Page 25 of Cursed (Witchbane #8)
They sounded confident that their magic was up to the challenge, boosting Seth’s hopes. But even with his powerful friends and their helpers outside, Seth knew better than to take a win for granted.
The energy suddenly shifted, like a fresh wind sweeping away a dark, fetid cloud. Seth could feel the fundamental change.
“Anchors aweigh,” Nash said over the headset, confirming Seth’s guess.
Nash did it. We were right. The ship’s wheel was the anchor, and he’s destroyed it.
“They’ve knocked out the anchor, and I can feel the music magic,” Teag said. “It’s building, and within reach when we need it.”
That helped since Vernon had his coven, who at the very least, served as an energy source for the witch-disciple. Seth doubted Vernon trusted witches of serious power to be in his inner circle, but even those with limited abilities and the right spell could be a danger.
“He’s coming,” Evan warned, and Seth’s group stopped in their tracks.
“We welcome our honored guest.” Vernon stepped into the warded circle and approached where Pax hung, motionless.
“I know you’re awake,” he said to Pax, who did not respond. “Pretend all you like; you’ll give us what we came for before we’re through.”
Vernon slowly turned in place until he locked his gaze on the drone. “Is that you, Evan Malone? There’s not much time left for you. Goodbye.”
Seconds later, Evan spoke through Seth’s headset. “Drone’s down. Audio from your team only.”
“Just play. We’ll handle the rest.” Seth told him and ended the connection to Evan.
“Vernon saw the drone and took it out. We’re blind. Sorry,” Seth told the others.
While the loss of the drone was inconvenient, he wasn’t surprised that Vernon had sensed the drone’s presence. Seth had switched off Evan’s audio feed since it would be awful for him to hear the battle without actually knowing what was going on.
They moved in fast and hard. Rowan lashed a streak of fire against the wraith, which lunged toward them from the shadows, slipping through the warded circle that kept Seth and his friends from reaching Vernon.
Vernon and six witches were safe within the circle that held Pax, and from the witch-disciple’s expression, he seemed to be relishing the confrontation.
“Watch out!” Seth shouted as the wraith dodged the flames and headed toward Teag.
Teag pivoted and hurled a handful of iron filings from his pocket at the creature, which screamed as the metal touched it, shrinking in on itself just enough for Rowan to attack again.
The wraith shrieked as Rowan’s hand-lightning struck it, sending it up in flames.
One down , Seth thought.
Rowan and Teag brought the warded circle down.
Before the others could react, Teag brandished a complex piece of spelled weaving, adding a flash of magicked light to make them look at him.
Once they did, the web of the woven piece wouldn’t let them look away and knocked them out.
Teag bound and gagged them, hoping that Vernon could not draw on their power with them unconscious.
Seth shot one of the guards in the chest, and Rowan’s lightning struck the second guard, dropping him to the floor. Vernon snarled, and he motioned for the witches to attack.
Ghosts surged from everywhere at once. Some went after the two witches inside the circle with Vernon, while others attacked the remaining six coven members who had not been hit in the first round and were hiding among the equipment.
The coven members might not be as strong as Vernon, but they possessed enough magic to defend themselves and to present a threat to both the ghosts and the rescuers.
One of the coven members sent a streak of fire at Caden, who leaped out of the way, rolled, and came back up firing his gun. His bullet caught the witch in the chest, sending him backward with a growing bloodstain on his shirt.
Seth dodged a ball of blue energy lobbed by another of the witches and shot back, hitting the man in the shoulder. Unlike the wraith, the witches were flesh and blood adversaries, and mortal, as they sometimes forgot.
With two of their number bloodied, four downed by Teag’s spell, and Vernon clearly focused on Pax’s sacrifice instead of their defense, the remaining witches abandoned their dead and wounded comrades to hide behind machinery.
Seth didn’t have the level of innate magical talent that Rowan and Teag did, but the spells he learned by rote still served him well. Knowing that the showdown with Vernon loomed in the future, Seth chose to rely on his gun and save his spells for later.
“Seth, behind you!” Caden warned as he took a shot at another of the witches. He missed, but the man retreated out of sight behind a large distilling kettle.
Seth wheeled, aimed, and shot at a coven member hunched behind a piece of machinery.
