The death magic strand wiggled slightly and grew just a little. Nothing else moved. Somehow, Angie knew that was bad.
From high on the hillside came the sound of gunfire. Then someone screamed, abruptly cut off. Edmund’s fury leaked through their bond before the connection disappeared. Her Dark Knight had the Big Bad Ugly.
—
Edmund carefully wiped the blood from his lips and licked the fang marks from the human’s throat. He now knew who the attackers were, how manythere were, how well they were armed, and what they wanted. He tucked the enemy’s weapons into his pockets, shouldered the man’s body, and jogged down the hill, his victim’s heart beating fast and arrhythmically from blood loss.
Movement at the Everhart-Trueblood back door caught his eye. Evan, Angie’s father, was on his knees, pushing his protective ward down the steps, his eyes wide, his face and beard bloody, shirtless body pale with shock. Angie had said her father was bleeding everywhere and Edmund realized that meant the male witch had not been caught in the temporal dislocation.
“Evan,” he said, as he approached thehedge of thorns.
“My children?” Evan gasped.
“Safe.”
The big man seemed to reshape with relief. Ed dropped his dinner at thehedgewall. Evan was huffing when he got there, fresh blood trickling from a nasty head wound, probably concussed. He fell to his backside, breathing heavily, as he pulled on sweats. “Update me.”
Edmund told him everything, including how Angie had pushed her ward through thehedge, and watched as Evan tried it, successfully ramming his small protective ward through. He dropped the tattered ward and staggered to the glowing protuberance of thehedgeenergies where the two humans were frozen in time. “They were... going to kill us.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not a violent man,” Evan said, his face twisting with fury. “But...”
“They will not trouble you again,” Edmund said gently. “My military and tech team are analyzing the people and the device. They will be dealt with.”
“Good.” Mixed scents of self-loathing and satisfaction came from Trueblood, tart and acerbic. “What did he tell you?” Evan gestured toward the human at Ed’s feet.
“He is with a group called DTP. Death to Paranormals. Starting with the Everhart-Trueblood family. There are two more warriors and two ‘suits’ over the hill in a van. We must assume they will be along presently.”
Gunfire rang out. Pain seared along Edmund’s side and in his right chest.
He fell. The witch dropped too.
—
Gunshots.From the hill. Angie broke thewarmingward and reset it, leaving EJ and George safe and asleep. She scrambled around the car and froze at the sight of Ant Liz and Ant Cia on the ground, twitching beneath anattackworking that writhed like red snakes. Miz Melodie struggled to get loose from the straps on her ankles. Angie wasn’t good with delicate spells, so she just raised her hands and hit the evil witch withsleep. That one she knew real good. Miz Melodie fell over.
She ran to her ants and studied theattackworking trapping them. It was solid and squiggly at the same time, like jail bars hit with lightning. The electricity made her ants shake. Ant Liz was turning blue. She had been injured once and her lungs were bad. She could die. Angie didn’t have long.
She took a deep breath, pinpointed the nearby ley line, and shoved her hands into theattackworking. It punched her like... like something awful. She shook. Bit her tongue and tasted blood. But she directed theattackworking down into the ley line, draining it. The blackness of night shrank her vision. It had never happened before, but she was pretty sure she was passing out.
—
Edmund sped up the hill and tackled the shooter. The sniper’s rifle skittered off the boulders, breaking the scope, firing a final shot into the sky. With a furious, vicious twist, Edmund broke the shooter’s neck at C5. His own wounds were painful, though not life-threatening. To heal himself he fed, reading the man’s thoughts. Verified that three others waited on the far side of the hill. He carried the still-breathing human, racing back to heal the witch. But Evan had wrapped himself in a protective ward and had not been shot. Ed dropped to his backside beside the big man, calling Lincoln Shaddock. It was past time to request reinforcements.
—
Angie scowled as Daddy said, “We don’t have good options, Angie. You, Little Evan, and I will go home with your aunts and we’ll try tomorrow—”
“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest just like Daddy did when he was putting his foot down. “Mama’s death magics are growing. They’llkill her and the baby by morning.” Daddy looked weird, the way he had when a rattlesnake found its way into the backyard and Angie killed it with a hoe. She had been four. “We have to stop it now.”
“None of us knows how, Angie,” Daddy said softly.
“I do.” She pointed up. “We have to find a way to get up there and unravel the knot of death and heaven.” Daddy didn’t reply. He just shook his head.
Edmund said he had a ’cussion. Whatever that was. Edmund also said Mr. Shaddock was taking care of the bad guys on the other side of the hill. She didn’t want them taken care of, she wanted them dead, but no one asked her.
“The top of thehedgeis twenty feet above the roofline,” Edmund said. He rested his hand on the ward and the frozenhedgeonly buzzed. “Thehedge of thornsfeels slightly warm, with a faint vibration. I can leap and climb to the top, provided thehedgeis as solid at the top as here.”
