It clawed and slashed at him while the air flashed and boomed with magicks, sending smoke billowing high to drown the swimming moon. The ground beneath his feet cracked, splitting fissures under the enormity of pressure.
While his lungs labored and his heart pounded, he ignored those earthy demands on his body, ignored the pains from his wounds and the sweat that ran salt into them.
He was power now. Beyond that moment at the beginning of this journey when he’d wavered for an instant over the black. Now, on this ridge over blood and death, over the courage of man, the sacrifice and the fury, he was the white-hot flame of power.
The cross he wore flashed silver and brilliant as Glenna joined her magic to his. With one hand he reached for hers, gripping it firmly when she linked fingers with him and pulled herself to her feet. With the other he raised a sword, and the fire on it went pure white.
“It is we who take you,” Hoyt began and slashed away a thunderbolt with his sword. “We who stand for the purity of magic, for the heart of mankind. It is we who defeat you, who destroy you, who send you forever into the flames.”
“Be damned to you!” Midir shouted, and lifting both arms hurled twin thunderbolts. Fear rushed over his face when Glenna waved a hand over the air and turned them to ash.
“No. Be damned to you.” Hoyt swung down the sword. The white fire leaped from the blade to strike Midir’s heart like steel.
Where he dropped and died, the ground turned black.
High ground, Moira thought. She had to get back to higher ground, regroup the archers. She’d heard the shouts warning that their line had broken again to the north. Flaming arrows would drive that invading force back, give the troops in its path time to forge their lines again. She searched through the melee for a horse or dragon that would take her where she knew she was most needed.
And looking up saw Hoyt and Glenna bathed in brilliant white, facing Midir. A spurt of fresh hope had her racing forward. Even as the ground seemed to catch at her feet, she swung her sword at an advancing enemy. The gash she served it slowed it down, and as she poised to strike again, Riddock took it from behind.
With a fierce grin, he charged with a handful of men toward the broken line. He lived, she thought. Her uncle lived. As she raced to join him, the ground bucked under her feet, sent her sprawling.
As she pushed up she looked down into Isleen’s dead and staring eyes.
“No. No. No.”
Isleen’s throat was torn open, the leather strap where Moira knew she’d worn a wooden cross was snapped and soaked with blood. Grief struck so strong, so deep, she gathered the body up against her.
Still warm, she thought as she rocked. Still warm. If she’d been faster, she might have saved Isleen.
“Isleen. Isleen.”
“Isleen. Isleen.” The words were a mocking mimic as Lilith flowed out of the smoke.
She’d dressed for battle in red and silver, a mitre like Moira’s banding her head. Her sword was bloody to its jeweled hilt. Seeing her crashed waves of fear and fury through Moira that had her surging to her feet.
“Look at you.” The grace and deftness with which Lilith spun the sword as she circled warned Moira this vampire queen knew the art of the blade. “Small and insignificant, covered with mud and tears. I’m amazed I wasted so much time planning your death when it’s all so simple.”
“You won’t win here.” Queen to queen, Moira thought, and blocked Lilith’s first testing thrust. Life against death. “We’re beating you back. We’ll never stop.”
“Oh please.” Lilith waved the words away. “Your lines are crumbling like clay, and I’ve two hundred yet in reserve. But that’s neither here nor there. This is you and me.”
With barely a blink, Lilith shot out a hand, grabbing the soldier who charged her by the throat. And snapping his neck. She tossed him carelessly to the ground, while slicing down at Moira’s swinging fire sword.
“Midir has his uses,” Lilith said when the fire died.
“I want to take my time with you, you human bitch. You killed my Davey.”
“No, you did. And with what you made of him destroyed, I hope what he was, the innocent he was, is cursing you.”
Lilith’s hand streaked out, flashing like the fangs of a snake. She raked her nails down Moira’s cheek.
“A thousand cuts.” She licked the blood from her fingers. “That’s what I’ll give you. A thousand cuts while my army feeds its belly full on yours.”
“You won’t touch her again.” On his stallion’s back, Cian rode slowly forward, as if time had stopped. “You’ll never touch her again.”
“Come to save your whore?” From her belt, Lilith drew a gold stake. “Gilded oak. I had this made for you, for when I end you as I made you. Tell me, doesn’t all this blood stir you? Warm pools of it, bodies not yet cooled waiting to be drained. I know what’s in you wants that taste. I put it in you, and I know it as I know myself.”
“You never knew me. Go,” he said