Page 115 of Solar Shadows

And so, running on that fuel, I charged at him, landing a punch on his nose.

He howled, the bone crunching under my fist, blood spurting. Staggering back, he grabbed his nose, stunned by my move.

I wasn’t done.

I cast Freeze from my witchcop bangle, which failed. Well, I had to be a hundred percent sure it wouldn’t work. So, I went for physical attacks instead, punching him in the gut, then kneed him right in the family jewels.

He went down, whimpering my name.

Ha! Not so ghostly after all!

I kicked him in the belly, seeing red. Who the fuck did this prick think he was to come here and do this? To try using me to murder vampires and Hecate only knew what else. He wouldn’t be becoming anything other than a bleeding mess of pain on this road.

I kicked and kicked, my anger taking over. He curled into a ball to defend himself from the blows, which only made me work harder to pummel him.

I’ll kill him.

I’ll kill him and spare the world his menace.

But I made a stupid error. In losing myself to rage, I’d forgotten to defend myself against the other witches and those solar things.

First, I got hit with a Trip spell. My legs tangled themselves up with each other mid-kick and I went sprawling. I hit the asphalt, cracking my forehead when I landed.

Whoa! The stars I saw, all spinning and nauseating.

Pain shooting through me, I rolled onto my back only to be confronted with solar shadows looming above me, blazing brightly, reaching down for me.

Blood ran down my face, any slight movement making my brain lurch.

“Get away from me…” I warned them.

Darn it. How useless could one man be?

“You will not harm him any longer,” a voice to my left spoke.

The figures lifted me off the ground and I almostpuked from the dizzy attack at the movement, just about holding it down.

They turned in a circle with me held above them, whispering, their words melting together in a chorus of scratchy whispers.

“Put…put me…”

Something sharp jabbed me in the side of the neck. My head flopped to the side, giving me an eyeful of a witch in white standing there with a small syringe in one hand, a crystal in the other.

“You won’t make us fail,” he told me.

My jaw seized shut, a stiffening iciness taking me over. A wicked headache consumed my skull, and the constant roll of nausea came in and out like the tide.

Shit. What now?

Tony got to his feet, his nose broken out of joint, blood all over his white clothes. But he grinned, baring those blood-stained gnashers.

“Now, where were we?” he said.

With no ability to counter him, I watched him throw his arms in the air, white magic swirling around his hands.

His people held their crystals above their heads with both hands, forming a circle around us.

Where was the High Coven? Surely this magic had pinged an alert on their systems.