Griffin shakes his head.
“I was eleven. I was eye-level with its shins.”
The six men stop twenty feet from us, taking our measure. Two look like Tarvans, not quite as sun-browned as Sintans and not quite as olive-toned as Fisans. They’re marked with the swooping, archaic symbols of ward lines, drawn across their foreheads. I recognize a broad-spectrum block, geared mainly toward Elemental Magic. If I gain any magic during this fight, I can’t use it on them. It’s too dangerous, knowing how wards corrupt my power.
My eyes flick over the rest of the team. Fisan, or at least I think so. Two of the men are of slightly smaller build and probably Magoi. The one completely covered in a dark cloak is carrying a wooden staff. I hate staffs. They’re either pretentious and purely for show, or else they carry a wallop I don’t even want to think about.
The cloaked man steps forward and pushes his hood back, revealing lank brown hair and mud-green eyes. Definitely Magoi. Moderately powerful. The staff is for show.
His swampy gaze widens when he gets a good look at the clear bright-green of my eyes, the only part of my face not hidden by cosmetics and kohl. I bare my teeth in a mockery of a smile.That’s right. I’m going to walk all over you.
But he smiles back, which I don’t like at all.
He looks right at me. “I’ve got something up my sleeve.” Chuckling, he opens his cloak.
I gasp, revolted. He’s crawling with spiders, completely covered from neck to toes in a moving, scuttling blanket of little black beasts. They’re furry in places and the size of full, ripe olives. They crawl all over each other, pushing and sliding and bumping, because there arelayers.
A collective groan of disgust sweeps the arena. Then the whooping, cheering, and hollering begin again.
The Magoi throws me a vicious sneer. He raises his hands, and the spiders split into two racing currents that disappear into his billowing sleeves. An instant later, they fly from his outstretched arms, shooting straight toward me on a strong, unnatural wind. The second Magoi raises his head for the first time—bright-green eyes. The Elemental Mage’s wind slams into me along with a horde of prickly spiders.
They hit me everywhere at once and then converge on my neck and head. Hopping like a maniac, I drop my knives and start ripping them off me, but a tight, sturdy web forms in seconds, circling my throat. I start to panic, mainly due to a life-long loathing of anything creepy-crawly or slithery. They’re in my eyes. Pinching my ears. Scraping my scalp. Up my nose. In my mouth.Oh my Gods!
Other hands start tearing the spiders off me, but there are too many, and they just keep coming back.
Before I can’t breathe anymore—or they start biting me—or something equally awful—I force myself to calm down and stop howling. This is compulsion, and this Magoi is only powerful enough to drive nearly mindless spiders. About a million nearly mindless spiders, but I won’t think about that. I’m stronger than he is. I can make his spiders eat each other—or him.
Griffin shouts my name. His hands are all over my neck and face, flinging spiders off me. They’re so thick I doubt he even knows about the noose. I keep my eyes closed, but even so, it’s like the middle of a pitch-black night. They cut out all light.
The web suddenly jerks on my neck. The spiders drop, and daylight hits my face in a blinding flash. The army of arachnids yanks me off my feet, racing as one toward the Magoi. I grab the noose, struggling to get my fingers under it as I bump over the rough sand, gasping for air.
“Cat!” Griffin lunges for me, missing me by mere inches.
The brute force of the opposing team chooses that moment to spring into action and leap over me, cutting me off from the others. Griffin ducks a ferocious swing and then comes up in an explosion of muscle and steel. Metal clangs, men grunt, and utter mayhem breaks out.
Scraped raw by the sand, I tumble to a stop at the Magoi’s feet, only a trickle of air still making its way down my throat. His knife flashes above me, but I wrap my free arm around his ankles and jerk hard. I don’t have the leverage I need to pull him over. He stumbles, though, and I pivot on my hip, getting my feet between us and kicking out. Grunting, he reels back. Spiders start crawling on top of me again. On my left, blades meet and shriek and slide off each other in a grinding cacophony of savagery and sound. There’s the thud of leather and flesh. The first spray of red arcs through the air, and there’s a moment of silent, breathless glee before the bloodthirsty crowd goes insane.
The spider-controlling Magoi raises his long, curved knife again, an ugly smirk curling his upper lip. I make a rude hand gesture, smirk back, and then disappear.
Shock registers on his face. The audience gasps. The Magoi still jabs downward, but his moment of hesitation gives me the time I need to roll away, crushing spiders underneath me.
With one hand still dragging at the noose, I scramble to my feet and put some distance between us, bringing a slew of now invisible spiders along with me. They dangle from the web, cling to my arms and clothing, and make my skin twitch and itch. I squash some underfoot, cringing at the revolting, crunching pop.
Taking a knife from my belt, I stop breathing while I carefully work the blade between my neck and the web. Blood drips down my throat from the shallow cut I can’t avoid making. I push out, slicing the sticky fibers, and then gulp down air, accidentally sucking a spider into my mouth along with it. Gagging, I spit the awful thing back out.
Both Magoi turn sharply, and I fling the bloodstained noose away from me along with the spiders still attached to it. While the Fisans focus on the severed web, I silently circle the other way, getting behind them to assess the situation.
Griffin is fighting the two Tarvans at once. One is nursing a bruised or broken rib and a very bloody, mostly useless arm. The other is still dangerously intact. Kato and Carver have a Fisan each. Every strike is fierce and ear-splitting, bone-jarring blows coming from both sides in a brutal dance of strength, speed, and skill.
Flynn is hanging back to guard Jocasta when he should be taking an opponent from Griffin. He can’t leave her now, though, because with me out of sight and the spiders scuttling back to their master, the two Magoi focus on Flynn and Jocasta with malicious intent.
Mud-Eyes flicks his hand, and his terrible black army scuttles into motion. A wind picks up, propelling the spiders along.
Still invisible, I fumble to latch on to their tiny minds and turn them around.Why did I never practice this!The spiders are four feet from Flynn. Three. Two…Time’s up.
I spring forward and slam the blunt end of my knife down on the Magoi’s head. He crumples without a sound. The Elemental Mage gapes at his fallen teammate. Then his head jerks around, and his bright-green eyes search the empty space for me. I stop moving, not stirring a single grain of sand.
He lifts his hands, conjuring a fierce, circular wind. My still solid form alters the flow of swirling grit. He finds me almost instantly and jabs with his sword. I spin out of the way, drop, roll, and come up in the calm space around his body.
