Natural Dual-Mage (Page 51)

A lion’s roar seemed to shake the earth beneath our feet. Another deep-throated roar followed. Wolves took up the call from the other direction. That crazy warthog ran by, alone. If there wasn’t more than one confused warthog, then Roger really needed to have a talk with that guy.

“Keep going,” Emery said, running toward the records room that we’d broken into before.

Mages jumped out and spoke magic to life. Before they could get it realized, I countered their spell. Emery followed up with a spell to take them all down. From the other side, three more mages broke capsules and shot them at us. Reagan jumped in front and slashed with her sword, killing the spells before yanking out her gun and shooting the casters.

“I’m pretty sure that’s cheating,” I said, feeling winded and knowing we still had a ways to go.

“Cheat to win.” Reagan ran through the middle of the quad, and two vampires skirted in to join Darius. Marie and Moss, if I had to guess, though I was no expert at deciphering monster forms. Shifters filed in behind, in packs or alone, depending on the animal. One of them was limping.

Magic throbbed somewhere to my right.

Obliterate!

“They aren’t trying to capture us anymore,” I said, grabbing a hold of Reagan and pulling her back. “They’ve got another monster spell brewing.”

“Unless they are making it while having a parade, this is a different group than the last,” Reagan said, clearly better at directions than I was.

“Cut off the head,” Emery said, marching forward with determination. “Swipe their feet. Ruin their concentration and careful planning with absolute chaos.”

“Take them from behind,” I said, adrenaline running hard through my body. Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky started to vibrate. Emery had tucked Plain Jane into his utility belt, but even though it wasn’t on my person, I felt the deep drumbeat of its power pulse to life.

“This is where it gets hairy,” Emery said. He grabbed my upper arms and stared down into my eyes. “If things look bleak, if you don’t think we can make it through, you run, do you hear me? You let Cahal take you out of here.”

“No.”

He shook me a little, a deep pain moving in his eyes. “Please, Penny. For me. Get yourself clear. Get yourself safe. Live, Penny. I need you to live.”

“You will be pampered. Looked after,” Cahal said. At my hard stare, he did the first human thing I’d seen him do. He put his palm to his chest and, with wide eyes, said, “Not by me.”

I barked out laughter. I couldn’t help it. The super-old druid, who’d seen it all, did not want to be shackled to a nut case like me.

“Join the club,” Reagan said, and I realized I’d said that out loud.

“Penny,” Emery said again, pleading. Willing to sacrifice himself for me. Wanting me to live above all things.

My heart twisted in my chest. I held his gaze, everything in me breaking.

The world went silent for a moment, but my resolve only strengthened.

“No,” I said, tired of other people telling me what to do. Tired of living a life someone else had chosen for me, and a path someone else had made me walk. Now I was carving out my own future, and I would choose the direction my feet walked. “You stay, I stay. We’re a team. We’ll finish this together.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but a knowing gleam lit those beautiful Milky Way eyes. A grin tickled his lips. “Watch out, world, here comes Turdswallop.”

“Why does everyone I know always ruin great moments?”

He grabbed my cheeks in his strong hands and smashed his lips to mine.

“Come on, Romeo and Juliet, we have a battle to start,” Reagan said.

Emery pulled away, storm clouds raging in his eyes. Wildness rose in him, unruly and unchained. Electricity pooled between us before spinning higher and spreading out, joined by Reagan’s complex and beautiful magic. Shifters had gathered, waiting for direction, and the hair on their backs stood on end. Vampires shifted in their monster form and clicked their claws in anticipation.

“Let’s cut off some heads,” Emery shouted, leading the charge.

35

“It has taken them this long to get this one spell in motion,” Emery said, cutting right and running down the side of a building. The magic grew to our left. Had we kept going straight, we would’ve run right into the building Obliterate spell. “The team that already loosed their spell is probably regrouping with another. They’ll do it in shifts. After we take this spell down, we need to cut out the leader. We have to do that for each of them.”

“Get oder roup,” Darius said through his mouth of fangs. He needed to practice more to speak as well as Vlad in his monster form.

