Help me, Leo! Please!
I scanned the area for him, but my vision grew too fuzzy and the battle too hectic. Then I remembered I had no interest in being the damsel, so I desperately tried to think of a way to buy myself time. I knew Leo would come for me.I knew it.
What could I do? I couldn’t move. I couldn’t run. Katarina’s hold on me kept yanking me up while the plants I’d conjured were desperately trying to pull me down. I supposed the only reason the witch didn’t incinerate them outright was that between holding me, choking me, and keeping up everything else she had in the room, she didn’t have the attention to divide. Really, I only needed a second or so of slack to get free, or even draw a breath.
My thoughts grew sluggish, taking on that unreal quality that came after waking up from a long, intense dream. I had a few moments left at best. People didn’t realize that usually it took a really long time to actually choke a person into unconsciousness, but that was when magic wasn’t involved.
The plants around me began to writhe, their little leaves rattling almost as if they were trying to ask me questions. They could tell I was in crisis, but they didn’t know what to do. They weren’t advanced enough for that kind of high-level thought. Besides, it wasn’t like they would understand what strangulation was. As long as their leaves and vines were exposed to air, theyhad thousands of different places they could bring in carbon dioxide.
Wait a minute.
Actually, I didn’t have a minute, so all I could do was wait a second before trying something so insanely stupid that there was no way it could work, but I did it anyway. I sent all the magic I could fizzing down into the plants covering me. There wasn’t a lot of physical contact considering my clothing, but some of those vines and leaves were wrapped around my belly or had gripped my ankle and calf. I focused on my connection in those places and ordered them tobreathe.
The first tiny little bit of oxygen that hit my lungs was hardly more than a sip. I was so shocked, I nearly laughed. Except I couldn’t, because the witch still had a stranglehold on my throat.
But the next rush of oxygen was like a full gasp, and my panic receded. It was an insanely strange sensation not to breathe through my nose or feel the air go down my throat, but I wasn’t about to complain.
I played dead.
I made a good show of it. I gasped and concentrated on trying to make my face red. I crossed my eyes. I struggled. The key was not to succumb too soon because I didn’t want her to catch on to the fact that I was faking.
When it came time for the big finale, I couldn’t bring myself to pee down my leg, but I did let out some horrendous choking sounds and dribbled spit all down my chin. Gross but effective, because the magical stranglehold released me, and Katarina cackled.
“Do you see, Leo? The futility of trying to fight what must be. Your precious mate is dead now, and soon the rest of you will all join her.”
The howl that issued from my lover was so pained, I felt guilty. I hoped he could sense I was alive, but he was obviously too far away for that.
I did, however, hear a host of other shifters answer his mournful cry, and those that were free all rounded on the witch.
I cracked a single eye open from where I was slumped over in my little plant cocoon. Katarina’s back was completely exposed to me. Leo had somehow managed to get a mouthful of her dress. It was the first significant physical contact any of them made. Leo had come through for me, just like I knew he would. I couldn’t do it without him.
“Do you have any idea how old this is? The designer isdead!” Katarina cried, her hands raised, no doubt ready to cast some sort of awfulness at the people I loved.
The bitch really should have made sure I was dead.
Drawing in a deep breath, I grabbed all the magic I possibly could within me, reaching deeper and further than I ever had before. I poured it out into the air around me. I let it flow like the very waterfall I’d passed on my climb up the tree, spilling over anything and everything it touched.
A host of sensations I couldn’t really understand flooded my every sense with its bubbling, popping, fizzing nature. But then I finally felt a connection. Something slow and ancient but resolute. Something eternal.
I had tapped into the tree’s life force.
I couldn’t quite describe how it felt to be connected to the wellspring of knowledge and power that resided inside the living wood around us. It had seen things. Terrible things. It had absorbed blood, magic, and tears. It wasn’t evil by nature, but it loathed what it had been turned into. It wanted peace.
A peace it could never get while Katarina Morgana was inside of it.
Letting my plants drop me down to the floor, I placed my palms on it and pressed my power through the marble. It was as if the tree and I were both inhabiting my body. Me, the one sentient enough to understand battle, and it being the one with the power to end the witch.
Focusing my mind’s eye, I watched as the marble floor cracked in two below the witch, and she dropped down into the hole. She let out a sharp shout of surprise, but before she could fly out of it, the opening sealed shut around her. I could feel her magic crackling against it, but the tree absorbed it, drinking it down like it had consumed so much of her poison throughout the years.
“What is this? What the hell have you done?”
She tried to pull one arm out, but the floor sucked her farther down, sealing her entire body until only her shoulders and head remained. I knew it was squeezing her and squeezing her, and by the time I reached her, she seemed to know she was beaten.
“You think you can end me so easily?” she asked, her eyes flashing malevolently. Her hair was mussed, her face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat, and a thin line of blood trickled down her forehead. It was the messiest I’d ever seen her, and I took no pride in it. What I was about to do would be violent. Merciless. But it needed to be done. Mercy was a luxury, and with people like Katarina Morgana, it wasn’t something we could afford.
The hatred in her expression only blazed more as the shifters behind me skidded to a stop.
“Disperge animas vestras o?—”
