I already have a knife in each hand. “I’ve got the two on the right.” Instinct tells me they’re powerful Magoi.
Griffin claims the burly one in the middle.
Carver shakes his head. “No good with a knife.”
“Not from this distance.” Kato grimaces. “I don’t have the arm for it today.”
Flynn’s mouth turns down in a hard frown. He doesn’t look confident, but he switches his ax to his left hand and then draws a knife with his right. “Far left. Then whoever can gets the last woman.”
“The woman,” Jocasta practically snarls, staking her claim.
Flynn’s eyes flick to her. “No one’s asking you to become a murderer, Jo.”
“I already am,” she says tightly. “And no one asked for your opinion.”
“You’ll get it anyway,” he grates out.
Jocasta snorts. “That would require your talking to me instead of just glowering all the time.”
He glares. She glares back.
“And on that happy note,” I mutter under my breath, “we all might die.”
Griffin slants me a pointed look. “Not today, Catalia Eileithyia.”
He’s confident and calm, even in the face of terrible odds. Griffin doesn’t add Fisa to my name this time. Apparently, I’m universal now.
I take a deep breath. It straightens my spine. “Not today.” Because we all know saying it out loud makes it true.
The gong sounds. My pulse leaps, and my heart kicks me in the ribs. Instinct takes over, shoving aside nerves and leaving only the will to protect and survive. I let fly my first blade before our opponents even take a step. The woman I aimed for goes down, a knife in her throat. My second target is looking right at me, and in the time it takes me to cock back my hand and throw, he dives out of the way. Now, I’ll have to get him on the run.
Griffin hits his mark. The stout man falls, Griffin’s knife in his heart. Flynn misses his moving target and curses as he draws a second knife. Jocasta has yet to throw, and her target is charging, a wooden shield now blocking most of her torso.
The Cyclops hasn’t moved. It doesn’t have to. It’s terrifying everyone just by being there.
I lock on to the way my man is moving. Quick steps, agile. Every three to four paces, he moves right while Jocasta’s woman fans left. Are they trying to get around us? Herd us toward their monster?
One, two, three—throw!My knife sticks in my target’s well-muscled shoulder. He wheels around to face me, more enraged than damaged, and I immediately throw again.
The small, round shield strapped to his left arm stops my knife at his eye-level. He rips my blade from the wood and then throws it back so fast he nearly catches me off guard. I twist, and the blade lands tip-first in the sand behind me.
A pained, feminine gasp makes my stomach take an anxious plunge. I spin, my eyes landing first on Jocasta and then on the woman she struck. They both look stunned, like neither of them quite believes what happened. Jocasta’s knife is in the woman’s pelvis, just beside her hip bone.
I wince.What a place.
“Got him!” Flynn shouts.
I whirl. An upper torso wound. Not fatal, although it might make breathing hard.
Griffin scoops up the Kobaloi knife near my feet and then throws it from down low. It hits Flynn’s target under his chin, driving up into his head. The man drops, on his way to an abrupt heart-to-heart with Hades.
Three down.
Two humans left, both wounded.
One Cyclops.
Raising his battle-ax, Flynn closes in on Jocasta’s woman. She’s Tarvan, tattooed but not in the southern style, and a Magoi. Her eyes spark with magic an instant before Flynn’s ax flies from his hand and lands at her feet, splashing sand up her legs.
