Chapter Eight
Ezra pitched down the steep slope in a wave of dislodged foliage and clumps of clay. A gust of wind blasted the falling debris away as he broke his fall with a cushion of air—but he still slammed into the ground with painful force.
I hung half off the bluff, my arm outstretched in a failed attempt to grab him. Aaron held the back of my coat to keep me from falling too, and he yanked me into the cover of the trees.
On the mudflats, the leviathan writhed against the magic relentlessly dragging it toward the circle, but that distraction wasn’t enough. The rogue mythics had noticed Ezra’s plummet. Three of them broke away from the group and started toward the seawall.
Even with his wind magic, Ezra would never make it back up the sheer bluff. The seawall path followed the coastline, leaving nowhere to flee and nowhere to hide .
Without a word, Aaron took two running steps and jumped off the bluff.
As he plunged out of sight, Kai swore furiously. He shoved his phone into my hand, spun on his heel, and sprang after his friends. The wind gusted as Ezra used his magic to slow Kai’s fall.
And that left me alone with the two witches.
“You!” I snarled, pivoting to face them. Fury twisted through me, and my fist was flying before I knew what I was doing.
My knuckles cracked against Olivia’s cheekbone and she fell back into a tree. Pain ricocheted through my hand and it felt like I’d severed my thumb—because I was still holding Kai’s cell. As I yanked my hand back, the phone slipped from my grip. It bounced once, then tumbled off the bluff. A second later, a crunchy crack announced its arrival at the bottom.
I winced. Oops.
As Odette clutched her sister, babbling incoherently, Olivia cast a burning glare my way. Clambering up, she stalked to the bluff’s edge, cautiously pushed off, and slid down it like a muddy waterslide—except a few feet from the bottom, her heel caught on a rock. Thrown off balance, she pitched forward and splatted on the concrete trail.
Ouch. That must’ve hurt. Somehow, I didn’t feel too bad for her.
Olivia scrambled up and straightened her shirt, then ran toward the three mages. Ezra, Aaron, and Kai had retreated along the seawall, but the three rogues were closing in fast—and two more were on the way.
An ear-splitting cry erupted from the leviathan. It was a dozen yards from the ritual circle and twisting like a snake in agony, its pectoral fins gouging the mud .
The rogues reached the mages, and orange light erupted as Aaron unleashed the first attack. He charged in, flanked by Kai and Ezra. I expected them to split apart, one mage for each rogue, but as Aaron bowled through the first guy, Ezra slammed into the same mythic right after. Fast attacks—giving the sorcerers no time to complete an incantation.
Kai darted past them as Aaron swung his sword, unleashing a band of fire into the second rogue while Ezra blasted wind in the third’s face. Kai swung around, his hands flashing in quick movements. Then he raised his fist.
Lightning leaped from him and speared the three rogues. They collapsed in convulsions and even after the crackling power had died, they didn’t stir.
“Amazing,” Odette whispered.
Olivia reached the guys, her mouth moving and hands gesturing emphatically toward the leviathan. Kai shook his head. Olivia pointed again, then jumped off the seawall and charged toward the mudflats. As she went, a shape formed at her heels—an orange tabby house cat. Her fae familiar?
Aaron, Kai, and Ezra exchanged looks, and I knew what they would do. They were too valiant to do anything else. They jumped onto the rocky beach, racing after Olivia as she ran straight for the oncoming rogues.
There was no way this wouldn’t go badly. Growling, I grabbed Odette by the hair and hauled her toward the bluff.
“Stop!” she yelped shrilly. “What are you doing?”
“This is your fight too—so get down there and fight! ”
“I can’t!” Odette wailed, grabbing at my arm. “I don’t have a familiar!”
“So? ”
“Witches don’t have any offensive magic! Without a familiar, we can’t fight any more than you can!”
Bullshit. I was way more capable of fighting than this cupcake. “You’re completely useless.”
“That’s why we needed a powerful guild,” she whimpered. “That’s why we got the Crow and Hammer to send their mages.”
My gaze darted toward the bluff. Aaron, Kai, and Ezra, with Olivia behind them, were locked in combat halfway to the circle, but they weren’t fighting two rogues anymore. They were battling two rogues and two shadowy beasts—one that resembled an ox on two legs, and something small that flitted around on blurry black wings.
