Page 24

Chapter 24

Andy

M y magic swelled within me, ready to be directed and put to good use. All around me, I could feel my friends and lovers doing the same. Clearly the leader of the cult could sense the magic, and the rapid shift in our intentions. Her taunting smile fell, and she pointed a finger at us, shouting for her people to attack. Her words were lost to me, drown out by the pounding in my ears—my raging heart and my swelling magic.

I had fought before. Little skirmishes. Serious, yes, but nothing on this scale. This was the first time in my life I had called on my magic knowing with absolute certainty that I was going to kill someone. The leader of the cult was a dead woman walking.

The surrounding hordes of cultists and their slaves rushed us, closing the circle around us, flinging magic and brandishing weapons. The High Ophanim raised his flaming sword and his glowing wings higher and let out a blood-curdling yell that would have been right at home in some human story about apocalypse and glorious wrath. His people took to the skies, darting down to attack from above in a terrifying dance of death. But they were wildly outnumbered now. And there were powerful witches in the cult’s ranks.

The big town square in front of the SA building was a writhing mass of SA zombies, Jacki’s crew, rebels, cultists, angels, and… us—a solid core of powerful magical beings at the center of it all. I quickly thought through our options, even while half my attention was taken up by dodging magical attacks and trying to ignore the carnage that was taking place before my eyes. A severed arm rained down from above, the hand still tightly gripping a flaming sword. The flames extinguished as the limb hit the ground in front of me, the magical sword fading altogether shortly after, leaving behind an angel’s arm.

I swallowed down bile and shook off the horror. There wasn’t time to be shocked. To be soft. I needed to move. To do whatever I could to make sure the next body part I stumbled over didn’t belong to me or someone I loved. My hands shook as I crafted my first ever killing curse and lobbed it at the nearest cultist.

It struck true, catching the man by surprise as he slashed at a rebel fighter—a weaker sylph. I watched my magic steal the life from the cultist’s eyes and something inside me died with him as he crumpled to the ground.

Darkness erupted at the far side of the square, smoky black tentacles of terror unfurling from the air, reaching for misguided, power-hungry cult witches and dropping them to their knees with unhinged screams. Ambrose.

Corpses rose to face the zombies, another delicious wave of dark power reanimating the fallen cultists and turning them against their still friends—living and dead. Dyre, off to my left, his red hair rising in a wind only he could feel, his eyes gone completely black with wraith magic.

A black shape darted by me with the brush of soft fur and powerful muscle, coiled to strike. River leapt past me in Jaguar form, a deadly shadow that appeared and disappeared as he did something with time and luck magic to leapfrog through the battle, wicked claws and teeth leaving a trail of blood and death behind him.

I caught sight of Niamh and Zhong off to my right, fighting back-to-back with claw, fang, and blade, Zhong’s enormous wings sometimes darting out to knock enemies off their feet.

Elijah paced behind Dyre. His own flaming sword was drawn, but he barely had to use it, as his angelic soul magic twined with wraith power, halting people in their tracks and causing them to fall to their knees and await the killing blow.

I tore my eyes away from that, not letting myself think about how much Elijah would grieve his actions later.

Heat flared somewhere behind me, and the increased volume of the screams told me Aahil was gleefully setting people on fire with jinn flames that would consume them in seconds.

My mind was frozen. Paralyzed. I tried to recall the spells Dyre had taught me. Or ones I had learned myself over the years. Things other than the awful killing spell. Spells to stun, to cause sleep or stupor. Magic tingled in my fingertips, but the words, and gestures, and intent—the craft of spell weaving—wouldn’t come.

All I could see was the way my spell had stolen that cultist’s life. Severed body parts. Reanimated corpses. The screams as people burned alive. I shook my head, trying to clear my mind and focus. I was a Lovell, damn it. This was kind of our thing. It should be second nature. Why was I freezing up?

