“I am not sure what is going on, but don’t worry about me. Just take care of each other; for from the looks of it, I am guessing this is your younger brother, he looks too much like you not to be.” Exerilla said quietly, and he saw a light in her green eyes. How he loved that light.
“Enough, although I should allow you, a last good-bye to each other,” Baudali sneered.
“Why?” Exerilla asked softly. “I should like to know why?”
“Because I wanted their mother for my own, and when she refused, I killed her and her good husband. One has only to know the knack of killing an immortal, you see, and I made it my business to do so.”
“Immortal?” Exerilla’s shock was evident in her voice and on her face. She had already had no choice but to assume that he was a wizard, but he was also immortal?
“Ah, he did not tell you that. Yes, they are immortals, but I know the trick of ending their immortality.”
“Do you?” she said quietly. “I see.”
He frowned, “You take many things in your stride, now watch as I kill your lover’s young brother.”
“Stop,” Hunter said. “I will make ye a deal, ye canna refuse.”
“What is that?”
“Take me in his place, in her place, and I’ll surrender up to ye, bend m’neck to ye for the taking…”
Baudali laughed, “No, that is mine anyway, but I will give you the choice. Your brother or your lover!”
“No, ye’ll not put that on me. Do ye take me for a fool, then? Do ye think I doona know ye mean to have us all? Tis in your nature.”
Suddenly both Ferrell and Hunter had glinting swords in their hands and took a stance. Hunter smiled, “Our swords canna miss and are spelled against ye, specifically against ye. Now, best let her go.”
Baudali hesitated and then snorted, “How will your swords get past her to me?”
* * *
Timing was everything, especially when backed up with patience. For an impulsive kinda gal, she was proud of herself, for she had waited, and waited, and now she was going to give this black wizard just what he deserved.
“Like this!” Exerilla snapped as wand in hand she vanished from his hold and before he knew what had happened, she zapped him with a charge of White Magic.
He cried out in pain, and she smiled, “And that, is not an illusion.”
Ferrell and Hunter regarded one another with some astonishment but also sprang into action as they held him in place with their wands in their left hands and their swords in their right.
Exerilla’s white powers were nearly at their peak. They would attain full power at Samhain, but even so, her mother had taught her a trick or two to be used when faced with dark magic’s devilry. Well, here was the darkness even worse than her father’s, and far more evil. She held him in her wand’s grip.
“Now,” said Hunter as he moved in with his sword for the kill.
Baudali was screaming in agony, burning from White Magic but even so, he summoned enough of his own dark brew to spell himself out of range.
He found that as he did this, the shield that kept the roaring battle outside their circle, was broken.
Coalition soldiers fighting French soldiers spilled into the fray and Exerilla, as well as Hunter and Ferrell had to put away their wands. They couldn’t chance hurting their own.
Exerilla saw Baudali s
link into the fray, a slow grin on his face and Hunter’s brother said, “He is mine, brother.”
“No, the time must pass, or he will kill you again. Allow me, young brother,” and Hunter shifted off in a wave of magic all his own.
Ferrell looked at Exerilla and grinned, “I had hoped that whenever m’brother found a lass he meant to keep, we would meet under…er…different circumstances.”
She laughed, and even as the questions in her mind arrived at her lips, she went silent and stood, unable to move. Oh no…oh no, was all she could think.