselves for war too.”

  “Good,” I said as I continued counting the shifter scouts semi-hidden across the mountain landscape. “I hope they give Abramelin hell…”

  I jolted out of my light dozing when a hand clamped down on my shoulder, bolting upright and nailing whoever touched me, right in the nose.

  “Fuck, Kaye,” Darius groaned, falling back on his ass, hands over his nose, scowling at me. Heart racing, I scrambled across my temporary sleeping arrangements—a sleeping bag I’d enchanted to feel as downy and soft as my old mattress—and quickly worked on healing what I realized was a broken nose.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, infusing the break with white magic, willing the bones to mend. “It took me forever to get to sleep…”

  My brain shifted into high gear, and I suddenly realized he was back. Out of the castle. In our camp. Unharmed! Well, besides the broken nose, now healed. “When did you get here?”

  “Just now,” he said, brushing my hands away, when I continued fussing over him. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I shouldn’t have startled you.”

  “It’s okay,” I managed as we both climbed into my sleeping bag. It had been hours since I last saw Darius. We’d settled in for the night, with a few fires going and people watching the camp in shifts. I was supposed to be getting my much-needed sleep, but I’d been tossing and turning for at least an hour or two. I couldn’t have been asleep for long before Darius roused me, and as much as I wanted to poke fun at him, to hug him, maybe risk a kiss, I knew as leader of this militia, I had more pressing priorities. “What happened in there? Did you meet the alpha? Are they going to help us? Can we go inside? What—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He chuckled, calming me like a frightened animal. “Everything is fine. The alpha knew of Abramelin’s plans and has been arming his people accordingly. He says we can come inside in the morning.”

  “Why not now?”

  “He wants to tell the rest of the clan that we’re here. They know they’re in a war with supernaturals. The alpha wants to ease them into it, though he expressed his appreciation for our being here.”

  I tried not to glare at the castle and its barricade looming over our camp. “Huh.”

  “He’s a good man. A warrior and a true alpha,” Darius insisted. “He worries about his people, and unlike many dragon clans in the past, he wants to work with us rather than handling it on his own, in private. He’s let the other clans set up camp on the other side of the castle too. They’ll be allowed entry when we are.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “The other clans?”

  “Bears. Wolves.” He shrugged. “They’ve been arriving for a few days now, apparently. There’s another entryway. I guess we arrived at the back door.” He grinned like a little boy who’d been caught misbehaving when I frowned. “My bad. I thought I knew where I was going.”

  “More Sanctius dragons arrived while you were gone,” I told him before I could forget. “They said they were out-of-towners, the guys who don’t live with the clan. About thirty more.”

  “Excellent.” He scanned the dark campsite. “I hope my brothers thanked them in my stead.”

  “I did,” I said. “Hope that’s good enough.”

  “Better than good enough”, he replied. I exhaled sharply when he stole a kiss, his hand cupping my face. “Don’t take this the wrong way Kaye, but you look exhausted. Go back to sleep. We’ll talk about all this in the morning.”

  “But—”

  “You’re no good to anyone half-asleep. You’ll need your wits about you to play in the Brisbane clan court. They run themselves like a medieval kingdom… Even more so than we do.”

  I blinked sleepily, fascinated, and tried to ask more, but Darius hushed me with more soft kisses and slowly eased me back down onto the sleeping bag. My heart fluttered, my hands were desperate to roam his body—but the rest of me was too tired to lift them.

  “Sleep,” he murmured against my lips, then pressed a kiss to my forehead. I managed to catch the hem of his t-shirt when he started to leave.

  “Sleep with me,” I pleaded softly. His storm-gray eyes darted around the camp again, but he soon settled down next to me. Within seconds, I’d burrowed against his burly chest, breathing him in, his scent soothing the inner pangs of longing that had grown sharper, more painful in his absence. Arms wrapped around me, he stroked my hair, and for the first time all night, sleep came easily.

  I awoke to the sound of gunfire. Gunfire and screaming.

  At first, I’d thought it was part of my dream—because it would have fit right in. Shit had been hitting the fan for what felt like an eternity inside my head: war, strife, fire. Even in Darius’s arms, I hadn’t been able to escape the onslaught of nightmares.

  I groaned, shielding my eyes from an unrelenting sun, and rolled onto my back.

  “Get down!”