Rattling overhead drew Seth’s attention just in time to see a piece of ductwork shear loose from its fastening and plummet toward where Caden stood.
“Move!” he shouted to Caden, giving him a shove toward safety while Rowan blasted the falling hunk of metal and sent it out of the way.
“Duck!” Caden yelled, and Seth dropped. Caden fired past him, and while the shot went wide, it forced the attacking witch from cover. Seth didn’t miss with his own bullet, and the witch staggered back, bleeding.
Seth heard chanting and hoped that the amulets and protections he and Caden wore would deflect whatever the coven threw at them. A wave of nausea rolled over him but slid away without doing damage, and seconds later, a gurgle deep in his belly faded without harm, thanks to the talismans.
Despite the magic he had used, Seth wasn’t as tired as he expected, and he credited the music magic Evan and Tony conjured, as well as whatever power Kinsley and her coven were sending their way.
That just reinforced what Seth had learned in battle conditions both magical and mundane—the combined power of a good team was damn near unstoppable.
He hoped that applied not only to their witch friends but to the ghosts he would need to make the grimoire spell work.
“Kinsley?” he said into his headset, on high alert for whatever the coven might attempt next.
“There’s a bunch of Vernon’s mob guys out here.
Sorry, taking a lot to hold them off. Some have magic.
They sent an exhaustion spell toward us.
We blocked it, but it took a toll. Tristan is siccing most of the ghosts on Vernon and some of them against the toughs.
We’re sending you all we can and still hold off the goons.
Good luck,” she said before her feed went silent.
That meant reinforcements inside the plant weren’t coming soon.
Fire streaked toward Seth, and he barely threw himself to the ground in time to avoid it. Caden shot toward the fire’s origin.
“Got him!” Caden shouted.
“Stop the rest of his coven. We’ll handle Vernon.” Teag’s voice came across the earpiece. With Evan’s life on the line as well as Pax’s, Seth hated not going after the witch-disciple directly, but he knew Teag and Rowan had a much better chance.
Four of the witches were still at large, and while Kinsley’s draining spell might be sapping their power, they still remained a danger.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Vernon taunted.
Although he had Pax in position for the ritual, Vernon hadn’t started the magic yet, distracted by their attack.
Vernon had conjured a smaller warding over himself and Pax, a faintly glowing translucent dome.
Teag loosened one of the stored energy knots on his belt and sent a wave of magic toward the warding, which lit up as it intercepted the threat.
Rowan followed up a moment later with a strike in a different color of light, a concerted effort to wear down Vernon’s protections.
Outside, the rain pounded on the factory’s roof, and the wind howled, echoing in the large, mostly empty building.
Seth called on one of the memorized spells Rowan taught him, a “parasite” incantation that leeched power from another mage’s casting. A blue spot appeared on Vernon’s dome like mold on cheese, draining magical energy.
Before Vernon had a chance to react, Seth sent a second small spell, this time to cause heat. A red spot appeared next to the blue one, using its power to increase the temperature inside.
Seth knew that something as small as a burr could make a horse buck its rider, and gambled that minor destructive spells, taken together, could help breach Vernon’s protections.
At least it will force him to deal with the annoyance, and that means he can’t start the ritual.
He took comfort in knowing that whatever else Vernon might do to use the weather against their allies outside, he didn’t dare use lightning in a factory full of old boxes and flammable residue.
Before the audio connection ended, Seth had heard the musical spell Evan and Tony wove. Now, he imagined that he felt an outside force buoy his energy, giving him strength to conjure more magic to keep Vernon distracted.
The red spot and the blue spot disappeared from the dome, but Seth sent a freeze cantrip that would make the temperature inside Vernon’s protected area plummet from the sweltering heights of the heat spell.
He silently apologized to Pax for the discomfort, but figured if the other man lived through the ordeal, he was likely to forgive Seth the inconvenience.
Rowan cast salvo after salvo against the warding to weaken its walls. Seth suspected that Teag drew on extra energy stored in the braided and knotted cords that hung from his belt, part of his Weaver magic.
Seth was so fixed on attacking the dome that he didn’t see one of Vernon’s coven break from his hiding place until a blast of magic hit and sent him reeling.
He hurled a throwing knife, pegging the witch in the throat. Blood gushed, soaking the man’s shirt, and the witch fell back.