Chapter Four
“What the fuck are those?” Kierse all but shrieked.
She lived in a world with monsters for most of her life.
She could name all of the known monsters in New York City—vampires, werewolves, goblins, nymphs, shifters, wraiths, incubus, succubus, and phoenix.
She even knew there were more monsters from legend.
She ran with warlocks, Druids, High Priestesses, and witches, after all. But nothing like this.
The first was a cyclops, or at least it only had one eye at the center of its massive round head attached to a square chest with no neck.
Its arms had claws at the ends, and while its head nearly brushed the ceiling, it was squat.
The second was a many-tentacled thing of nightmares.
Like an inverted octopus with suctions on the slimy array of tentacles that protruded from its many-eyed “face.” The last one was only as tall as her hip but a solid creature of muscle with leathery bat wings and razor-tipped points.
It hovered six feet off the ground as it stared at Kierse with a wide-open muzzle full of shark’s teeth.
“They’re conjured demons,” Graves said, pulling a gun off his belt.
“What’s a conjured demon?”
“They’re pulled from another dimension or plane of existence,” Lorcan said. He already had a gun in his hand, too. “We don’t have anything like this in our world.”
Kierse didn’t have time to understand what any of that meant. She’d done a lot of reading about monsters and magic in the year since she discovered that she was a part of the magical world.
Now there were conjured, interdimensional demons? Too much all in one year.
Either way those things wanted to kill her. So she pushed her shock and revulsion behind her and reached for her gun just as the bat creature shot toward her.
The cyclops rushed after Graves while the octopus creature moved toward Lorcan.
Kierse took aim and fired at the bat creature, but the wings were no joke. It zoomed out of the way, her bullet pinging off Archie’s golden conjure circle.
She fired three more times, but there was no point. She missed stealth missions. She might be a better fighter than she once was and because of her Fae abilities, but she still didn’t have the training the other two had.
Kierse tossed the gun aside and slipped the spear off her back.
“More death? A warrior in truth. I will defend you.”
“Thanks, Lugh,” she muttered as she analyzed the movements of the creature.
It came in quick, mouth extended toward her chest. Then it chomped down when it came in close to her. It relied heavily on the wings. If she could cut them down, then she might be able to survive this, because she was pretty sure she couldn’t survive those teeth.
The demon dove for her and came close enough to slash a claw against her skin. She hissed as she swept the spear at its face.
It howled in fury and backed up before zooming in at an even dizzier speed. She could barely see its wings like a hummingbird, but she had seen it fly enough to know when to dodge. She threw herself forward at the same time it dove for her.
With barely a breath, she came up on the other side of the demon and slashed the spear across one of the wings. Its howl turned into a roar.
One of its wings was crooked and broken, but still it came toward her at an alarmingly fast speed. And now she had nowhere to go. She put her back to Archie’s circle, and nothing was getting through that.
She lifted the spear before the demon again, but this time it blocked her hit. Its claws dug into her wrist, and a scream ripped from her as the spear was tossed across the room.
“Kierse!” Lorcan shouted at the same time Graves yelled, “Wren!”
She hadn’t concentrated on their battles and had no idea how things were. She just wanted the ability to use her time manipulation and put the whole world into slow motion. But Lorcan locked that ability down along with her others.
Still, her body moved before she could remind it that the magic didn’t work. The last time she tried to use it subconsciously was to save Nate’s life. Only it hadn’t worked, and Nate was gone. When she could have saved him.
It felt the same this time, slow and sticky, but then on the next breath, the world ticked down to stillness.
This wasn’t slow motion. This was stopping time.
The bat demon was inches from her face. His teeth were out, lined up in three rows of them.
Graves was on top of the cyclops, the gun missing from his hand, but he worked some kind of bright golden glow out of his palm against the cyclops’ one giant eye.
Lorcan had his demon against the destroyed bookshelf.
A half-dozen tentacles were on the ground, but his gaze was swept back to her, terror written in his expression.
Her body shook with the effort of holding time still. She’d never come close to this before.
Usually, her slow motion was like moving through water. Everything still went on around her, just slower than before. Not like this. If she’d had the power, she could have killed all the demons without anyone moving.
Instead, she barely had enough energy to drop a knife out of her sleeve and sawed down on the base of the demon’s wings, severing them from his back.
Time clicked back into motion, and the demon dropped from the sky with a squeal. Kierse punted the thing across the room with all her might, and it crashed against the remnants of the hutch, shattering the porcelain all over the room.
She panted breathlessly in her second of downtime. Then her gaze swept up to Lorcan.
“You…” she whispered.
“Me,” he agreed with a wink, and then he was back in his fight. The tentacles were very much alive and squishing across the floor toward him.
She tried to clear her head. Lorcan had kept her magic trapped for months, and she had thought that she would never see those powers again. She switched off her absorption like a light switch and felt it come down with ease. It was back. It was back.
Well, back as long as Lorcan would let her have them.
This was what he had been saying all those months before. He might be her “soulmate,” but the binding was around her magic. For the first time, she understood.
Her power had doubled under his power share. It didn’t make what he had done right. It just made it true.
“The circle,” Lorcan shouted.
“Try to get through the circle,” Graves called at the same time.
For two people who hated each other, they were weirdly in sync.
But with her absorption in her hands, she actually had a way to stop Archie. Kierse turned from the incapacitated creature and put her hands on the circle. Then with a breath, she drew it toward her.
It was like breathing in air after too long underwater. The magic finally worked at her bidding. The blue of her pixie lights drew in the warlock’s energy and mixed gold and blue in the room. Her body became a vortex of power, so much power in that moment that she thought she’d be sick.
Strange to think that she could absorb power and be overpowered by it. She could only absorb so much before it would shred her defenses and leave her magically wounded. But she didn’t feel like that this time.
Whatever Lorcan had unlocked made her magic feel endless. She could take this, take it all, drain it until the torrent belonged to her. There was no bottom. Just magic.
She tilted her head back and reveled in the feel of the magic flowing through her veins. The power that radiated from her. Was this what Graves felt like all the time? Like a bottomless well of energy that had no beginning or end? No wonder he acted invincible. Who could go up against this and win?
Fighting was still going on around her as she connected to Archie’s magic and pulled and pulled and pulled.
“Wait!” a voice cried through the circle. “Please, wait, don’t! That’s too much.”
She could hear him through a fog of magic, but she couldn’t stop. She had to bring the circle down. She wasn’t sure those demons would stop until it was down.
“You can’t do this!” the voice shrieked.
But she could. She could do this and so much more.
“Please…please…please,” the voice said, softer and softer and then…
Nothing.
The circle popped. The demons disappeared as if they never were. And Archie Blair fell down dead in his own conjuring circle.