My face felt hot, and now I was the one avoiding his eyes.
“Balah,”I whispered, shoving my hands straight out in the correct mudra. I threw more of myself behind it that time, but I didn’t even see him cast the counter-spell. I just saw his hand twitch before the spell ricocheted off the wall, making it shudder.
One of the lanterns swung wildly on its hook.
“You’re holding back,” he said, his voice now openly irritated. “I didn’t think I’d actually have to tell younotto do that.”
“Crus levare,”I hissed, flicking my whole arm sideways to aim the mudra at his leg.
Again, he knocked it easily aside.
“Ignire aerem,”I snapped, not bothering to be quiet as I yanked harder on my sun primal. The air burst into flames in along, darting line, straight for him, but extinguished a few feet from his chest.“Mastishk dhundhala…”
He deflected that one, too.
“Try something different,” he said, still impatient. “You’re not going to get past my shields that way.”
I felt my jaw harden, but didn’t speak the obvious.
I wasn’t going to get past his shields at all.
“Then try something else,” he said, biting out the words.
He started walking towards me, and for some reason, real fear caused my adrenaline to spike. I scarcely whispered another spell in Russian, using my primal to seek out anything living in the shed compartment apart from me or Bones.
I didn’t have much hope the spell would find anything.
Meanwhile, Bones glided closer, moving like he wasn’t in any hurry at all.
I backed up as he approached, but he easily closed the gap.
I jerked away when he reached for one of my wrists.
I aimed a left hook at his head, that time solely as a diversion, following it up immediately with a hard jab at his throat with my right. He moved so quickly and effortlessly away from both, I couldn’t even track what he’d done with his body, and then he was behind me, using a spell that prevented me from turning around.
I started to speak another spell, but he murmured something else, and my throat locked closed, unable to move, or to finish the words.
He still hadn’t even touched me.
I managed to break free of the spell that forced me to face away from him, using a mudra and a hard yank of my primal, but I still couldn’t speak.
Just then, I heard a buzzing sound, and turned my head to see a swarm of some kind of flying ant mixed with beetles flyinginto his face. He neutralized them with a mudra and a silent spell, but he actually smiled, meeting my gaze.
“Tanets medvedya?”he asked. When I nodded, he smirked, and dropped the hold on my throat. “Clever, Shadow. But you should probably use that one outdoors, so you can summon something bigger than termites and beetles to come to your rescue––”
“Vanarpucchham,”I breathed, twisting my hand in a circular motion in front of my body, where he wouldn’t see it.
Whipping it around with a hard flick, I wrapped my new, prehensile tail around his ankle and yanked, hard, putting magic behind it, right as I murmured an unbalancing spell.
He moved fluidly with my yank without losing his balance, deflected the second spell first, then snapped the tail off right where it came off my spine… again,somehow.I didn’t hear the countering spell, or see more than a flick of his fingers, and he never touched the tail with his hand. It crumbled to dust as I watched, and, now actually angry, I hit him with a spell I’d never wanted to try on Alaric, worried I might actually hurt him.
“Exsanguinate,”I hissed softly, and yanked, hard, on my primal, throwing the spell with my arm and a mudra in a long curve, hoping to hit him on the back.
He stepped in front of the curse before it could get behind him. Without his lips moving at all, he bounced that one straight back at me with a flick of his wrist.
I barely got the“deflecto,”from my lips, jerking my hands to the left, before my own spell would have slammed into me and drained half the blood out of my body. As it was, the charged streak of aether slammed into the wall, and exploded one of the lanterns. Bones hadn’t yet moved back, so I let out an angry snarl and full-blown attacked him, swinging my fists at his face. He slid easily out of my way, again moving inhumanly fast, andwhen I tried to attack him a second time, he used his leg in an odd maneuver to push me back.
I tried stomping his foot, then aimed a palm strike at his chest. I missed both when he moved his chest sideways, just out of my range, and blocked my foot with a shin.
