My friend twisted and struck the web without hesitation. Both sunshine yellow magic and black demon power streamed out of her, as if she’d been born to wield them equally well.
For a moment, I stood transfixed, but when a beam of light nearly sliced open my shoulder, I too whirled to face my adversary.
The poisoner witch smirked at me. “Come on, girl. Let’s see if the light or dark shall prevail.”
The room filled with fuchsia and yellow magic. Portraits flew off the walls and candles fell over as we battled. La Voisin was magically skilled but less fit and nimble than the rest of us. Using my endurance to my advantage, I danced around her and it didn’t take long for me to land a blow to her leg. She dropped to her knees. Her hand pressed to her thigh, and with a wail, the witch pulled her skirts up.
I gaped. Rivers of blood gushed from her leg. I must have pierced her femoral artery.
And yet, the poisoner still had it in her to fight. She lifted her hand, a murky green light blooming in her palm.
“Itoarazicus,” I murmured quietly so she wouldn’t hear. The last thing we needed was a traitor like La Voisin knowing such a spell. Black tendrils soared from my fingertips and smothered the poisoner witch’s power.
She tried to return my attack, but her magic fizzled right out of her fingertips. The witch gaped. “How—?”
The demon-touched witch thrust her hand out again, and a spell I didn’t know slipped off her lips.
Nothing happened.
Victory bloomed inside me. The binding curse had worked!
“Master!” La Voisin screamed, cutting my inner celebration short by reminding me that a bigger baddie was in the room. “Master! Help!”
But Xaphan paid his follower no mind. He was locked in a battle with Morgan, streams of blackness fighting vibrant fuchsia light. The Prince of Hell never once took his eyes off my ancestor, which relieved me.
The prince knew I had demon power, but I didn’t think he’d seen or heard me use the curse, which was something I’d like to keep in my back pocket. Anything to give me a leg up for the war to come. That is, if we made it to the war. Even as I watched Morgan, she started to flag, growing strained.
We had to get out of here. My mentor wouldn’t last much longer.
To be safe, I wound up a net of black magic, and sent it flying over La Voisin, trapping her. She screamed for her master again, but once more, Xaphan didn’t spare her a glance.
That’s what you get for making a deal with the devil, biatch.
I twirled to see that Eva was making great headway with the black spiderweb. Whipping back around, I struck Xaphan, first with a witch spell, and then with demon magic pulled from the deepest recesses of my being.
When the black tendrils hit him in the heart, the Prince of Hell gasped and fell backward onto his ass.
I grabbed Morgan’s wrist. “Run!”
With another blast of dark magic, I helped Eva make a hole in the web big enough for the three of us to squeeze through. We were in the hallway within seconds.
It took only a couple of heartbeats more for our lead to narrow. Heavy feet and beating wings sounded in the passageway behind us, telling us that Xaphan had recovered.
We only needed to get out of the house, past La Voisin’s wards, to disappear.
My mentor loosed a scream as a torrent of shimmering black magic surged past her, the edge of it hitting her shoulder. She stumbled, but I was there, and caught her and pulled her forward with all my strength.
“Faster!” Eva screamed, throwing herself at the front door and wrenching it open.
She leapt outside and twisted to face the devil. Magic surged as she tried to fight him off, buying us time.
“Morgan! A warphole!” I shot a beam of black magic back behind us. Xaphan grunted as it hit him.
My ancestor cried out in pain as she extended her hand. I felt the essence of time shift milliseconds before a warphole opened and the strands of time materialized. Eva stood between them, her gaze swaying from the threads in front of her and the warphole behind her. I scoured the threads, but none popped out at me as therightone. So I plowed forth and trusted that Morgan would find it while I held her up.
Blasting another stream of demon magic at the Prince of Hell, I sprinted straight into Eva, felt Morgan reach for a strand of time, and saw her fingers graze one before we disappeared through the warphole.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
