She forced the orbs into it, burying them deep within all that ice.
Holy. Hell.
She was incredible.
In the next second, Grandpa darted past his agents in a barely perceptible blur, ripped through all the vampires, and snapped their necks in quick succession.
I reached out a hand to her—but I never made contact.
A sudden rush of power jolted me, had Grandpa calling out a warning to his agents, and me spinning because I couldn’t discern where it was coming from.
The reason for that became clear in the next second when another burst of vampires filled the area.
Seventy of them.
But they weren’t decked out like that clan had been—all in varying forms of dress instead.
In the next beat, more bursts of speed brought thirty wolves lining up alongside them.
Eruptions of teleportation all over had magic-wielders of all sorts joining.
There was one thing despite the lack of a uniformed look that tied them together—a glinting black T etched into the back of their right hands.
“Temperance,” I choked.
There was no verbal sparring, no introduction—they just acted.
In the very next second, they rushed The Shadowed.
Something lashed at me, and I hissed as an awful chill shot through me.
I spun to see one of thoseNihilumbrabinds snapped to my right wrist.
Grandpa was there in the next second tugging at it with the full force of his Ancient vampire strength. I yelled for him to stop as I saw it desiccating his fingers.
But he didn’t.
He kept going until flesh desiccated to bone, then bone almost turned to ash.
Just before that happened, he managed to rip it off me—but then he was slammed into by a dozen Temperance soldiers at once and driven down to the ground.
I heard them calling out orders about not actually killing him because he was vital to the supernatural world.
That chill theNihilumbrabind had caused collided with what Ruxnoth had afflicted me with, setting it off or something, and then I was stumbling and shuddering.
I went to call my amber power, but then another bind lashed through the air like a fucking whip, and I had to dodge before I could invoke my power.
That dodge wasn’t enough in my current state, and it hit me.
But before it could snap to my wrist, a blast of dragon ice tore into it, sending it spinning out of range, and slamming back into two approaching werewolf-sorcerers who’d been wielding it.
Evira shot out her hand toward me to bolster me, but once again, we never managed to make actual contact, because she was blasted away from me by magic and flame from ten Temperance combatants.
I screamed as she went hurtling three hundred feet into the distance and crashed into the main campus building, the impact driving her right through the wall.
Even more chaos erupted then, students screaming and rushing out through the wreckage and debris, professors and administration speeding and teleporting to the scene of destruction, then noting the battle taking place here on the campus grounds.
The Loxley Academy threat alarm went off in the next moment, a fucking siren blaring through the noise of the battlefield.