  The voice that issued the order wasn’t one of ours. My eyes shot open, and I instantly realized it wasn’t the sun that was nearly blinding me, but a flaming ball of magical something hurtling toward camp like a falling star.

  Even as panic sunk its icy claws into my heart, I still leaped to my feet, Darius was nowhere to be seen, and threw myself toward the nearest cluster of militia members. Just before impact, I cast a protective ward around the six of us—it was all I could muster in the heat of the moment
—and braced for impact.

  I had expected the magical canon ball to slam into the camp, butchering anyone who wasn’t protected by a shield of some kind. Instead, it smashed into the enormous wall barring outsiders from the Brisbane clan’s castle. I hazarded a glance up, watching as the wall crumbled—and the shifters on top plummeted into the rubble below.

  What a fucking thing to wake up to.

  The impact’s aftershocks rumbled through our camp, vibrating up into the mountains around us, in violent tremors that sent the guards scrambling for footing. When things somewhat settled down, I spied my dragon racing for the battered wall, a handful of supernaturals behind him, and they hastily dragged enormous chunks of wood, stone, and iron off the wounded dragon shifters that were trapped beneath it all.

  “Is it Abramelin?” one of the witches in my protective bubble asked.

  “Has he found us?”

  “What the hell was that?”

  “I know pretty much the same as you guys,” I said amidst the rapid-fire interrogation. “My best guess is yes, Abramelin has found us. His roving band of assholes are probably here to take out the Brisbane clan.”

  Though I had no idea if the Archmage knew that the dragons would have some serious back-up in the form of our militia and various other shifter clans. Hopefully, that was an unpleasant surprise.

  “Prepare for battle,” I hissed. I then dropped the ward and shot off toward Darius. Above, a shadow moved across the camp, like storm clouds rolling in to blot out the sun, only it wasn’t storm clouds. A quick glance up and my heart skipped a beat. “Gargoyles! Turn your spells upward!”

  A shit ton of gargoyles. Like biblical locusts swarming an Egyptian village.

  “Fuck me,” I whispered, hurling a disorientating hex into the sky. The gargoyle it hit plummeted to the ground, where militia members tore it apart. The scouts higher up had finally bounced back from the earth-shaking aftershocks and were giving the creatures hell with their guns—automatics, rifles, handguns. They were surprisingly effective.

  Although I was still mildly off-balance, considering I’d just woken up, I was pleased to see the militia sprang into action right away. The air was full of magic, colors shooting through the air and picking off gargoyles with more precision than I could have imagined.

  With Darius in sight and appearing uninjured, I whirled around and scanned the area for the other most important person in my life.

  “Catriona?!”

  “I’m fine!” she shouted from the far side of camp. I found her after a few seconds of looking, her hands bright with magic and Quinn by her side. He yanked off his shirt and jeans, and within seconds his human form swelled into a massive navy-blue dragon. His color contrasted sharply with Darius’s, but it was still beautiful. The colors rippled with each slight movement, reminding me of gasoline spilled across pavement on a stormy day—a rainbow of color, pinks and purples and dark greens. Blink, and it would be missed.

  Dragons really were the most spectacular creatures. Not just for their colors—but for their enormous wingspans and fire-breathing, which Quinn put to use immediately. He shot off, the jump making the ground shake again, and the gusts of air drawn up from his wings nearly sent the gunmen toppling off their perches. I wasn’t sure why none of them had shifted yet, but within moments of Quinn’s flight, about ten more dragons flew out of the castle, over what was left of their exterior wall, and joined the fight. Gargoyles scattered, letting in the sunrise, but the soft blue dawn of a new day was soon overtaken with flame.

  “Are you okay?” Darius called out to me, and I hurried to his side, checking him over for injuries. Although he was a bit dirty, and some of the bits of rock and wood must have nicked his face judging by the small scrapes, he seemed relatively unharmed.

  “Are you?” I still asked anyway, letting him assess me just as I’d done to him. “I’m okay. What the fuck?”

  “Abramelin,” was all he needed to say, and I nodded, my mind chugging along at a thousand miles a second as I considered all the things I needed to do in that moment as the leader of the militia. However, behind me, Quell and Galen seemed to have a handle on things just fine, and for once, I was glad to see them taking charge.

  “How did he find us?”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Darius said gruffly, walking us away from the carnage of what was left of the exterior wall. Behind him, supernaturals continued to pull the wounded out, and I briskly ordered a few fae I knew were adept at healing, Catriona included, to tend to the injured. They snapped to work in a second, Catriona blitzing across the camp with her fae speed to join the others.

