The first thing she saw was the light going out of the Priming Bangles. They clicked open and fell to the floor.
The second thing she saw was Finn push Kai over and then, enraged, turn eyes saturated with magic on her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Fear
BLOOD DRIPPED FROM Sera’s nose. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, then reached back to draw her sword. Her fingers refused to close around the hilt. In fact, she still couldn’t feel her hands. Retracting them, she stared down at burnt and blistered palms. So much for fighting.
“That looks bad,” Finn taunted. “Do you want me to have one of my mages take a look at it?”
“Your mages will keep their magic to themselves if they know what’s good for them,” Sera spat back. Her body had blocked out all feeling to her hands, but she didn’t need to be a doctor to know they were completely trashed.
“You’re not in any position to be making threats.”
Dragon fire flashed behind his eyes. He’d leeched a lot of magic from Kai. This was going to be fun.
“How’s this for a threat? First, I’m going to knock the stolen magic out of you. Then, I’m going to make short work of your minions.”
“There are many of us and so few of you.” His grin was pure rapture. “Give up now.”
“Yeah, so you’ve got to know by now that that’s just not going to happen.”
“You’re being stubborn.”
Twin pillars of fire blazed up behind Finn, casting him in demonic light. Beside him, illuminated strands of bright silver magic began to twist and turn together, slowly shaping into a dragon.
“That’s bigger than your last one,” Sera commented.
Maybe if I wrap my legs and arms around it, I can…push out my magic and shatter it?
Even in her head, the idea sounded ridiculous. Finn was high on Kai’s magic, a power both potent and resilient—so potent and resilient that it had allowed Kai to survive being shot at by a tank.
“Yes, it is.” Finn’s dragon continued to grow. At this rate, it would be fully formed in another one or two minutes max.
“Callum,” Sera said. “You go for the spatting siblings. Dal and Tony, start working your way through the rest of these bozos. I’ll deal with Finn.”
When they didn’t charge into battle, she looked back. They just stood there, their eyes wide as they stared at the forming dragon. They were tough guys, but right now they looked scared out of their wits. Kai was struggling to peel himself off the floor, and they didn’t move a muscle. Fear had frozen them.
Finn laughed. “You are alone, Sera. And yet you’re not scared. Why is that?”
Not scared? Of course she was scared. She was terrified. But when you’d spent two decades in constant fear for your life, you’d long since learned to deal with the fear. You didn’t let it paralyze you.
“Nothing scary about you,” she told him. “All show and no substance.”
The dragon’s tail swung at Sera. She ducked. It came again, and she jumped back. The tail smacked the floor hard, crumbling it into a crater of cracked and broken pieces.
“No substance, you say? How about that!”
“She’s right,” Kai’s scratchy voice said as he stumbled to his feet beside her. Sera extended her arm, and he gripped onto her shoulder, using it to steady himself. “You are playing a game. You’ve only ever played games.”
The fire pillars doubled in diameter, forcing Finn’s army to scramble to avoid the angry flames.
“Playing with magic is very different than fighting with it.” Kai took a heavy step forward.
“Wait.” Sera swung her arm down in front of him like a gate. “You’re in no condition to fight.”
He looked pointedly at her blistered hands.
“The rest of me is fine,” she said.
He gave her a hard look.
“Mostly fine.” Her body was sore and her head was pounding with the thumps of a herd of stampeding horses, but she was still standing. “I’m in better shape than you. He just drained your magic dry.”
Kai stepped around her. “Not completely dry.”
“I’ll gladly take the rest,” Finn called out.
That did it. Kai charged forward, preparing to tackle his cousin. But Finn threw him back with a gust of wind that slammed him against the wall. Sera jumped over the dragon’s tail. Blasts of icy energy flew at her, nearly kissing her cheek as she rolled. They shattered against the back wall, singing out like frozen chimes. Sera jumped up and ran at him.
Finn’s fist crackled with lightning. He swung a punch at her, but even juiced up as he was right now, he wasn’t a fighter. Sera slid aside and slammed her elbow into his ribcage. Roaring in pain, Finn stumbled away. A ring of red and gold energy burst out of the floor, sending a shock through Sera’s body.
She must have blacked out for a second because the next thing she remembered was lying on the floor, watching Kai body-slam Finn into a brick wall. Blood and sweat were smeared across both cousins’ faces. Kai was barely staying on his feet, but he kept fighting, powered solely by fury. Finn looked even worse. His head was bleeding, his steps dizzy, and his arm hung at an awkward angle.
The summoned dragon had faded out to the point that it was nothing more than a ghost; soon it would disappear completely. The commandos were finally fighting. Finn’s army was falling. Olivia and a few others lay unconscious in the corner. Harrison was making a run for the exit.