“Get the other group,” Emery said quietly as he turned to one of the shifters in the group. “Get people, doesn’t matter who, on the first group of spell workers we encountered. Cut them down now, while they are rebuilding.”

The wolf darted away, two reinforcements with him.

“Let’s go around this way,” Emery said, running across a walkway and over dusty ground that might have once been grassy. I felt a pull to the next building. Confused, I glanced down, not sure what I was feeling or why. “Here we go.”

I pushed the weird feeling away and refocused, slowing down with everyone else. My heart quickened as I once again sensed the magnitude of the spell that was brewing. Obliterate. Emery and Reagan were both looking at me.

“How close is it to being done?” Emery asked.

“Close,” I whispered. “It’s a monster, like the last one.”

Reagan looked at Emery with a flat expression, then me. She winked.

“No, no, what are you—” She was already running around the corner with a sword in hand, and Darius took off after her. “Dang it, I hate when she does that.”

I felt a familiar hand grab my arm. I sent a pulse of electricity through my body, through the hand, and into the stack of man attached.

Cahal flinched away and staggered.

Don’t mess with a woman on a mission.

Emery and I followed Reagan at a fast run, moving straight toward the spell casters, and though I wanted to skid to a stop and about-face, I turned up the speed instead. There they were—another large group of mages, waiting in a line, staring up at nothing, hands full of ingredients and no feelings in their hearts. They were magical drones, attempting to let loose a spell they probably scarcely understood.

Even as we stood there, the spell rose and swelled, becoming a force unto itself. It puffed up and hovered above everyone, seeking its target.

A target that was among them.

I kicked the first guy, punched the second, and smashed three more with a thick weave that sliced right through them. Reagan hacked through their ranks with her sword, looking up with tight eyes, knowing that thing would drift right back down at any moment.

“Gun. This would be a good time for my mother and her gun.” I speared someone with magic and barely dodged an attack by someone else—a rare mage who was thinking for herself. I knocked that woman out, because I didn’t think she truly belonged here, not with a brain of her own, and magically slashed another.

It turned out I was excellent at close combat, magical style. Thank you, Reagan, for those many horrible hours of training.

Someone hollered as they flew over the crowd, and suddenly Cahal was by my side. The guy he’d thrown skimmed the spell above us. His holler turned into a garbled scream before cutting off. He fell down in a clump, the area that had been in the fog eaten away.

“We can’t stick around under that,” I said to Emery, who grabbed a guy by the head, cracked his neck, and magically shot someone else.

“I know. Skirt the outside of the group. Keep them in the middle. They’re tired and scared. Let them cower together.”

A fierce snarl dragged my attention to the front of the line, where a single man stood opposite a very large lion. The mage, wearing a long, flowing robe and tall, silly hat, snatched a casing out of his satchel and fired it off.

Steve lurched forward, all teeth and claws and shifter magic, eating the spell or cutting through it, and slammed into the mage. A bear lumbered after him, opening its mouth wide and roaring at the mages at the front of the line.

“Penny!” Emery shouted.

I spun around, following the direction of Emery’s pointed finger. The red fog, similar to the first monster spell, puffed out and swelled a little more. A few sparks flared from deep within it as it slowly started moving back toward the ground.

“Go, go, go.” I turned and ran right into someone. Cahal stepped around me, grabbed the guy by the robe, and yanked him out of the way. The robe ripped and the guy barreled into a few other mages, three of them falling. Cahal pushed someone else out of the way and I ran in the newly created lane, Emery right behind me.

“Cut through,” Emery yelled.

I pulled at the elements above me, wove them into something nasty, and shoved it out, ruthless in my desperation. Up ahead I could see Darius slashing and tearing his way to the front, all strength and viciousness. Reagan followed in his wake, letting him clear the way.

The fog continued to lower, just as unhurried as the last. Tripping over limbs, struggling through the panicking crowd, I shot another spell at the people continuing to file into my way. The fog was nearly close enough to singe. The wall to my left was unforgiving, and the crowd pushing at me from the other side blocking me in.