It left the werecreature protected but Spencer momentarily out in the open, surrounded by the enemy. Fatima yowled a warning right before a vampire slammed into Spencer and took him down to the ground. He skidded across wet earth, hands pressed flat against the personal shield he’d erected between himself and the vampire in the span of a single breath.
The vampire whose face he’d almost blown off earlier snarled mere inches from his own through the dark green flicker of his defensive magic. Spencer bared his teeth and conjured up a mageglobe between them, filling it with raw force. The vampire flung himself away from Spencer before he could set it off. Spencer kept the spell active as he rolled to his feet, looking around for a target. He found one in the trio of vampires harassing Brooke and sent it streaking at the one farthest from her position.
That vampire didn’t react as quickly as their brethren and ended up with a mageglobe exploding against their back. Body parts went flying through the air, the attack giving Brooke enough space to go for the throat of a distracted vampire and tear it out with her teeth.
Pressure in the air had Spencer’s head snapping around, gaze locking on the sorceress and the impossibility spinning between her hands.
“What thefuck?” Spencer snapped, turning on his feet to face her.
What must have been dormant before but was now considerably active was a tiny hole in the veil that pulsed like a solar flare in his slipped sideways sight. It wasn’t the sorceress’ magic—couldn’t be simply based on the power output—and Spencer had a sinking feeling about what it was and where it probably came from.
The removable snake eye last seen on the Ouroboros Mirror’s frame.
Andsomethingwas trying to pass through that dangerous opaque glass. Something old and powerful and quintessentially evil.
From the case reports and the archival records, Spencer knew the Ouroboros Mirror was a conduit, and the running theory was that anything crossing through that metaphysical tunnel needed an anchor.
A body.
A soul.
Not counting himself and the one werecreature still carrying a demon, there were four people in the Black Diamond Cemetery and plenty others in the town beyond for the damned to possess. Spencer wasn’t willing to give up any of them.
“Fatima,” Spencer snapped.
Demon, Fatima warned.A strong one.
“Aw, shit.”
Trepidation made his stomach knot, but he ignored the discomfort. He’d take a regular old demon any day over hell’s version of nobility. If that thing got into a body, Spencer was going to have a fight on his hands to break the soul apart and cast it out. Whatever was coming through wasn’t the only threat they had to deal with.
The vampires were still hassling the conscious werecreatures, and the sorceress remained a threat. Her use of military-grade spells was problematic. Those kinds of spells were banned from use around civilians because of the damage they could do. Spencer couldn’t, by law, use military tactics against the sorceress this close to civilian homes without risking his own standing before the government.
What came from above, however, wasn’t—technically—military, despite their formidable power.
Fatima’s head jerked up, and she yowled, the sound joyous rather than fearful. Spencer looked up at the sky, caught sight of the nova-bright soul seeping from the hulking form dropping free of the storm clouds with astonishing speed, and swore viciously. Spencer blinked his sight back to normal to save his vision from the presence of such a powerful aura. There wasn’t time to shout a warning, but Spencer took solace in the fact that at least he and the werecreatures weren’t the target of who had arrived.
That didn’t mean he enjoyed being on the periphery of dragon fire.
The roar reverberating through the sky and over the town would probably end up in stories passed down as a local legend as the fire dragon snapped his wings open and pulled out of a dive with enough force to send a downburst of wind crashing over the cemetery. The dragon fire accompanying his roar found its target with unerring accuracy, engulfing the sorceress and incinerating her in seconds. The casting circle broke, and it was even odds if the shattering was due to the sorceress’ near-instantaneous death or Wade Espinoza’s dragon fire.
The vampires scattered, flinging themselves with supernatural speed out of the cemetery. The last possessed werecreature tried to do the same, but Makai slammed into it, the pair careening between headstones and continuing to fight.
Wade landed with enough force to shake the ground, wings flapping to help keep his balance before he fully settled. Wade flicked one of his forelegs in Spencer’s general direction, and something thumped to the ground near him. He jerked his head to the side, getting eyes on the backpack that had seemingly fallen out of the sky. Spencer jogged over to it and scooped it up, letting it dangle from the crook of his elbow by one strap. When he turned back around, Wade had both werecreatures pinned by his foreclaws. Then he lifted each of them into the air, wings finally folded along his back.
The only light in the cemetery now came from Spencer’s few scattered mageglobes and the hint of unearthly fire curling around Wade’s fangs. His long neck snaked down, wedge head with its black horns angled so he could see the werecreatures biting at his curled claws. He let out a heady puff of sulfuric smoke before setting Makai down on the ground. Then he shifted on his hind legs to twist his body around and offered up the possessed werecreature to Spencer, wriggling him back and forth in a questioning manner.
Spencer licked his lips, staring up at the large, molten gold eyes with their reptilian black pupils that were each bigger than his head. “Thanks. Don’t kill them. They’re possessed.”
Wade rolled his eyes and pressed the werecreature to the muddy ground, keeping them pinned until Spencer could set a binding ward. The demon still hadn’t fled and had no chance once Spencer caged it in and set about breaking the soul apart. Fatima bounded over to stand near Spencer as he exorcised the demon with the thrice-fold chant so she could guide it back to the hell it’d crawled out of.
As Spencer focused on the final remaining threat, Wade shifted mass with a swift fluidity that was less nausea-inducing than when a werecreature shifted form. The shape of his dragon-self blurred and shrank, that blinding aura of his folding back inside the steely control that muffled it into something that passed for human to anyone who wasn’t in the business of seeing souls.
“Oh, cool, you found my backpack,” Wade said cheerfully, the last hint of red scales fading into his skin.
Spencer spared the naked teenager—no, that wasn’t right; Wade was finally old enough to drink—a single glance before returning his attention to the task at hand. By the time the demon was on its way back to hell, Wade had gotten dressed in spare clothes quickly getting damp from the rain but was still barefoot, backpack slung over one shoulder. He grinned toothily at Spencer and offered a cheeky wave.
“What are you doing here?” Spencer asked.
