“Pussy-whipped, is he?” Lora circled so that she could keep them both in her line of sight—the bleeding woman, the unarmed man. “But he’s right, we really should stop messing about. I’ve a busy schedule.”
She swung the sword down, and Blair thrust hers up to meet it, to block it, to hold it. The muscles in her arms screamed with the strain and her side wept blood and agony.
“I’m no pussy,” she panted. “He’s not whipped. And you’re done.”
She yanked the dagger from her side, stabbed it to its bloodied hilt into Lora’s belly.
“That hurts, but it’s steel.”
“So
’s this.” With all her remaining strength, Blair shoved Lora’s sword aside, and plunged her own into the vampire’s chest.
“Now you’re just annoying me.” Lora hefted her sword, point down. “Now who’s done?”
“You,” Blair replied as the blade still in Lora’s chest erupted with flame.
Burning, screaming, Lora started to tumble from the rock. Blair yanked the sword free, swung it, hard and true, and cut off the flaming head.
“Fucking well done.” Blair stumbled, swayed, would have fallen if Larkin hadn’t sprung forward to catch her.
“How bad? How bad?” He pressed his hand to her bleeding side.
“Through and through, I think. No organs hit. Quick patch to stop the bleeding and I’m back in the game.”
“We’ll see about that. Get on.”
When he shimmered into a dragon, Blair crawled onto his back. As they soared she saw Glenna on the ridge clashing with Midir. And she saw her friend fall.
“Oh God, she’s hit. She’s done. How fast can you get there?”
Inside the dragon Larkin thought: Not fast enough.
Glenna tasted blood in her mouth. There was more seeping out of a dozen shallow slices in her skin. She knew she’d hurt him, knew she’d chipped at his shield, his body, even his power.
But she could feel her own power ebbing out of her along with her blood.
She’d done all she could, and it hadn’t been enough.
“Your fire’s cooling. Barely an ember left to glow.” Midir stepped closer now to where she lay on the scorched and bloody ground. “Still it might be enough to trouble myself to take, along with what’s left of your life.”
“It’ll choke you.” She gasped out the words. He’d bled, she thought. She’d made him bleed onto the ground. “I swear it will.”
“I’ll swallow it whole. It’s so small, after all. Can you see below, can you? Where what I helped wrought runs over you like locusts. It’s as I foretold. And as you fall, one by one, my power grows. Nothing will hold it now. Nothing will stop it.”
“I will.” Hoyt swung, bloody and battered, over the lip of the ridge.
“There’s my guy,” Glenna managed, gritting her teeth against the pain. “I softened him up for you.”
“Now here is something more to chew on.” Whirling, Midir shot black lighting.
It crashed, sizzled, spewed bloody flames when it struck against Hoyt’s blinding white. The force blew them both back, searing the air between them. On the ground, Glenna rolled away from a streaking line of flame, then clawed to her hands and knees.
Whatever she had left, she gathered to send to Hoyt. Closing a trembling hand around the cross at her neck she focused her power into it, and to its twin Hoyt wore.
While she chanted, the sorcerers—black and white—battled on the smoke-hazed ridge, and in the filthy air above it.
The fire that sliced at Hoyt carried the burn of ice. It sought his blood—what was shed, what it aimed to shed, to draw away his power.