And I magicked up the best fireball of my life.
The spirit saw what I intended and finally tore free, boiling toward me before I could throw anything.Only to stop in mid-air and be forced back, not all at once, but in jerks and jolts, as if being pummeled by an invisible prize fighter.Before slowly, slowly, slowly starting to make headway again.
Jen screamed and fell to her knees, and Sophie cursed and grabbed her.And then another spirit bounded onto the field, a giant leopard-shaped one, pouncing on and then tearing into Bleddyn’s creature, forcing it back toward the blackened body slowly sinking toward the earth.And yet it still wasn’t enough.
How the hell could it not be enough?
“He’s been feeding off half of Tartarus,” someone said harshly from behind me.“He’s too strong for one necro.But let’s try ten, shall we?”
I looked back to see the Dark Circle council member standing there, with a group of his fellow mages clustered like an elongated shadow behind him.Only this shadow moved.Their hands extended, their eyes neon bright, they threw everything they had at the struggling spirit.
It paused again.And this time, it didn’t move.Not forward, but not backward, either, maintaining its distance from the body that was almost consumed now.
And that wouldn’t work.It had to beinthe body to die: that was what Dave had said, and he’d studied this shit, only I had no idea how to get it there.We had nothing left!
Then I noticed: the council member hadn’t moved yet.He’d let his men take on the danger and gauge the creature’s strength before he committed.But once they stopped it, he slowly raised a hand.
And I guessed he really had gotten that upgrade.Because just that fast, the spirit slammed back into the burning corpse, as if hit by a wrecking ball; the cluster of flame hovering over my hand became a dozen, two dozen, four; and then all of them tore straight into the weakened, already burning body, sending it up like a pyre.And causing the flames to flare so high that they licked the top of the shield far overhead.
The writhing spirit was almost invisible among them, yet still battling, not trying to get away so much now as to get to me.Its eyes were silver fire, its voice was terrible, screeching things I couldn’t understand, although I understood the hate behind them.And somehow, impossibly, it was tearing freeagain—
I heard Jen yell, “Lia!”; heard Sophie’s leopard cry out in pain and leap away; heard the mage behind me curse and several more scream—
Heard my counterpart whisper, “Now.”
And then a spear of purple lightning stabbed down once again, immolating the remaining flesh of that terrible body, and turning it into silvery black dust that puffed away on the wind.Because she’d been right, I thought dizzily.Theydidhave a rotation.
And then I passed the hell out.
Epilogue
We have to stop meeting like this,” Cyrus said, his voice gently calling me back from the abyss.
I blinked my eyes open to see him sitting beside me on our bed at home, and I would have thought it had all been a crazy dream except for how he looked.
“Oh,” I said, sitting up and reaching for him, only to fall back against the bed, wincing.“Oh.”
“Yes, the healer is very upset with you,” he informed me, as if he didn’t look worse.
“What...”I gestured at the absolute mess that was his usually handsome face, which was lacerated all to hell, what parts weren’t a giant, swollen bruise.
“It’s something to do with the potion those bastards gave me,” he said, “to keep me from Changing.It also shuts down most of our healing processes.It should wear off by the end of the day, and I’ll go furry and deal with this.”
I felt myself relax slightly.
And then I remembered—the arena.My students.My boys—
“No, no, no,” Cyrus said, as I jerked upright.“It’s all right.They’re all right.”
“How?What—”
“You passed out,” he told me, his hands on my shoulders.“Your third did not.And we mopped the hell up afterward.Noah brought the entire crew from Wolf’s Head, where they seem to have been influenced by Sienna’s new militaristic mindset—”
“You think?”I said hoarsely, remembering an acid-spewing fire truck.
“—and Lee jacked a weapon she’d talked the Circle out of recently, for the place’s defenses, which the Corps was very unhappy about before seeing the use he’d put to it.That seems to have mollified them somewhat.”
Yeah.