“What the hell are those?” I demanded.
Odette tugged on her hair, still in my grip. “Red Rum’s witches have enslaved familiars. They’re darkfae that would normally be too powerful to… to… to…”
She kept repeating the word, her voice growing fainter. Her throat bobbed as she mumbled “to” over and over, her bugged-out eyes fixed on something in the trees behind me.
Releasing her hair, I spun around.
At first, I saw nothing. Then the air shimmered, rippled, and melted. A shape materialized from the darkness.
“Such fascinating chaos, brazen one.” The otherworldly voice whispered across my senses as the creature’s form solidified. It was a fae.
A fae I recognized.
Flowing garments in unfamiliar fabrics draped his lean body, but that wasn’t the strangest thing about him. No, that would be the black dragon wings rising off his back, the long tail slithering along the leaf litter behind him, and the dark talons that tipped his slender fingers.
“Echo?” With effort, I closed my jaw. It had been weeks since my first and only glimpse of the dragon wyldfae’s humanoid form. “What are you doing here?”
“I have answered your summons, as promised.” He glided closer, silent on the forest floor. Halting beside me, he gazed toward the ocean and the dual battles—one between my mages and the rogues, and one between the leviathan and the ritual circle. “A most unpleasant night, I see.”
I stared at his flawless skin, so close. I wanted to touch his delicately pointed ears and feel the texture of his braided black hair, shining with blue and purple streaks, that hung over one shoulder down to his waist. He didn’t seem real, more like a dream than a living creature.
Another enraged cry from the leviathan snapped me out of my daze. “I didn’t call you.”
His large, dark eyes turned to me. Crystalline, pupilless, and with a hint of swirling stars in their depths. “You touched my mark upon your arm and called my name.”
“No, I didn’t. I touched my arm but I—I only thought your name. Silently .”
His lips curved in an unsettling smile, and I remembered a certain druid’s warning to be very careful around this wyldfae.
A purplish glow blazed across the foreshore. The leviathan had reached the circle, and its lines pulsed with light. Contorting its thick, powerful body, the sea fae screamed as it was dragged toward the rogue in the center.
“Great fae!” Odette gasped, her voice shaking so badly the words were nearly incomprehensible. “Oh, noble lord, please, I beg you. Intercede in this black ritual and save your kin. ”
Echo didn’t react to her plea. He studied the struggling leviathan, then appraised me with the same disconcerting focus. “You called, and I have answered. What aid may I give you?”
I pointed. “Can you stop that?”
“No longer.” His leathery wings stretched wide, brushing the nearby trees, then folded against his back. “Llyrlethiad is already bound. All that remains is for the witch to enslave him.”
My stomach dropped. Aaron, Kai, and Ezra were fighting to save the fae, but it was already too late. “There’s nothing we can do?”
Echo canted his head. “Wrong question, little one.”
Urgency pounded through me, and I struggled to calm myself, to think. To understand what the fae wanted me to ask.
“What can I do?” I blurted.
He smiled, flashing his predatory fangs. “ You can deliver Llyrlethiad from the witch’s enslavement. I will instruct you how, and the debt between us shall be met.”
“Okay, yes! I agree,” I added formally.
Echo’s tail lashed side to side, rustling the shrubbery. “The witch holds a relic of fae power, for no human magic could enslave one such as Llyrlethiad. Part the relic from the witch’s hold and you will save Llyrlethiad from his fate. This you must accomplish before the ritual is complete.”
“How long until it’s complete?”
Echo glanced into the sky where the full moon hung above the ocean. “Minutes.”
Well, that was specific. “Anything else I need to know?”
“This you alone can do.” Another fang-laden smile. “I shall offer one more small assistance.”
“What’s th— ”
His elegant hands closed around my upper arms. Wings unfurling, he drifted weightlessly upward, and with a flick of his tail he pulled me off the bluff.
I choked on a shriek as we dropped, but his huge wings caught the air and my feet settled lightly on the ground. The pressure of his touch faded to a whisper and his soft, alien voice crooned in my ear.
“Farewell, brazen one.”
I twisted around, but he was already gone. Okay then.
