Chapter 60
Chapter Sixty
Tackling the mage to the ground, I claw and bite like a feral beast at any part of him that I can reach. The foul odor of burnt hair permeates the air, clogging my nostrils and making bile rise in my mouth.
When I collided with his legs, we ended up rolling for a few feet until we skidded to a stop in the middle of the alley. The gravel and dust put out the fire that he set to my hair, leaving me fuming with anger. My breathing is harsh, my grunts and snarls louder than him squealing like a cut pig.
The mage finally stops twitching, and his howls and shrieks of pain silence, so I slow down the frenzied clawing until my hands just flop limply in the pile of goo left under my knees.
Warm blood drips from my chin, and my lashes are heavy with the thick liquid covering my face.
To my horror, my snarling hasn’t stopped.
It still bounces off the walls of the buildings around us.
A blast of fire hitting somewhere behind me has me flipping around so fast that blood sprays everywhere, splattering concrete and brick.
The standing mage has Sebastian cornered, sending fireball after fireball at him and preventing him from coming to me.
He twists and turns, pivoting like a dancer while avoiding each and every one.
They slam into the walls and ground around him, sending flames and sparks through the air.
My breath hitches when one gets too close for comfort, grazing his arm and charring his dirt-covered shirt.
Even smudged with dust and gore, he is a sight for sore eyes.
Like an avenging angel, shadows and reflections of the fires dance across the planes of his handsome face, making him look terrifying and irresistible at the same time.
I sit listless, like an idiot, staring at him in awe until the sound of groaning metal jerks my face up.
Instantaneously, my gaze locks with Andrei’s.
The determined look on his face and his lips pressed in a tight white line is so unlike him my shoulders square off in reaction.
Something is wrong apart from fighting these assholes, but I can’t figure out what.
Andrei is coming down from the building fast. His large hand grips the railing of the fire escape to catapult his body a few stories down, so he repeats it again, muscles bulging under his shirt.
Scrambling around, slipping twice in the pile of guts and gore, I lift myself up just in time for his boots to land soundlessly next to me.
“One down,” I tell him because he might be blind and didn’t see me pulverizing the mage into a pulp.
He grunts once, his fingers lifting the burnt-up ends of my hair. “You okay, bella?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” I say a little too brightly. “No more fire spitting for this one.” Flicking my fingers at the pile at my feet, I end up flicking blood and what looks to be an eyelid at Andrei.
He lifts an eyebrow, and without taking my eyes off his face, I reach out tentatively, peeling the said eyelid off his thigh.
Shaking my hand to get rid of it, I turn in a circle, looking for Marcus.
I find him leaning a shoulder against the mouth of the alley, a few feet in.
He is watching me acutely, his gaze still like two small burning fires in the darkness around him.
“I think we should give Sebastian a hand.” Saying it to no one, in particular, I move to do just that.
“Let him be.” Undisturbed by everything that’s covering me, Andrei stops me with a hand on my arm. “He needs to release some of his aggression. It’ll be good for all of us, trust me.”
And we let Sebastian be. Standing like spectators, we watch him dance around the fires, swiping at the mage with claws and fangs every chance he gets.
When I first saw him, I thought he was trying to get past the trajectory of the magic to come to me.
Now I see how wrong I was. He is not trying to escape the fires; he is toying with the mage.
Prolonging the fight for his own twisted needs.
Marcus comes to stand next to us, all three of us silent as we track the fight.
The alley lights up in flares, like watching a gun going off in the darkness.
Twist, turn, crouch, swipe. It’s almost soothing watching him move.
The mage tries a few times to send his magic at us, and I tense up, but Sebastian keeps him busy enough that he gives up pretty fast. For some reason, I glance at the squealing mage I left curled up in the pile of his own blood.
He is gone.
“Where the hell did he go?” Whirling around, I search the alley, but there is no sign of him.
“He couldn’t have gotten too far.” Andrei is already on the move.
I bolt after him, my face lifting up as I sniff the air. Following the zing through the rubble on the street, I see the mage tattering away, holding himself up on the piles of debris. Slowing down, I walk casually towards him, coiled up to jump away if he flings magic at me.
“Going for a walk?”
My voice from right behind him startles him.
The mage swings around, but instead of running or screaming as I expected, he jumps in my face with a wicked smile.
He takes me by surprise and manages to tangle his fingers in my shirt, mumbling words so fast it’s hard to hear what he is saying.
Gripping it tightly with one hand, his other hand comes up, holding a piece of glass that he jams in my face.
A piercing scream is ripped from me when the glass connects with my eyes.
It’s not glass, a delirious part of my brain decides to inform me while my body is locked, and I can’t push the asshole away.
He pulls his hand back, his hideous face blurry from whatever he did to me, as he moves to repeat the action.
The moonlight catches whatever he is holding, and I see a crystal as large as his hand coming at my face. Before it hits, something huge and furry sails over my shoulders taking the mage with it and ripping my shirt in the process. By the sound of the growls, I know that mutt has found me.
Blurry vision or not, I don’t miss the swinging of the crystal at my dog’s head. Andrei throws himself at the mage from my right, sending mutt rolling off the asshole, but not before he yelped from the hit. A red haze blankets everything and I finally know no more.