A spell hit my shoulder, and pain lanced through my entire body. I dropped to one knee and sucked in a sobbing breath. “Son of a bitch !” I muttered, pushing myself to my feet and jumping out of the way just in time to avoid a more direct hit that I was sure I wouldn’t survive.

Focus. I had to focus. Muttering, I flung a stun spell back at the witch who had just tried to incapacitate me with pain. My spell hit and the witch fell to the ground, alive but out of the fight. I could do this. I could avoid killing.

Someone stepped on the fallen cultist, and I turned away. There was only so much I could do for people who were trying to murder us and anyone who stood between them and power.

A watery sphere filled my vision. Hasumi, shielding the twins while the weaver used their water magic to drown anyone who got too close. “Hasumi!” I shouted, moving closer to their bubble of protection. “If you can take them out of here, do it!”

“I can’t carry them both at the same time,” their fluid voice replied as the watery shield stretched out to encompass me, drawing me inside with Hasumi and the children. “I can take them one at a time.”

I met those turquoise eyes and nodded, understanding what they were asking. “I’ll put up a shield and stay with them until you can come back for the other one.”

The twins were glancing between me and Hasumi with wide, frightened eyes. The girl lifted her chin and gave me a defiant glare. “You can’t leave us here with strangers!”

Hasumi turned their focus away from the battle raging outside our watery bubble and knelt to look the twins in the eyes. “I would never leave you with strangers,” they said gravely. “But Oleander is no stranger. She is a piece of my heart. And she will protect you with everything she has.”

The little boy gripped Hasumi’s shirt sleeve and gave me a wary look before looking up at the water weaver with pleading eyes. “We can’t stay here. If the bad people get us again, they’ll suck out our magic some more.” His bottom lip wobbled and my heart clenched.

“They’ve been—” I started, but I clammed up when Hasumi met my eyes and gave me a sad, curt nod. “Goddess damn them all to the hells,” I muttered. The cultists had somehow been stealing these kids’ magic—their innate spark. All question of how they’d managed that aside… it was beyond foul.

“Hasumi, you have to get them out of here,” I said again, anger lacing my voice. “Take them someplace safe, and stay with them until this is over.”

The water weaver nodded. “I can only take one of you at a time,” they said calmly to the children, as if a war wasn’t waging outside our little bubble. “We will find a safe place, and I will come back for the other one. One of you will have to come with me and wait alone for a moment while I come back to fetch your sibling. And one of you will have to wait here with Andy until I can come back for you.”

The little girl squared her shoulders and stepped forward almost immediately, her chin held high, and fire in her eyes. Goddess, she was scrappy. It made me want to hug her so hard. Made me want to promise this precious little thing that no one would ever hurt her again. Not on my fucking watch.

“I’ll go first,” she said as bravely as she could, only a little tremble in her voice giving away her fear. “Sky doesn’t like to be alone.”

Hasumi smiled softly at her and nodded. Then they reached out a hand. “Come then, Moon. I will be as quick as I can.”

I met Hasumi’s eyes and nodded, reaching out to pull the little boy close to me. “I’ll guard him. I promise.”

My shield went up the moment Hasumi’s came down. Then the water weaver was gone, taking the brave little girl with him. I felt the little boy’s shoulders shake as I scooped him up and held him close. “It’s okay,” I soothed. “Hasumi will be back before you know it, and you’ll be with your sister, away from all this scary stuff.”

He hiccupped with little sobs and buried his face against my shirt. My heart nearly broke in half. Fucking power-hungry supremacists. I could feel his ribs and his knobby spine through his thin shirt as I clutched him to me. This sweet little boy was a powerful witch. One of their own people. And yet they had terrorized and abused him and his sister, used them like disposable tools, for the magic that dwelled inside them. My rage was a hot, bubbling monster in my belly. I wouldn’t feel bad the next time I used a killing spell against those fuckers.

I patted Sky’s back as I focused on maintaining the shield around us. We were near the edge of the fighting, and I wanted to move us even further away, but I was afraid if I changed locations while Hasumi was away, they would come back for the boy and end up in the middle of the fight instead.

