Chapter 13 #2
“As far as the mages—“
“Capture them all.” Niamh finally headed our way. “Don’t kill any of them, mercenaries included, if ye can help it. Some of them need to fill us in on Tilda. They’ll talk easier than she will. The rest…” A crease formed between her brows. “I’ll figure out when I have a moment to think.”
“Okay, we know what we’re doing.” I grabbed the back of Austin’s neck and yanked him down for a kiss. “Be safe. I’ll be right above you.”
“Likewise. Guard my heart.”
I smiled, knowing his heart was me.
“Tristan.” I pulled off my muumuu and tossed it to the ground as Sebastian grabbed his stuff from Tristan and ran for the vehicle he’d come in wearing only boxers. Nessa had already headed that way. “We get to officially see if my training has taken root, huh? Let’s hope I learned something.”
“Yeah,” he said, standing ready. “Don’t screw up.”
I laughed, the thrill of battle beating through me. Time to earn my keep.
“Leave your people here,” Austin told Drex. “We’ve got this. They’d just get in the way and possibly get killed. If you want to come along to see how we handle mages and to see what mages can do, you’ll need to follow orders from me and my beta.”
“Understood,” Drex said.
“Keep those mages in that house,” I told Drex. “Do not let them out. If they run, it might be into the hands of the enemy. Right now, they have a fighting chance of explaining their situation. If the Guild gets them, they’ll have no hope of salvation.”
He nodded. “Got it.”
Edgar had already taken off, always with Nessa in battles. Everyone else stood ready, muumuus on the ground and anticipation sparkling in their eyes.
“You heard what Niamh said,” I told them. “No killing.” I pointed directly at Cyra before I swung my finger to Dave. “Did you hear that?”
Through Her’s connection, I could feel the mercenaries getting closer. The mages were behind them. They weren’t moving fast, so they must be walking. Two others, these on four legs, were running for all they were worth toward the town. Sentries, probably, coming to alert Drex.
“Heavily maim, but no killing,” I told my people.
Dave’s brow sank low. “It must’ve been them loitering in the woods, planning their violence, that made the mountain uneasy. The mountain asks that we exterminate—“
“No killing,” I interrupted. “The mountain will get plenty of blood. It’ll be fine with that.” Probably. It was a mountain, since when did they give orders?
“How about burning off a limb?” Cyra asked hopefully.
“Just don’t kill,” I reiterated. “Or start a forest fire. I don’t want to spend a bunch of energy sucking away your flames.”
The number of times I had to repeat stuff like that.
I shifted and took to the sky. Tristan was right behind me, blasting up faster and grabbing me as he went.
Cyra shot up, following the others, except for Hollace, who needed more space before he shifted into his mighty Thunderbird form.
Thunder rolled as he rose into the sky, which was thankfully still overcast. The mercenaries walking up the last bit of the hill to the shifter town wouldn’t think anything of it.
A large gargoyle grabbed a newly clothed Sebastian, our weird mage wearing black sweats and runners. It was time for him to fight in a way Elliot Graves never could.
If Tristan guided the gargoyles with wing movements, the sound would reverberate down the mountain, so I sent the command to prepare for battle through our connection, and the gargoyles wasted no time. My crew fit into their positions.
Our people below had all shifted and fallen into their own formation, Austin was in the lead with Broken Sue coming up behind.
Despite his issue with dominance when he’d first met Austin, Drex had no trouble falling back, a huge bear fitting into the other shifters as they started forward at a fast pace.
The basajaunak briefly flanked them, before disappearing into the trees.
I sent directives to push them faster, instructing them to remain invisible and slip past the mercenaries so they could then crowd around the mages. When we struck, they would, too.
We kept pace with the shifters, flying above the trees.
More thunder rolled around us. I could feel the location of the enemy advancing; not far now.
They moved steadily, no doubt their magical blaster guns drawn.
The more expensive of those guns could rip through magical defenses and then flesh and bone.
However, these mages didn’t expect much in the way of a magical defense.
They would be worried about the shifters, so I doubted the blasters they carried would be high-tech.
Hopefully, they wouldn’t be a problem for us.
Hopefully being the operative word. You just never knew with mages, especially with the unknowns of this attack.
The trees blurred as Tristan put on a burst of speed. The mercenaries should be just ahead.
