Before I could question what I was doing, I knelt down and pressed my hand over top of Rowan’s, holding the twig against the guy’s face. He screamed, but he couldn’t wriggle away.
I focused my mind on that twig and on the dirt clot in Rowan’s hand, on the two touching – two parts of the earth coming together. Somehow – and I have no idea why this evenoccurredto me – I knew it was important that I thought about that twig and the dirt and nothing else.
Fear and energy and tingles of heat and light swirled through my body. Bile touched the back of my tongue. But I kept my focus.
The guy’s face twisted and sagged. His eyes flashed with anger, and then they rolled back in his head.
His body stiffened.
He toppled backward, slamming against the ground.
His head bounced.
He didn’t get up again.
I sucked in a breath.What just happened?
Rowan helped me to my feet.
“What did we do?” I cried.
“No time for that,” Rowan dragged me toward the others. “Come on!”
I stumbled across the field after him, my breath ragged and my lungs screaming.
Arthur, Corbin, and Flynn fought the other two guys – the five of them climbing over each other in a whirlwind of flailing limbs. I saw the flash of a white blade under the moonlight and Corbin cried out.
Corbin rolled out of the fray. One of the assailants leapt on top of him, sending him sprawling to the ground. Corbin managed to roll over beneath the guy, and he hooked his hand under his shirt and pulled out some kind of necklace which he shoved in the guy’s face.
The assailant screamed as the metal necklace touched his skin. He lashed out at Corbin with the same clawed fingers. Corbin wrenched his head to the side and the guy raked his claws through thin air.
Rowan ran over and grabbed the guy around the neck, trying to pull him off Corbin. I stood frozen, unable to move. All I could do was watch the carnage around me.
Arthur and Flynn took down the other attacker. Arthur pinned the guy’s arms while Flynn tore open something in his pocket and sprinkled it into his face. The guy screamed, thrashing wildly in Arthur’s grip, his foot nearly clobbering Flynn in the face.
And then,poof!He disappeared.
What the?—
I was leaving a lot of sentences unfinished tonight.
I squinted into the gathering dark. Yep, the guy was definitely no longer there.
Flynn helped Arthur to his feet, and the blond giant hunched down to retrieve his knife from the long grass, the stalks bent and broken from the fight.
Meanwhile, Corbin was off the ground. He and the last assailant circled each other like two boxers in a ring. The black-cloaked guy had a long, curved sword made of some kind of white material. It looked like the rib bone of a large animal. The white blade shimmered with a pale blue light along one edge.
Corbin’s eyes flicked to his friends. “Arthur!” he yelled, raising his hand.
Arthur tossed his blade through the air. Corbin reached up and grabbed the handle just as the assailant swung the white sword at his arm.
I gasped. The entire world moved in slow motion, the blade inching closer to Corbin’s raised arm. Moonlight gleamed off the sharpened edge.
The blue light kissed Corbin’s skin, but before it sank into his flesh Arthur slammed into the guy, knocking him sideways and plunging a second knife into his side.
“Arrrrrrgghhh!” the guy bellowed. Arthur leaned his full weight into his, twisting the knife into his flesh. Blood spread out from the wound, but in the dark it looked weird, kind of green. But that was probably just a trick of the light and the green meadow.
The guy’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his body stiffened. But before his back had even hit the ground, he also disappeared, his body shimmering away into the air as if it had been made of dust.
