Chapter 56 #2
I grabbed hold of him and summoned my invisibility, holding it long enough to pull him deeper into the chaos, away from the sight of the warlocks.
Something tore at me as we moved and I grunted as I was ripped away from Kaeleron.
My hold over my invisibility faltered and the world became solid again, and I scanned my surroundings.
A dark forest loomed before me.
I pivoted.
The battle raged over a kilometre away.
What the hell?
I summoned a teleport and nothing happened. I tried forming a ball of solar magic. Golden light flickered over my hands and then sputtered out.
I focused on my body, on my connection to the land, on my magic.
And felt it.
The barest thread of something. Like a ward.
Someone had torn me and Kaeleron apart, and in the same instance had dampened my magic.
The warlocks?
If this was what they were capable of then Kaeleron had been right to want to go for his own warlocks. I had thought he was exceptionally skilled with magic, but whoever had done this had made it happen so quickly, and all without ever stepping near to us.
It wasn’t going to stop me.
I ran back towards the battle, part of me focused on that ward or whatever it was I could feel lingering like a veil over my magic.
Lorien appeared before me.
I brandished my dagger but before I could attack him, Neve was there, swooping towards me and scooping me up in her enormous paw, carrying me over his head.
“Godsdammit, Neve,” I bit out. “I could have taken him out.”
Her great golden head angled towards me, the elliptical pupil of her giant amber eye narrowing in a way that chastised me.
Maybe she was right, and fighting Lorien alone would have been a mistake.
I refused to admit it though, even when she deposited me close to Jenavyr and flew over the battlefield, her wings beating the air at the warriors, toppling several as she ascended, heading for the other side of the chaos.
Was that where Kaeleron had been teleported?
I cut a path to Jenavyr, forming a blade of solar magic in one hand and gripping my dagger in the other.
The plate armour the Summer Court males wore didn’t stand a chance against the heat of the solar blade, and I began to favour it more even as wielding it depleted me, leaving my thoughts blurry at the edges.
I needed to reach her and stay close to her, so Kaeleron would know where to find me.
She battled three large males, dispatching one with ease and then turning towards the others, fighting them with blade and shadow.
She slit the throat of one and lifted the other into the air with her shadows that rapidly tightened around his limbs as she raised her sword and swung hard, slicing straight across his hips.
A fourth male came at her unprotected back.
Riordan shoved her to one side.
I gasped as the male’s sword punched through his right side, high on his chest.
“By the Great Mother,” Vyr snarled as she turned and whatever vicious words she wanted to throw at him for barging into her, they died on her lips as her gaze landed on him. “Riordan.”
He looked down at the blade protruding from his chest.
Shadows tore at the male who wielded it, ripping him into pieces, and Riordan grunted as the weight of the pommel dragged that end of the sword downwards as the male fell, releasing it.
He tipped backwards with it, and I ran for him, flinching at the thought he might land on it and worsen the blow, but Jenavyr was there before me, catching him in her arms and keeping him from slamming into the churned earth.
“You should not have done that!” she snapped as her hand fluttered near the blade while she supported his back with her other arm. Indecision warred in her eyes as they bled crimson, mirroring the vampire’s as he wheezed and gritted his fangs. “I heal faster than you. I would have been fine.”
He swallowed hard, his skin paling as she made her decision and pulled the blade from him, but couldn’t hold back the agonised bellow of pain as the sword grated over bone and blood ran down the channel along the centre of it.
“I heal faster. I would have been fine,” she muttered as she shook her head, her onyx eyebrows furrowing as she peered at his wound, parting his black leather armour to get a better look at it.
I stopped close to them, turning my back to them, fending off anyone who dared to come at them.
Giving Jenavyr time to help him.
I spun as I sensed people behind me, letting my solar blade disappear as I reached for my throwing knives. I let them fly, soaring over her head to nail the enemy creeping up on her as Riordan stared at her as if she was mad.
“If you think I’m going to stand by and let you get hurt when there’s something I can do about it,” he grunted as he lifted a trembling hand and shoved it against his bleeding chest, “then you are crazier than I am. I would never let you get hurt, Vyr. Not when I have the power to stop it.”
I hurled another blade, this one slicing across the throat of a blond male, and then looked down at them, my heart breaking a little as I saw all the blood pooling beneath Riordan. It was worse than I thought.
Vyr shook her head, tears glittering on her lashes as she bent over him, that sorrowful look on her face at odds to her tone as she snapped, “You had better not die! I will never forgive you. I will curse you daily to the goddess and she will see to it you never find any rest.”
He managed a smile. “I’m too irritating to die, right?”
He passed out before she could answer him, going lax in her arms.
She threw her head back and howled as if she had been born of my kind, and the black clouds that split with lightning weren’t created of the goddess’s grief this time.
They were born of Jenavyr’s as she launched to her feet, as her shadows lashed out in all directions.
Darkness stained the skin around her crimson eyes as her black-tipped fingers seized one male and then another, her talons dancing across their throats as she screamed and raged, a whirlwind of shadow following her as she unleashed on the enemy.
The ground bucked and cracked, fissures opening into crevasses that devoured more than one unfortunate warrior.
Kaeleron appeared before me, facing Jenavyr as she tore through the battlefield, leaving carnage in her wake.
“Riordan.” I grabbed Kael’s arm, redirecting his attention to the fallen vampire.
Kaeleron shook himself out of it and dropped to his knees beside Riordan, checking his pulse and then the wound. He closed his eyes and pressed a hand to the vampire’s chest, over the wound, and muttered something beneath his breath.
I kept the enemy from him as he worked, no doubt using some of his magic to help the male begin to heal. My own was back at full force, whatever the warlocks had done to us having lost its effect soon after Neve had picked me up.
“Malachi,” Kaeleron bellowed.
I realised the big demon was fighting nearby and he must have been the one to bring Kaeleron to us rather than Neve.
Mal peeled away from cutting down a large Summer Court male and jogged over to us, his footing sure on the bodies that littered the area around us.
“Get him to the medic.” Kaeleron pushed to his feet and turned back to his sister, sparing me only a glance as he said, “He will be well. I need to reach her, before she harms more of her own men.”
I nodded and summoned my solar blade again, making it the same length as my dagger this time, dual wielding them as we cut through the crowd that fell in behind Jenavyr.
Several males blocked my path and I took them on, easily dispatching one and ducking beneath the blow of another before kicking his legs out.
I whirled and blocked, and shoved forwards the moment another’s blade met both of mine, pushing him off balance.
Kaeleron was quicker than me, cutting through them with sword and shadow, closing in on his sister as she fought close to a dozen at once, her actions more sluggish now. She was burning out. I willed Kael to reach her before something could happen to her too.
I spun with my blades, dragging the solar one across the breastplate of the male behind me while my dagger found his throat, and watched him fall.
Breathing hard.
I looked for Lorien, determined to end this, before countless more lost their lives.
Before another of my friends danced with death.
I didn’t see the blade coming.
Didn’t sense the male who wielded it, slicing it through the air like a scythe.
Coming to reap my life.