Anticipation hit me. The basajaunak had sighted something. They didn’t slow, splitting instead to curve around what I surmised was the enemy. I pointed in that direction and Tristan veered right.
He started to dive. Here we go.
My heart picked up pace. I couldn’t just flap around on my own this time. I had a team and a flight plan to navigate. My wingman would be trying to lead and anticipate me at the same time. This was real-life training and getting it wrong could mean death.
With a deep breath I wiggled, and he let me go. I dove, magic at the ready. I could feel Sebastian’s ride diving with me. Near the top of the trees, I saw the first mercenary. He sensed something and slowed, looking to his right and left, but not up.
They hadn’t been told what they’d face. Otherwise up was the first place they’d look.
I hammered down with a wide spell, and Sebastian did the same.
One mercenary screamed and another splatted against a tree.
Crap. That was supposed to be a low energy version of one of the grisly spells.
I’d meant to scratch him to hell, not explode his middle.
Hopefully, Cyra hadn’t seen that. She’d take it as a green light to go nuts.
I angled right as a gargoyle team of four flew over me.
I picked up the pace to match their speed and covered them with a spell.
A jet of yellow shot through the trees, hit my spell, adding to my energy, and then filtered through my connections to the generic magical defenses I applied to the shifters.
It was by far the best magical discovery in one of the Ivy House books.
I fired a different altered spell, and a black line slashed across a mercenary’s head. He gave a bloodcurdling scream, his head tore in two, and he fell.
Dang it! I’d greatly reduced that spell, but the result was every bit as dangerous as the original. Clearly, these spells wouldn’t be tamed.
Blasts came fast now. I had to pull up and focus on defense. Tristan caught me and flew me toward the mages. We’d done enough to distract the mercenaries. Their guns wouldn’t be able to bleed through my protective magical defenses on the shifters. Austin knew how to handle them.
The mages had stopped. In a moment I saw them, hands out and at the ready. They weren’t looking up, either. They must not have been able to see the mercenaries through the trees.
I squirmed and Tristan released me again.
Sebastian pulled up next to me, and I met his eyes.
I gave a slight nod, and his gargoyle transport dropped lower with me to the treetops.
I hammered spells as fast as I could, mundane ones that should hurt like hell but not kill, but the tree cover was thick, and I couldn’t see well enough to hit the targets.
I angled my wings, dropping to get a better view, and my wing hit a branch.
Pain lanced through my back. A mage looked up and saw me, a look of horror crossing his face, and then fear.
He fired a spell at me, shouting something I didn’t understand, and I threw up a shield.
My other wing caught in the branches as another spell came in.
I tried to clear myself, but my angle stopped me.
I heard a thrum, and large hands grabbed me and yanked me upward. Tristan tucked my wings in and pulled me in close. I knew a moment of abject terror, instantly transported to a time when Nathanial had done the same thing.
“Nooo,” I said, my fear rising.
“Ea-ssy,” Tristan said through a mouth full of fangs. “Eeaa-sy.”
He wrapped his wings around me and dropped, crashing through the leaves and branches. He then spread his wings with a snap. Thunder rolled above us, and lightning crackled. The trees were too dense for many of our team to get in easily. In our haste, we hadn’t thought of this contingent.
I covered us in a defensive layer as spells came in hard.
Mages stepped from behind trees long enough to shoot jets of magic at us and then hid again.
If they’d been any stronger, I wouldn’t have been able to withstand their fire.
As it was, the sheer magnitude of magic in close range was frying my defensive spell.
Tristan landed, hustling us out of the way on foot. Another gargoyle dropped out of the sky. He unfurled his wings, revealing Sebastian, who was firing spells.
I pushed away from Tristan and fired. Tristan and the other gargoyle slipped behind the trees and ran at the closest mages.
Roaring, the basajaunak exploded from the trees.
One snatched up a mage and then another, bashing them against a tree, while a basandere tossed yet another mage through the canopy like a rag doll.
“Don’t kill!” I shouted, but I was in my gargoyle form and it came out garbled.
Mages took off running. Some panicked and ran in the wrong direction, straight toward the shifters. Others hid in the trees, cowering away from the basajaunak hunting them.
More roars and snarls. I felt Austin drawing near. A mage screamed, and then another, and I saw jets of spells and sensed pain from three different people.