Magic sizzled off my shield, mostly misplaced, bouncing off other targets first or missing its intended target and hitting the shield instead. But soon, I felt a more targeted attack gnawing at the edges of our protection.

The smirking man who had been standing at the prime’s right hand during the initial confrontation appeared before me, separated from me and Sky by the thin, shimmering barrier of my magic. He sneered at the boy I held in my arms.

“There you are, you little maggot. Hiding with this fat-assed disgrace to witchkind. Come on over here, kid. Come back to the people who’ve taken such good care of you and that bratty sister of yours.”

I snarled at the oily, offensive tone in his voice. There was some kind of compulsory magic there, but it didn’t survive past my shield. Sky gripped me tighter and let out a little whimper. “Please don’t let him take me,” he pleaded in a thin whisper. Clearly, the man before us had a completely different definition of “taking good care of” kids than I did.

“Go to hell, you sick fuck,” I snarled at him. Lifting a hand, I flicked a painful stun spell his way, the magic crossing through my shield without disrupting it, a handy trick that Dyre had taught me early on in my hurried magical training.

The asshole countered the spell before it could do any damage, and his creepy eyes roved over my body. “Ha. You don’t even know how to use that tool you’re holding onto right now,” he scoffed. “Best hand him over before I take him by force and show you how it’s done.”

I scoffed. My shields were incredibly strong. A point of pride for me. There was no way he was getting through, even after all the magic I had expended earlier. All I had to do was hold out until Hasumi got here. Then the little boy—Sky—would be safe from this lunatic once and for all.

And I could unleash a killing spell without fear of dropping my shield or traumatizing the poor baby in my arms.

“You’re a dead man,” I whispered to the grinning cultist. “Living on borrowed time.”

He just grinned back at me, A rebel charged in from the side, a fae cross of some sort, tall and slender, and wielding a long, shining blade. The cultist deftly deflected the blow, grabbed the man by the hair, and disarmed him with a smoothness that was both awe-inspiring and terrifying. I watched in horror as he slit the man’s throat and cupped his hand under the spray, gathering the blood for black magic.

“Shit,” I muttered, bracing myself, trying my best to bolster the shield that kept him away from Sky.

But blood magic was ridiculously potent. My shield fizzled and my magic screamed in protest as he lifted his blood-coated hand and punched through my barrier, chanting words that made my teeth ache and my head ring.

Foul. Wrong.

But stronger than what I was working with.

The shield fell and I lashed out, the killing curse boiling on my lips. I would not let this psychopath get his hands on a child. Especially not this child, who had clearly already suffered at his hands.

The deranged jackass managed to deflect the curse with nothing more than a pained grunt, still powered up with the residual blood magic he had just cast.

I backed away, drawing my magic closer, ready to counter whatever nasty spell he tried to send my way. My focus was zeroed in on the threat before me. But I expected magic. I didn’t expect him to dart forward and make a grab for Sky.

I turned, trying to break the guy’s grip on Sky’s little arm. He punched me in the face, and I staggered, my grip loosening for just a second in surprise. That was as long as it took for the madman to rip the child out of my arms.

Sky’s scream of terror was down out by my own scream of rage. I lurched forward, but just then, Hasumi reappeared. The man when down, gurgling and gasping, eyes bulging as water filled his lungs. Hasumi deftly snatched up the little boy as the cultist fell over and scrabbled in the dirt, his hands gripping his throat as if he could will air into his own lungs.

With a curt nod, Hasumi disappeared again, taking Sky with him.

I let out a ragged breath of relief. Then I realized I was in the middle of a raging battle and forced my attention back to my surroundings.

Too late.

I half turned and saw the witch standing behind me. The O’Leary prime and leader of the cult. I had just enough time to register her feral smile, as an orb of pulsing red and black flew from her outstretched hand and hit me square in the chest with the force of a semi-truck.

She was waiting the whole time, I had time to think. He was just a distraction. Then the pain and blackness swamped me, and I fell.