43. POWER BEGETS POWER #3
Several feet below, packs of werewolves, werecats, kelpies, and the like stormed through the gate in their shifted forms, huge, terrifying. They tackled the nearest sorcerers, plowing them into the ground under snarling, snapping jaws.
Zombies, revenants, and Frankenstein’s monsters streamed through after, a blur of undead body parts descending in a mob. They moved like a flash flood, flattening everything in their path, scooping up and carrying away any sorcerer who managed to get free.
The Glitches poured in behind the Bitches and Stitches.
The largest group, they were the cavalry, carrying the teachers and administrators with them in a wave.
They surrounded the gated cemetery, filling in gaps, plugging holes, making themselves such a mass of humanity that not even a sorcerer with all their assorted powers could slip through.
Balthazar Hale was cornered, and even through a haze of love, he knew it.
Embry grinned. “Turns out everyone at Raven’s Head is sick of your shit, Balty.”
She wasn’t sure if it was her taunt, or if it was simply the fear flooding his body that did it, but the illegal love spell popped like a soap bubble. Uh-oh.
But before Balthazar’s fake love could harden into his real hatred of Embry, his father called out from across the graveyard, “Balty, what the hell is this?! I thought you said you had the school handled!”
“I did!” Balthazar snapped, newly black vein bisecting his forehead throbbing.
Then he announced with his endless stage aplomb, “All the kids think Embry Woodcross murdered her friend. They’d never in a million years defend her unless they’d been spelled, and we all know witches aren’t capable of bending hundreds of people to their will. ”
Visibly irritated, even with dark magic pulsating through his body, features bulging and warping, Balthazar’s father waved his hands at the assembling masses and literally scoffed at his son. “Apparently not.”
The younger sorcerer ground his molars together, preparing a retort, but it was Lazarus’s voice that came next over the din, loud and caustic.
“My daughter doesn’t need a spell, jackass, because people really love her!”
This made Embry smile and also happened to provide the perfect distraction because in that moment, her magic came flooding back like a dam breaking.
As Balthazar’s murderous gaze whipped around to Daddy’s shielded form, Embry dove for the sorcerer’s bare hand and stunned him with the full force of her nearly drained magical supply.
Balthazar’s body jolted.
His arms went slack, and suddenly, he was tumbling backward. Embry dodged to the side and backpedaled, avoiding his falling form with that Raven’s Head track and field agility she’d honed so well.
Arms still raised and vibrating, Balthazar’s father didn’t even spare his son a disapproving glance. “You’re too late! You’ve all spelled your ends, because in mere moments there will be nothing left of Ravenwood Island but a rush of seawater and my sorcerers, free from—”
The man’s grand speech slid off his lips like a pancake against a brick wall.
His body dropped, too, frozen and immobilized, hitting the ground with a giant WHOOF.
Standing behind the sorcerer was Lazarus Woodcross, the very immobilization spell he’d taught Embry for protection veritably smoking from his fingers.
The coven and the crowd of Raven’s Head students cheered with the second takedown. Merlin swooped a large, happy circle over the cemetery, before diving toward the outstretched arm of Headmaster Martinelli.
In the near distance, sirens wailed from the direction of both the school and the Woodcross Residence, Inspector Brown and the Table arriving just in time to find that the students at Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted had everything under control.
All around the graveyard, sorcerers lay prone, heads lolling to one side or the other as strong witch-based magic took them under. The Table would be able to sever their connection to the dark well of magic until the completion of a fair trial.
Embry took a few stumbling steps toward Balthazar.
And suddenly Rye was there, reaching out a hand—his only working one from the way his shoulder hung too low on the other side—to steady her.
Embry didn’t need it, but she took Rye’s hand anyway, squeezed it as tight as she dared, offering him a smile as she did, before turning her attention to the sorcerer.
She crouched down beside Balthazar. He’d yet to be bound with the necktie she’d lost somewhere in the second phase of the fight but instead lay askew like the outline of a dead body, reeling and unblinking under her stun spell.
His breath was coming in little pants, the dark magic in his veins beginning to recede, but he still appeared marbled, bloated, unwell.
His eyes continued to sparkle, though. And staring into them, Embry booped Balthazar on the nose.
Then, leaning in close, her smile as cool and smug as the one he liked to wield, she found just the right words, her voice raspy but as direct as her gaze.
“Have a nice life behind bars, Sorcerer.”