Chapter 23 #2
Doug bent and Julie bounded up his leg, leaping off his back and launching herself at the soldier the moment Poppy released her time spell.
The enemy soldier never saw it coming.
“Doug!” I called out, my brain forming the idea before my mouth could follow.
He glanced my way and trotted over with a pant.
“We need to flank Dorian without him seeing the attack coming. If we can do that, then we’ll be able to get the rebels into place to hold the Unseelie while I take him down. Do you think your wolves can do it?”
He answered with a howl, the sound familiar and aching, before he took off into the chaos. Several shifters cut off to trail behind him.
Then I fell.
Something had grabbed my ankle and tugged, and my chin smacked the ground, driving the breath from my lungs. I swiveled to face the zombie.
It wasn’t much more than a sack of rotting meat and bones at this point, with one ear dangling and only half of its jaw in place. It scrabbled for my legs and thickened yellow fingernails scraped at skin.
I kicked out and shattered its skull. Ichor, black and rancid, spattered everywhere.
I kicked the zombie again and it fell limply to the ground and didn’t move. Pushing up, I got to work carving destruction through the camp, using a small sprinkling of magic to avoid harming the rebels.
Muscles hummed and power sent waves of energy outward, growing with every strike.
"Tavi!” My name sounded from the left and I danced backward, balancing on the balls of my clawed feet.
Coral loped closer, her nostrils flared in a snarl. “There’s too many of them to gain the high ground. We can’t flank them no matter what your pet werewolves are doing, not when they’re coming in from the river too.”
I blanched. “The river? Where are the Encantado?”
They could use the river to hold off enemy reinforcements from that position, since our wards had fallen.
An Unseelie warrior in an ill-fitting helmet rushed us and Coral slammed her knuckles against his cheek. A second punch stunned the Fae before he got off any hits.
“Not here, clearly!” Coral screeched.
Adrenaline coursed fast and hot. “You head to the river,” I called out. “Cut them off there before they get a toehold.”
The Encantado should be here.
Coral wasn’t listening, otherwise occupied with hammering her fists down on a few more zombies who sprouted up from the ground like bamboo shoots.
Bronwen took up the responsibility and ran with a squadron of rebel soldiers to carry out the order. With seconds to spare, she shifted into her crow form and angled away.
I landed a punch as magic fired, surprise after surprise coming from a ring of Unseelie around me. Their hits glanced off of my hide.
“Jade!” I yelled his name. “Come down here and face me yourself. Or are you too chicken-shit?”
I leaped to avoid a sword and landed light on my feet, angling away from the blasts of spellwork easily, as easily as bending under a limbo stick. I caught the nearest of Dorian’s soldiers and slammed my head against his nose.
Wave after wave of zombies and soldiers came at me. Let them come. I was ready for them.
A push of my magic had the first wave stumbling. They regained their footing in time for me to send out a blast of thickened air like large hailstones. The cannonball shots buried in their bodies and took them out.
Melia took aim at my side, sending her magic in a crude but effective arrow into the chest of an oncoming soldier. It knocked clear through his chest and sent him down.
“Damn right.” The sound of her swearing was music to my ears.
“You shouldn’t be here, Meli,” I growled.
She fist-bumped the air and a muttered word of power branded the nearest soldier, his makeshift armor shrinking into a tight cage.
“I’ve got you to protect me, right?”
A murmured spell burned another trench in the ground between her and our enemies. “Don’t get ahead of yourself! We still have to take down Jade.”
But maybe this won’t be as hard as I thought.
A shiver of excitement ran through me like a current. I’d never been in a battle with my powers unleashed this way, with my awareness of them unfettered. This was an entirely new situation.
My hesitation lifted as more Unseelie fired off arcane spells in my direction. I thickened the air again, fanning it out in a shield circle to protect the people nearest me.
Magic pulsed and I used it, changing the gravity under their feet. The ground dropped out from underneath them and left them floating in midair for a moment, their limbs moving as if in slow motion.
Swords and spears floated out of their hands, and another twist, another change, brought gravity back with an explosive rush.
I sent the magic outward and a slight pull magnetized their weapons to me, summoned them and broke them into smaller pieces before sending the shards out. They flew like shrapnel.
I glanced around to take stock of the situation. Melia managed well enough. At some point between her graduation and now she must have learned better hand-to-hand combat skills. She used them in conjunction with her magic, keeping pace behind me.
I caught a glimpse of Mike from the corner of my eye as I bent to avoid another blow from a fist.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Did he want a simple answer? I dropped to my knee and blasted magic between his legs, angling the spell to take the head off of an approaching direwolf. Lesheno’s warriors who marched behind Mike finished the job.
Mike paused, his eyes wide in a double take before he turned to me. “We need to retreat. There’s no way we can get the upper hand and he knew it. Maybe if the Encantado were here then we’d be okay, but right now Jade’s forces have us surrounded.”
His jaw clenched with panic, his face streaked with unmentionable substances. The doubt was the worst part. He wasn’t sure we’d make it out of here.
Neither was I.
End this now.
“We can’t retreat. They’ll slaughter us,” I argued.
“It’s either survive today to fight tomorrow, or lose more than half our people in this raid,” Mike threw back.
Had the battle gotten to me? Plumes of black smoke ringed me as my senses slowly struggled out of nervous system collapse and into stability. I had the power to end this right now. One shot.
I glanced at Jade and drew up from the well in my abdomen, gathering magic. “Then I’ll take him out now.”
One throw, one hit, and then I’d have to find a way to live with the cost. Everything inside me constricted tighter and tighter—
Then I felt the prick of something sharp against my leg.