Facing the battlefield, I gulped down a wave of panic. I was on my own, but I could do this. I would make it work.
With my two sorcery artifacts in hand, I jumped off the seawall, landed on the rocks, and sprinted toward the mudflats. Red fire and white lightning flared, illuminating the ugly darkfae familiars—three now. The last two rogues not involved in the ritual had joined the fight.
Aaron and Kai held their tiny front line, the former with a blazing sword and the latter by whipping throwing knives into his enemies, followed by bolts of lightning. Ezra covered them from behind, his wind buffeting and blinding their opponents. Even Olivia was helping—sort of. She chucked rocks at the rogues while her nimble house cat familiar distracted the small, flying darkfae, keeping it out of the action.
My plan was simple: run around the scary mage/fae/rogue battle and figure out what to do about the remaining four sorcerers once I’d reached the ritual circle. No way that could go wrong, right?
I scrambled over the rocky beach and onto the sticky mud. It squished under my shoes, but at least it was flat. Running hard, I angled to zoom past the guys’ fight.
But nope, not even that was going to work .
A rogue peeled away from the struggle and moved to cut me off. Gripping my Queen of Spades, I changed course—and ran right at him. His hand came up, a small object in his grasp. An artifact. He shouted an incantation.
I thrust my card out at the same time. “ Ori repercutio! ”
A swirl of gold light leaped from his artifact, hit the shimmering reflection of my spell, and rebounded. He threw himself down and the golden spell shot over his head, flashed across twenty feet of foreshore, and hit another rogue in the back.
The man crumpled face-first into the mud. In a single move, the nearest fae—an ox thing trying to smash Kai’s skull in—whirled and grabbed the unconscious witch with two giant hands. Not in a nice, protective way, but with all the violence of an enslaved creature whose master had just lost control of it. The other rogues shouted in alarm, and one gestured wildly. The small, winged darkfae abandoned its attack on Olivia’s familiar and flew at the ox’s face.
My sorcerer opponent scrambled to his feet and pulled out another artifact. Now I was the one retreating—my Queen of Spades card needed five minutes to recharge and it was the only defense I had.
A blast of wind slammed into the sorcerer’s back, throwing him off balance. Ezra charged out of the chaos and the sorcerer spun to meet him. The man bellowed an incantation, but Ezra flicked his fingers. Spiraling wind shoved the man’s hand up, and the fiery light from the sorcerer’s artifact shot into the sky.
Aaron broke away from the battle and swiped his sword through the air. A band of flame hit the sorcerer in the face and the man collapsed with a scream, clutching his eyes.
“Tori!” Aaron shouted. “What are you doing? ”
“I need to get to the circle!”
“What? Why do you—”
The leviathan howled, drowning him out, but I was already running again. Aaron shot after me, while Ezra raced back to Kai and the three-way battle between fae, witches, and mages.
“Tori—” Aaron began in a shout as he caught up.
“I have instructions!” I bellowed cryptically. We were almost to the circle, its lines rippling with eerie purple light. “I can save the fae!”
He grunted breathlessly, then surged ahead of me. Fire coated his blade as he grasped the hilt with both hands. Detaching from the circle, the four sorcerers ran to intercept us.
Orange flames raced up Aaron’s arms and across his shoulders. “Go right, Tori!”
I veered to the right. Aaron skidded to a halt, set his feet wide, and brought his sword back. With a roar of effort, he swung the blade in a broad arc. An inferno exploded out of the steel, blasting toward the approaching sorcerers.
Arms pumping, I sprinted past the fiery maelstrom, wholly focused on the black-robed witch in the circle’s center. I leaped over the outer ring and my feet hit the mud within the circle. Electric power shot up my legs. Stumbling, I raced for the witch. The leviathan towered over me, its thick serpentine body thrashing against the mud.
The witch didn’t move until I was almost on top of him. At the last second, he turned, his eyes widening and hands clutching a sphere of delicate silver threads woven into elaborate patterns.
I tackled him .
We crashed into the mud and I jammed my red crystal against his face as I reached for the sphere with my other hand.
“ Ori decidas! ” I shouted.
With a flash, the crystal’s immobilizing spell activated. The witch went limp at the same moment my fingers closed around the sphere, and I tore it from his grip.