Kai hit Finn one final time, and the leader of the magic revolution crumpled to the floor. Kai pulled out a pair of handcuffs—a special type designed to block out all magic. As he slapped them onto his cousin’s wrists, Harrison and a few other mages made their exit. Kai’s eyes slid across the room, falling on Sera. He trudged over to her, his boots thumping heavily against the cracked floor.
“Hi,” she croaked, trying to pull herself up. Her body refused to cooperate.
“Hi.” He crouched down and wrapped his arm around her waist, helping her up. He nearly fell over. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks, so do you.”
She managed to sit. Her butt felt like someone had hit it with a war hammer. She looked around the room. Most of the mages had fled. The commandos had managed to capture a few. They were slapping magic-blocking handcuffs on them.
“We won?” she asked.
“Yes.” A spark of magic flashed in his tired eyes. “Too bad you slept through the whole thing.”
“Not all of it. I was cheering you on from here while trying to convince my body to get up.”
The humor washed from his face. “Let me see your hands, Sera.”
She showed them to him. A few of the blisters had popped and were oozing blood and pus.
“There was an enormous amount of magic streaming through those bangles,” he said.
“Enormous? Come now. There’s no need to be modest. How about gargantuan?”
“You tried to disrupt the flow of magic,” he continued. Apparently, he didn’t find her weak attempt at humor very funny. “You didn’t just try, you did it. And it almost killed you. You almost died for me.”
“Ha, you’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? Maybe I did it to save the city from a cult of crazy mages.”
He winked at her.
“I did.”
“If saving the city was all you wanted, you could have just hit Finn over the head while he was draining my magic.”
“What’s your point?”
“He wasn’t in any condition to stop you,” he said.
“Yeah, well, as we’ve been over at least a hundred times, I’m not the smartest person in the world. I just did the first thing that came into my head.”
“Your head? Or your heart?”
“You flatter yourself.”
He chuckled. “You can deny it all you want, but your actions speak for themselves. At that moment, you weren’t thinking about saving the city. You were thinking about saving me. Stop,” he said as she opened her mouth to argue.
It was just as well. She wasn’t even sure what she’d say.
“We’ll discuss this later,” he said.
“Like hell we will. There’s nothing to discuss.”
“You just keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.” He hovered his hand over hers. “I have just enough magic left to heal your hands.”
“You mean, you can do something other than wreck devastation?”
“Yes, now push in that pouting lip before I bite it.”
Following orders wasn’t Sera’s strong suit, but then she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t serious. He looked down at her hands. Almost immediately, the blisters began to shrink and close. Sera felt a rush of pain, which was quickly swallowed by a warm and smooth flood of soothing energy. She watched the raw burns fade to pink, then disappear completely.
“Wow.” She moved her fingers, then clenched her hands into fists. “Thanks.” She caught him as he toppled. “Are you all right?”
“Healing you took more magic than I’d expected,” he muttered softly. “I’m out of practice.”
“If you can’t walk back to the boat, I’ll just swing you over my shoulder and carry you there.”
“You’re not strong enough.”
“Sure I am. I bench press dragons all the time.”
He snorted. Sera waved the commandos over. They hadn’t made it two steps when a heavy thud shook the building.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Callum peered out the window. “Oh, no.”
“Tell me.”
“The mages didn’t retreat. They went to gather reinforcements.”
Sera hurried to the window and looked outside. They were trapped at the top of a guard tower, and below an army of mages, fairies, and a slew of nasty creatures were swarming inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Burning Tower
CALLUM AND DAL set up a barricade at the door. There wasn’t much in the room, but they molded what little they could find into a thick magical paste that they slathered across every hinge and gap. Tony waited behind them, his eyes closed, his hands pressed to the wall.
“How many?” Kai asked him.
“A dozen Wondrous Ones—mostly elves and a few fairies. About as many mages. A flock of ravens. Some dark ponies.”
Dark ponies weren’t dark, at least not on the outside. They were pink, purple, and a million other different shades of pastel. Each one of them looked like it had wandered straight off the set of My Little Pony. Except they weren’t friendly or sweet. Inside, they were as dark as midnight, those nasty little creatures. And they kicked hard.
“We have the defensive advantage,” Callum said.
Something thumped against the door, and the glowing barrier sizzled like a glob of fat hitting the frying pan.
“Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to deter them,” said Dal. He raised his gun to the bars on the window and fired. A raven the size of a house cat dropped out of the sky. “They’re coming from both sides.”
The floor shook with the force of an earthquake.
“All three sides,” he amended, then shot another giant diving raven.
The door thumped again. And again. And again. They were getting into a rhythm. Low and steady beneath that pounding percussion beat, the floor buzzed. As clouds rolled across the sky, a blast of lightning hit the tower. Bricks erupted from the outside walls and tumbled to the ground like falling tears.
“The vampires have arrived,” Dal called out from the window.
“Common vampires?” Sera asked.
“Yes.”
Good news.
“But their eyes are glowing red.”
Not so good news. Glowing red eyes meant bloodlust. