He attacked again, swinging his sword at my head. I ducked low. He didn’t have as good a reach by his feet, being extremely top heavy.
“Time to work on your legs, dude,” I advised and sliced across his Achilles tendons. He fell with an agonizing scream.
A flash of light illuminated the fight, and I caught sight of Fin taking a blow to the face so hard it drove him to the ground. Adrenaline shot through me, and my world narrowed.
I rushed across the clearing, bounding over fallen bodies to his side. The goon raised his sword for another strike. I hit first, sliding one blade through his back into his kidney. He dropped in a heap.
Fin shook himself, and I offered my hand to help him climb to his feet.
“Ready?” I asked, hoisting him up.
“Always,” he whispered. He kissed the back of my hand and I felt that even more than the adrenaline, deep in my toes.
Just as quickly, the sensation faded and we were back to fighting. The captain took on three men a few feet away.
Damn, he was good.
Fin launched toward a few more on the other side.
One big dude sauntered toward me. He didn’t carry a single weapon.
“Oh yeah, come for the girl, big guy, got something to prove?” I told myself.
He narrowed his eyes as if he heard me and continued his charge.
I met him on the field and stopped. We both took a moment sizing each other up, and then he swung out. The bastard was faster than he had any right to be, being that size. His fist connected with my ear. I went down hard, hitting the other side of my head on the packed earth.
One of the knives fell from my grip, and the other seemed to vibrate in my palm, as if drawing my attention to its fallen comrade.
I reached out to grip the hilt of my missing knife. His giant boot kicked my mid-section, and I couldn’t do anything but try to draw breath into my ravaged lungs. He reared back to kick me again, and I barely rolled away in time to avoid it. My ribs screamed with each movement as I lumbered to my feet. I’d graduated from fractured to full on broken now.
“Come on, big guy. I’m scrappier than I look,” I managed to say, though breathing was so painful it brought tears to my eyes.
He charged at me, intending to wrap his arms around me and take me down. I took two steps to the right and let him zoom past me into the nearest tree.
He hugged it for a moment before spinning. From behind me, another pair of arms wrapped around me. I wiggled to get my elbow into his stomach, but he gripped me too tightly, squeezing my broken ribs.
Pain nearly blinded me. Mentally, I reached out to anything I could grasp. An idea. Help. Surrender.
My mind snagged onto something familiar, comforting. The connection between me and Fin. A lifeline. I tugged at it, not sure what or how to wield his power, or mine, nor how they worked together. I simply grabbed everything I could and shoved it toward the goon advancing on me. He stopped mid-motion and then dropped over, dead between breaths.
The goon holding me reached out to drag his knife across my throat. I shoved that terrible power at him too. His arms fell away as he folded over to the ground like a rag doll.
I heard my name, but my vision wavered, and I couldn’t see who shouted it or where it came from. I no longer controlled the magic; it rode my body, using it as a vessel. Nothing would stand in my way as long as I embraced it.
The seductiveness of it surprised me. I wanted to give in, let it take me. While it lived there, nothing could hurt me. The pain ebbed, and bodies piled up around me as they charged and fell where they attempted to attack.
My name was shouted again, this time with more urgency. Fin? Was that his name? Yes. I could see him in my mind, all cheek bones and soft honey-colored hair. A man who meant something to me, more than I’d admitted to him or myself.
The magic sputtered in my chest like a candle exposed to a strong breeze. Then it went out, along with all the light in the clearing: the flashlights we’d long ago dropped, the fire from the first ambush, even the new torches the second round of attackers brought with them.
Silence pressed in around us and my knees shook. Where was I? Oh, the forest.
Finally, the wobble turned into something more and I collapsed onto the hard ground, the jar of it shooting through me, lighting up all the injuries I’d sustained. Some I remembered, and some I didn’t. My ribs certainly, but not the gash in my side. Someone had gotten a knife in before they’d fallen to my magical barrier.
Damn it.
What was the slick heat rolling down my belly? I fell over onto my side and lay in the wet grass, holding the wound.