I lifted said hands, making the low-heat fire coat the outline of the spell.
“She started with the casings.” Callie cleared her throat. “I’ll explain it all when you come for training. It’ll be fine. Let’s just focus on the here and now.”
I half smiled, because Callie clearly needed some time to come up with a good lie. My humor dripped away, though, as I felt the vibrations of the spell turn angry.
“Here we go.” I increased the heat, crackling through the spell. Like snapping strings on a violin, pieces of it kept breaking away.Pop, pop, pop.
I threw up a curtain of fire in front of us for protection. The protection and concealment spells sizzled violently, unraveled or eaten away entirely by my power. Without warning, they burst, reacting exactly as Penny had predicted. An explosion of magic slapped against my wall of fire. Sparkles of color spread outacross the flame curtain before I ripped it to the side, exposing a medium-sized warehouse with blackened windows and a plain door.
The door flew open and a shock of magic blasted out at us.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Icaught the attack in fire and ate away the spell, making the mages’ eyes go round in astonishment. My return fire was exactly that: a thin stream of heat-intensive flame directed right at them.
It hit the first mage dead-on. He screamed and patted at his black robe before running off the steps and onto the gravel. Clearly he had forgotten the stop-drop-and-roll technique. The flame grew, about ready to burn him alive.
Gross.
I tore the fire away and jerked my head. “Darius.”
The vampire was there in a moment. Two strong hands wrapped around the mage’s head. Penny flinched at thecrackthat followed.
“What are you?” one of the mages yelled, staring at me with a slack jaw. Next to him, a female mage bent to her hands, her lips moving. They’d shut the door behind them.
A blast of green shot from the female mage, headed for Dizzy. He didn’t have time to counter, but a sheen ofblack rose up in front of him like a net, catching the mage’s spell like my fire might’ve. Unlike my fire, however, the sheen of black didn’t eat away the magic, or even unravel it. Instead, it wrapped around the spell, making an outline like a comet. It looked about ready to implode.
“Uh-oh,” Penny said. Clearly she’d thrown up the netlike spell, trying to mimic my magic. It was not wise to experiment on the fly.
“Run!” Penny screamed, throwing up another layer of magic.
“Penny, you’ll only make it worse,” Callie yelled before hurrying over to Dizzy, her hands full of supplies.
“I can undo it,” Penny replied, moving her hands through the air.
The spells fizzed and shook in midair, frozen in place but not subdued.
“Reagan,” Callie yelled. Penny was damn near the most powerful mage I’d ever seen. Dealing with her magic gone rogue would be too much for even dual mages of Callie and Dizzy’s caliber.
I created a sphere of fire around the mess of magic, and not a moment too soon. The cocooned spell reversed Penny’s intended goal. Spikes of magic shot out in all directions, pounding at my sphere from within. A few spears broke out, incredibly powerful from the merged energy of both casters. It puncheddivots in the ground and shot through the wood of the warehouse.
“Bad idea, Penny,” I said, out of breath. I felt the drain of power. “Don’t try to mimic my magic. It doesn’t work like yours.”
She nodded with an ashen face. “Okay.” She swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“Go, Reagan.” Callie motioned me away. “I got it from here.”
The female mage had run down the few steps while I was dealing with the magic, splitting up from her stunned male counterpart. She’d probably hoped the man would snap out of it and guard the stairs. Or maybe she just figured her chances were better on her own.
Leaving her to Callie, I charged the door, feeling that now familiar cold throbbing in my middle. The demon was in there, and I was about to drop in and say hi.
Darius got there before me. He grabbed the still-stunned mage out of the doorway and ripped him away, leaving the door for me. I kicked it open and ran into the warehouse.
Hundreds of candles glowed around the floor, illuminating boxes stacked at the back and around the sides. In the middle of a cleared space stood three mages, all in black robes, making a triangle around acircle drawn on the floor. Beside them was a pile of gross, not human this time. An animal of some sort.
“You guys really don’t have the hang of sacrifices, you know that?” I said, inching forward slowly. I didn’t know what spells were brewing in that circle. One wrong move, and I could accidentally give the demon enough power to ride the magic home.
None of the mages glanced my way, all of them hunched in a troll-like way, completely focused on the circle and what was in it. A homeless man sat within the circle, bent and crippled in an inhuman way. The demon must have taken over that body, eating away anything that had once been human.