I tried to hurry, but I wasn’t as fast in my gargoyle form. The dense canopy blocked me in, and my wings weren’t strong enough to push through. I doubted any of the gargoyles could push through. We were stuck on the ground.
“Jessie, here,” Sebastian called.
Two mages were firing at him. I added to the protective spell covering him as a mage went flying above my head, slammed into some branches, and fell. A basajaunak was on him immediately, knocking the mage out with a hard punch.
As I reached Sebastian, a spell hit his defensive barrier, and I returned fire without thinking, accidentally releasing another one of the stronger spells. A spray of blood said it wasn’t a maiming blow.
“Crap,” I muttered as Sebastian’s eyes widened. He clearly hadn’t seen that spell before. “Sorry,” I tried to say, but the words came out in a mess of syllables.
Shifters filled the space. They were better suited for such terrain. It was why working with both groups made us ten times more effective. A huge Kodiak burst through the trees. Drex saw the mage and charged him with a snarl.
He wasn’t part of my gargoyle’s connections, though, and I didn’t have a defensive spell on him.
“Wait!” I tried to shout, bursting into my human form and closing the distance between us. The mage fired twice in quick succession, his eyes round with terror when he saw the charging bear. A wet stain spread across his crotch, and I expected him to freeze. He didn’t, though he would wish he had.
His first spell hit Drex with a loud sizzle.
Drex flinched but didn’t stop, and my defensive spell covered him before the second spell could hit.
That spell bounced off, back toward the mage.
It sprayed him, the ground, the tree next to him and a bush with magical acid.
Well…globs of magical acid, more like. The tree trunk started to sizzle, as did the dirt, and the bush… and the mage.
He screamed and looked down as the globs of magic burned his clothes away.
“Oh, no,” I said, wracking my brain for the counter spell. I was sure I’d learned it…
The mage’s shrieks grew louder as the spell blistered his skin and spread. I hadn’t known it would do that.
Drex stopped, transfixed by the writhing, screaming mage.
The mage patted himself to stop the burn, spreading the magic to his hands, something else I hadn’t known would happen.
“Crap.” I shoved at Drex’s big shoulder to get him to move out of the way. “I think I can fix this.”
“What the hell is that spell?” Sebastian asked, stopping beside me. “Jesus, Jessie, that kinda thing was outlawed in the dark ages.”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
“I’m not sure I’m kidding?” He sounded confused, as though he were trying to remember history.
“Like mages outlaw anything. It’s fine, though. There’s a counter-spell.” I tried what I thought would do it.
The mage screamed in anguish as a gaping hole opened in his belly.
“Ah, man.” I breathed heavily and thought about throwing up. “That wasn’t the counter-spell.”
“Oh, we get to kill?” Dave asked from somewhere behind me.
“No!” I put out a finger and looked around. “No, killing. This was an accident!”
Someone screamed before quickly cutting off.
“That was an accident,” one of the basandere called.
I sighed. This hadn’t gone as planned, and it was mostly my fault. Cyra would never let me live this down, especially because she was stuck above the tree line and couldn’t participate. At least she’d followed directions and hadn’t set fire to the trees.
“Right, okay. Well…” I put my hands on my hips and listened. Silence. We’d gotten through the enemy.
Austin stood off to one side. Only a few of our people were hurt and none of them badly. This hadn’t been a powerful force, and they’d also been unprepared. Niamh had been right. We’d now have to figure out what information Momar had been after.
“Fine,” I said. “There’s still a bunch alive, so I call that a win. It’ll be good enough.”
Someone tsked, and Nessa walked up. Her hair was messy, and she held bloody knives. “Jessie, Jessie, Jessie,” she said with a grin. “Niamh is going to be so mad at you.”
“Should I make art out of him?” Edgar asked with a toothy grin. “It always sends some sort of message.”
The big Kodiak was staring at me. Even the bear face looked shocked.
I held out my hands. “We’re not all perfect, okay? Sometimes my spell work is a little…”
“Volatile?” Nessa guessed.
“Horrific?” Sebastian said.
“Surprising,” I finished. “Sometimes it is surprising and doesn’t react how I expect. They were the enemy. They had it coming. Anyway, let’s head back.”
Someone grunted in pain—Phil—followed by a loud scream.
“That was an accident,” Phil yelled. “Kinda.”
I bowed in defeat. I couldn’t even yell at him. I’d started it.