“Let go,” Spencer snapped in a low voice as they dodged between a pair of trees.
“You want to fall flat on your face?”
“I won’t on my own. I will if you keep unbalancing me. Fatima?”
Between one blink and the next, Fatima appeared in front of him, springing out of the veil into a run that matched his pace. His sight suddenly shifted, the overlay of her vision and his brightening his surroundings, even if the world tilted at a weird angle as his brain tried to compensate for two different eye levels.
When Spencer yanked his arm again, this time, Makai let him go. Spencer stumbled for a few steps before he got his feet back under him. Makai didn’t run off, even though he could have. He didn’t owe Spencer anything, but it spoke well of the dire—or at least his handle on potential political fallout—that he stayed. Not like Spencer wasn’t going to do his damnedest to keep the other man safe.
Sound reached Spencer’s ears, and he was moving before his brain even processed the lunge. He slammed into Makai, taking the other man down to the ground as the heavy, continuous sound of automatic suppressive fire ripped through the air, tearing into the trees behind them. Fatima skidded to a stop, her vision bleeding out of his. The world went dark again, but that was the least of his worries.
He smacked a hand on Makai’s shoulder where they lay and cast a look-away ward, the little sparks of magic spinning into the edges of the other man’s aura. “Shift and then run to wherever is safest for you out here. I’ll keep them occupied.”
“There’s at least half a dozen hunters back there with assault rifles,” Makai hissed.
“Yeah, but they got nothing on a combat mage. Shift andrun. I won’t tell you a third time.”
He needed Makai out of the literal line of fire. Spencer worked better in situations like this when he didn’t have to worry about any civilian casualties. And yeah, Makai might be a werecreature, but demons were targeting his community right now, and Spencer knew Mallory and Anil would be pissed if he allowed their dire to become possessed.
The hunters could shoot at Spencer; he could handle their advance. Considering they were in the middle of the woods, he could only hope the nearest home wasn’t anywhere close enough for the owners to wake up tomorrow morning with bullet holes in their walls.
In the dark, he couldn’t really see Makai shift, but he could hear him. That almost made it worse. There was just something about the way the sound of bones breaking and the wet tearing of flesh as skin and muscle split that always made Spencer flinch the tiniest bit.Sympathy cringewas what Nadine used to call it.
Gunfire still echoed in the air, getting louder as the hunters pushed their way forward into the trees. Spencer’s sight wavered before returning to that strange overlay between his and Fatima’s that lit the world in a strange negative light. He watched Makai rise from a crouch on four legs and shake off the tattered remains of his clothes. Makai huffed out a soft growl before tearing off through the dark, keeping low to the ground and moving with preternatural speed Spencer had no hope of ever matching. He took with him Spencer’s look-away ward, the magic set to dissipate in about fifteen minutes or so.
Spencer lurched to his feet, calling up a personal shield that wrapped around him like a moveable wall, giving off a faint dark green glow. It would draw the hunters’ attention, and normally he wouldn’t want that, but he’d rather their eyes be on him and not anywhere else.
Fatima snapped her teeth at him, ears flattened back against her skull.Follow me.
His entire body ached from the crash as he ran after her, trying to watch his footing as she took him deeper into the woods. Enough trees were behind them that the bullets caught in wood rather than his magic. Spencer didn’t reach for his pistol yet, wanting to save his bullets for when they’d actually be useful. Shooting in the dark without good sight was just asking to waste them.
Fatima leaped over a downed log, and Spencer did the same, feet sliding on the wet ground behind it. He caught his balance right as a cold wind slammed into him, driving him back against the log and nearly causing him to lose his balance. Fatima growled, low and deep, a warning that made Spencer snap his head around. His vision swam, and not just because of their shared sight.
The forest, all low-lit trees and black shadows, had started tobleed.
The trees pulsed, bark peeling off the trunks as if they were vines, snaking through the air toward him. Spencerknewit was an illusion, but it still weirded him the fuck out to see the forest come alive like it wanted to eat him. His breath came out in frosty puffs of air, and the chill made him shiver hard enough his teeth clacked together.
“If I get frostbite, you’ll have to open your own pet box of the month,” Spencer said as he ran forward, crashing through the sickly illusion. “Where’s the damn poltergeist?”
Because that strange, malevolent spirit had to be around somewhere. The haunting ripping at the trees was too similar to the one in the hotel hallway for it not to be nearby.
If I leave, then you will not be able to see.
“I’ll light my own way.” He snapped his wrist, letting the mageglobe drop and increasing the size of the dark green sphere. “Go.”
Fatima’s vision disappeared from his own, and the world plunged into near-total darkness beyond his mageglobe. Spencer didn’t switch his sight, doing his best to ignore the lashing tree bark vines that looked so real. They evenfeltreal from the way they impacted his shield, metaphysical energy driving through the veil into their world. The poltergeist didn’t have an actual home to anchor into out here, which made Spencer think it was more demon than ghost.
He kept moving forward, the light from his mageglobe giving off enough illumination that Spencer wasn’t going to break his neck without a decent effort on his part. The gunfire abruptly stopped, but Spencer didn’t trust its absence. He ran, feet skidding at times over damp earth. He couldn’t hear anything but his own breathing out there in the dark, the quiet unnatural in the way a forest got when a predator was walking through it.
Spencer knew, as he breathed out air that seemed to fracture into ice millimeters from his lips, he wasn’t the predator.
“Come out, you fucker,” Spencer said, planting his feet and digging his fingers into the shape of his mageglobe. He stood there, bathed in the light of his magic and panting for breath, as trees split apart in the periphery of his vision.
He stretched out his senses, running up against that same deep well of energy he recognized from the hotel. It caught on the edge of his magic, looking for a way in, but Spencer had spent nearly his entire life learning how to keep unwanted spirits out of his soul.
Gunfire picking back up made him jerk, several bullets cutting across his layered shield. Spencer pitched himself toward the nearest tree, ignoring the illusion of vines that seemed to wrap around him like a boa constrictor. Even through his shields, he could feel the cold it exuded. Pressure bore down on the air around him, and Spencer slipped his sight sideways out of instinct just in time to see the poltergeist drop down from the treetops alongside a familiar kind of void.
The hideous ball of energy roiled at the edges of its form, giving off sickly sparks of yellow-orange light. Spencer poured his magic into his mageglobe and blinked his sight back to normal. The glow from his mageglobe allowed him to make out the vampire who now stood between the trees even if he could no longer see the poltergeist, startling him. He could sense its presence, though, and Spencer didn’t like the implications of their partnership.
