The tickling stopped and Gentry forced her eyes open so that she could see the horrified look on the necromancer’s face. “Let her up, Adrienne. I need to ask something.”
The immense pressure on her arms and legs immediately dissipated, but Gentry only had the strength to spit the cloth out of her mouth. Slowly, she could feel her lucidity returning with every passing second she was no longer under the icy knife of Wren’s power.
“Gentry, I need you to try and see if you still sense Drayer. Can you do that for me?”
She shut her eyes at the request, unsure how she could clear her mind in such a state. But she tried nonetheless.
It was to her absolute horror that her mind snapped back into that old, familiar connection.
fifty-two
Kit
They ran into their first guard relatively soon, and Kit didn’t have a single clue in hell how the wizened, scarred witch hadn’t heard their approach. The tunnels were an echo chamber for every single one of their footsteps. Sure, Kit had forced the others to freeze every few yards so he could scout ahead, but any professional should’ve been on the alert to onlookers, especially with a battle rumbling from the bottom level of the cliff face.
Perhaps the whiskey bottle in the guard’s hand was what saved them.
Kit snapped his neck as soon as he caught sight of the guard, not giving the man a chance to defend himself. It wasn’t his usual style, but he was ruthless where his family was concerned; bastards who kidnapped children didn’t deserve the chance to duel.
“How close?” Mary breathed the question into his ear. His foster sister had been a shadow at his side, her movements surprisingly lithe given that he knew she spent most of her time crafting clever charms rather than fighting. She would've been a natural scout. Their other siblings? Not so much. Williamand Benny kept running into each other, while Liliana kept kicking rocks on accident. Every time Kit saw residual moonlight filtering through a potential exit, he felt tempted to dismiss them, to send them somewhere safe, but practicality stopped him every time.
They’d need every witch with a broom once they found the kids.
“Another two levels,” he whispered back at Mary, “we need to speed up our pace.” And then they did just that, bumping and crashing through the tunnels like complete amateurs. Kit ran ahead and killed two more guards who’d been far more alert than the first. He heard his brothers and sisters gasp at his brutality but ignored it. They could think he was a brute all they wanted as long as they were alive.
Thankfully, they reached the center, and saw the pivotal landmark that defined Gentry’s map — a wide circular clearing which all the tunnels spidered from. Kit picked the northmost one, which would descend towards the room with the cages. They were close.
He stopped his siblings from following almost immediately, positive that the guards’ standard operating procedure would be to cluster around the children' s holding area when under attack. Protecting the cargo.
Sure enough, Kit spotted five. All alert under the shimmering firelight of the cave, their palms glowing with primed magic. They were keeping watch like experts, spread out and hyper-focused on their designated areas.
Fuck.This wouldn’t be easy. Silently, Kit crept forward and slouched, making himself a smaller target. Then he picked the guards furthest from him. The first three didn’t stand a chance.
But the two closest to him certainly did. They rushed him, the closer of the two blasting the nearby rock to pieces. The shrapnelsprayed, blinding him as a nasty bit of levitation smacked him into the wall.
Kit rolled with the impact and jumped to his feet just in time to watch as a snake flew onto the nearest guard’s face. She screamed, crumbling to the ground, which provided the distraction he needed to snap the other guard’s neck. He then approached the female guard, determined to stop the screams.
“Wait,” Mary called out as she jogged to him, “don’t kill her. Watch. Stop screaming.” The woman obeyed, growing eerily silent as the large snake continued to coil around her face.
Chills went down Kit’s spine at the sight. “Is that one of your charms?”
“Yes, I have her keyed to listen to you too.” Mary started moving towards the cage room’s opening. Kit stopped her and went ahead, not at all liking the silence despite Gentry telling them that the kids’ jaws had been locked.
Relief hit him as he saw his little siblings’ faces behind the bars. Benny was at the edge, and his eyes grew to the size of quarters at the sight of him and Mary. Soon, all the help arrived and Kit dutifully watched the hall as the others worked on freeing the kids. Mary did a headcount and confirmed that all nine were present, only Amelia missing.
Which meant it was time to get the others into the air. Kit escorted the group, his heart lurching as he heard some of the kids sniffle and cry in the only way the locked jaw spell would allow them. Impatience made him not signal to the group to go still so he could scout ahead, the woman with the snake on her face right on his heel. They were so close—
Three figures in the circular clearing of the cave system made his heart stutter to a stop. His eyes had yet to adjust from the firelit corridors of the cage room to the darkened outer ones, so all he could tell was that two were tall and the third short and stout.
“Attack!” an old, craggy voice demanded.
The tall figures then proceeded to attack him with an inhuman speed. Vampyres. Fuck. He knew Mary had packed stakes in his charm bag, but there was no time when he was being rushed. He could already hear the terrified gasps from his family behind him, and the moonlight filtering from one of the tunnels provided mocking context to how close they were to the sky. Which gave him an idea.
Kit threw as much magic as he could at the vamps, forcing them both a few feet back, which gave him just enough time to look back. “Fly,” he snarled, “I’ll take care of these guys.”
He rushed into the clearing, pleased when he felt air rushing past from fleeing brooms. One of the vamps jumped for Benny’s broom as the young man held a crying little girl, and Kit once again threw his magic in their direction, giving just enough of a distraction for the pair to escape. They were the last of the group.
“Quentin, after them! Me and your brother can handle a single witch,” the old woman cried.