  “We have to stop him.”

  “He’ll want to breach the castle,” Darius told me. “It goes deep into the mountain… There are hundreds of clan members down there, Kaye. We can’t let them get past the camp.”

  “Then those dragons better keep the gargoyles at bay,” I said, swallowing my panic at the thought of how many innocent, non-warrior beings resided inside that structure. No wonder they had such hardcore security everywhere. “Do the other clans know?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Then let’s get to it,” I managed, sounding more confident than I felt. “Just like before. Me and you. We got this, Darius.”

  “Kaye.” He grabbed me before I could take off running across our destroyed camp, ready to join the others. Across the way, there was a gap between the two mountains. Catriona and I had explored it last night: it opened to another huge gorge within the mountain range. Unlike the previous valley with the Archeri, this was just rock and rubble and loose gravel, with a sea of scraggly yellowish-green, thorny plants everywhere. Not exactly an ideal battleground, but what place ever was?

  “What?” I was already panting, the adrenaline fueling my body, that silly inner voice calling for the blood of any who would harm a dragon—my dragon, in particular.

  “We do this together,” he murmured, his hand tightening around my wrist. I glanced down to where we were joined, then nodded.

  “Together.” I wanted to kiss him, to hug him—just in case I never had the chance again. The sheer number of gargoyles above, paired with the sounds of imminent battle through the narrow passageway between the mountains in the valley beyond—it sounded like the first attack on the hive. This wasn’t some petty hit.

  This was the real deal.

  And there was no time for one last kiss.

  There was no time to even consider it.

  We tore off after half the militia, led by Quell, who were ready to join the fight outside. Behind us, Galen kept those more magically inclined back, projecting wards over the castle, but even as the first went up, out of the corner of my eye, I spied a witch on a broomstick pummeling it with an array of powerful spell-work. Each time a blast of light hit, it was like a bomb connecting with its target. I couldn’t even fathom using my heightened senses here. I’d go insane.

  “Kaye!” I tried to peer over the militia at the sound of Quell calling my name. He shot up, wings out and flapping so fast they were just two blurs on either side of him. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Your brother!”

  “Zayne…” I pushed through anyone in my way. I’d been so preoccupied with the now, that I hadn’t even had time to worry about where my brother was and why he hadn’t arrived at the Brisbane clan’s castle around the same time we did. As I squeezed through the passageway, wide enough to fit about six people across, but currently inundated with supernaturals trying to get into the fray in the valley, a moment of crippling panic gripped me. What if Quell was trying to tell me Zayne was hurt? What if he was dead?

  The panic dispersed as quickly as it appeared when Zayne stumbled into the entrance of the narrow passage.

  “Zayne!”

  I fell into his arms for a moment, hugging him tighter than I’d ever held him before, fighting back tears. Over his shoulder, all hell had broken loose: the chaos I’d woken up to was nothing by comparison. There had to be hundreds of Abramelin�
�s forces storming the valley—but there were hundreds of shifters, along with our supernatural militia, there to push them back.

  Magic thickened the air, painting it with broad strokes of color as both sides flung spells back and forth, ground forces coming to blows with weaponry of all kinds. Fleeting beams of sunlight glinted off swords. Gunfire rang out in an already piercingly loud atmosphere. Arrows sliced through flashes of magic.

  “Oh, my god,” I breathed. “This is madness.”

  “This is war,” Zayne whispered back, “but I am glad to see you’re okay.”

  For now. I almost said it, but I knew it wouldn’t do either of us any good. Instead, I pulled free from his embrace and looked him over. While his face had a bit of grizzled scruff to it, he appeared unscathed, though definitely tired. Given that the Sanctius clan held us up for obvious reasons, I suspected Zayne and his group made it to a greater number of shifter clans than we did.

  “When did you get here?”

  “About ten minutes ago,” he told me. “We received your message yesterday and had to make some last-minute adjustments, but we brought many different shifter clans with us. Paired with yours and the ones who were already here, I think we stand more than a fighting chance.”

  “And Abramelin?” I scanned the skies as supernaturals from my militia darted around us, racing down the gentle slope toward the unfolding battle in the valley below. I didn’t know what I expected, but I pictured the Archmage hovering there on top of a black cloud, watching everything unfold.

  “He isn’t here, as far as I know.”