Gael and Galyna—who I often forgot were siblings until they stood side by side as they did tonight—turned back to face our combined packs.
Gael raised his voice so as many as possible could hear him. “Tonight, we don’t fight for one alpha or one cause. Tonight, we fight for our homes, our hearths, our kin. Tonight, we stand and say no more! No more oppression, no more murder, no more mindless attacks. Tonight we are pack! We are blood! We are victors!”
A mighty cheer rose from those who were in human form, and then the wolves threw their heads back and howled, the sound pure and clear as they poured their hearts out to the night, to the moon, to the Goddess.
“With me!” Gael bellowed, and then he was racing down the hill, toward the onslaught of enemies. Our plan was simple, hammered out through the previous days as we prepared. The heavy artillery would stay on the castle walls. Our less skilledfighters would be the last line of defense, armed with the big guns that were harder to use in close combat.
Those of us who were skilled fighters would be armed with any easy-to-carry weapons, magical weapons that might give us an edge over attackers of so many different species. And on the field? We’d cut through the middle of their forces to hopefully encircle them, dividing them and making them easier to take down.
We all fell in on either side of Gael, racing with blades and fangs bared, into the belly of the beast of war. My heart pounded as I locked eyes with Valens, his expression one of grim determination.
Galyna picked up the battle song again, and I joined in as we ran, all the maidens did. The ODL and their hired hitmen saw us picking up speed and broke into a run of their own.
The seconds felt like hours as we crossed the closing distance and individual faces came into sharp clarity.
Snarls of hatred painted many faces as the distance closed to mere yards, and then feet.
Valens roared as he swung his sword at the neck of a warlock. He threw up a shield, but Valens’s enchanted blade cut through it like butter, lopping off the warlock’s head in one smooth slice. I couldn’t watch him after that, as I had my own battle to fight. A lesser fae shot a bolt of white light my way, forcing me to roll to the side and come back up on my feet.
It didn’t take me long to disarm him, sending the top blade of my staff slicing down through his chest. He was down and dying as I spun to put myself back to back with Valens.
We fought as a pair, guarding each other’s backs as the battle closed around us. Foe after foe, enemies on every side in an unrelenting stream. After I engaged with the first few, they became a faceless blur.
Cat shifters, warlocks, trolls, pixies, and vampires all fell to my blades one and the same.
Nothing fazed me, nothing slowed down my death march through their middle. We stayed close to our Hungarian and Blackwater packs, stepping in to help when anyone got outmatched. My gaze was always roaming, always protecting. Fiona caught my eye, fully shifted and stock-still amid the melee.
“Valens, there!” I caught his attention and ran to her side.
“You okay?”
“Fine. Can you cover me for a minute? I can’t use my powers on any of the people closest to us, or I might hit us. But I can rain lightning on their back line, maybe get some of them running scared.”
“Do it,” Valens said, and the two of us bracketed her, keeping a clear circle for her to work.
Thunder crashed overhead as her raven-shifted hair began to float around her. To my surprise, she began to rise off the ground, floating upward with her hands outstretched, amber eyes closed in concentration. Thick black tattoos I hadn’t noticed before snaked up both of her arms, and within seconds, she rose up, up, up, until she was enveloped by the thick mists she’d called.
“Is she vulnerable up there?” Valens hollered to be heard over the noise of the battlefield.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But there’s nothing else we can do from down here. I can’t fly up to watch her back.”
“She’s completely covered. I don’t think anyone but a fae or warlock could strike her. We’ll watch closely.”
I nodded, my staff lopping off the tip of a pixie’s wing, sending him spiraling toward the ground as he shrieked in pain. The shrieks cut off abruptly as he landed, his neck at a funny angle. I noticed he wore a silver anklet, and a small glimmer ofregret flared up before I shoved it down. He attacked us first. I would not apologize for defending the people I loved.
“How does she get down?” I asked, glancing up in the brief pause before another ODL goon arrived to test me right where the last one fell.
“Great question,” Valens huffed as he swung his broadsword, lopping off a vampire’s head after narrowly missing the slash it made toward his arm. “Hopefully not by falling.”
The thought made me shudder. Fiona was powerful, yes. But she didn’t have wolf healing. “We’ll stay right here under her, just in case she needs a soft spot to land.”
Valens snorted, wiping blood spatter off his face with the neck of his shirt. “Soft might be a stretch, but good idea.”
We did just that. We held ground as the battle surged back and forth all around us. Occasionally, one of us strayed a small distance to help out another pack mate—Brielle was wicked fast now, but still not a skilled fighter, and twice I’d had to bail her and Galyna out.
But for more than an hour, we held firm and followed the cloud that held Fiona aloft. Lightning strikes happened every few minutes at first, zapping powerful magic users at the back of the army and eliciting bloodcurdling screams and the scent of burnt fur and flesh. But as the hour wore on, the strikes began to slow, and I worried she was growing fatigued.
Reed was surely somewhere on the field, but it was impossible to single out anyone who wasn’t close in the middle of the mayhem.
