I angled my wings, dropping to get a better view, and my wing hit a branch. Painlanced through my back. A mage looked up and saw me, a look of horror crossing his face, and then fear. He fired a spell at me, shouting something I didn’t understand, and I threw up a shield. My other wing caught in the branches as another spell came in. I tried to clear myself, but my angle stopped me.
I heard a thrum, and large hands grabbed me and yanked me upward. Tristan tucked my wings in and pulled me in close. I knew a moment of abject terror, instantly transported to a time when Nathanial had done the same thing.
“Nooo,” I said, my fear rising.
“Ea-ssy,” Tristan said through a mouth full of fangs. “Eeaa-sy.”
He wrapped his wings around me and dropped, crashing through the leaves and branches. He then spread his wings withasnap. Thunder rolled above us, and lightning crackled. The trees were too dense for many of our team to get in easily. In our haste, we hadn’t thought of this contingent.
I covered us in a defensive layer as spells came in hard. Mages stepped from behind trees long enough to shoot jets of magic at us and then hid again. If they’d been any stronger, I wouldn’t have been able to withstand their fire. As it was, the sheer magnitude of magic in close range was frying my defensive spell.
Tristan landed, hustling us out of the way on foot. Another gargoyle dropped out of the sky. He unfurled his wings, revealing Sebastian, who was firing spells.
I pushed away from Tristan and fired. Tristan and the other gargoyle slipped behind the trees and ran at the closest mages. Roaring, the basajaunak exploded from the trees. One snatched up a mage and then another, bashing them against a tree, while a basandere tossed yet another mage through the canopy like a rag doll.
“Don’t kill!” I shouted, but I was in my gargoyle form and it came out garbled.
Mages took off running. Some panicked and ran in the wrong direction, straight toward the shifters. Others hid in the trees, cowering away from the basajaunak hunting them.
More roars and snarls. I felt Austin drawing near. A mage screamed, and then another, and I saw jets of spells and sensed pain from three different people.
I tried to hurry, but I wasn’t as fast in my gargoyle form. The dense canopy blocked me in, and my wings weren’t strong enough to push through. I doubted any of the gargoyles could push through. We were stuck on the ground.
“Jessie, here,” Sebastian called.
Two mages were firing at him. I added to the protective spell covering him as a mage went flying above my head,slammed into some branches, and fell. A basajaunak was on him immediately, knocking the mage out with a hard punch.
As I reached Sebastian, a spell hit his defensive barrier, and I returned fire without thinking, accidentally releasing another one of the stronger spells. A spray of blood said it wasn’t a maiming blow.
“Crap,” I muttered as Sebastian’s eyes widened. He clearly hadn’t seen that spell before. “Sorry,” I tried to say, but the words came out in a mess of syllables.
Shifters filled the space. They were better suited for such terrain. It was why working with both groups made us ten times more effective. A huge Kodiak burst through the trees. Drex saw the mage and charged him with a snarl.
He wasn’t part of my gargoyle’s connections, though, and I didn’t have a defensive spell on him.
“Wait!” I tried to shout, bursting into my human form and closing the distance between us. The mage fired twice in quick succession, his eyes round with terror when he saw the charging bear. A wet stain spread across his crotch, and I expected him to freeze. He didn’t, though he would wish he had.
His first spell hit Drex with a loud sizzle. Drex flinched but didn’t stop, and my defensive spell covered him before the second spell could hit. That spell bounced off, back toward the mage. It sprayed him, the ground, the tree next to him and a bush with magical acid. Well…globs of magical acid, more like. The tree trunk started to sizzle, as did the dirt, and the bush…and the mage.
He screamed and looked down as the globs of magic burned his clothes away.
“Oh, no,” I said, wracking my brain for the counter spell. I was sure I’d learned it…
The mage’s shrieks grew louder as the spell blistered his skin and spread. I hadn’t known it would do that.
Drex stopped, transfixed by the writhing, screaming mage.
The mage patted himself to stop the burn, spreading the magic to his hands, something else I hadn’t known would happen.
“Crap.” I shoved at Drex’s big shoulder to get him to move out of the way. “I think I can fix this.”
“What the hell is that spell?” Sebastian asked, stopping beside me. “Jesus, Jessie, that kinda thing was outlawed in the dark ages.”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
“I’m not sure I’m kidding?” He sounded confused, as though he were trying to remember history.
“Like mages outlaw anything. It’s fine, though. There’s a counter-spell.” I tried what I thought would do it.
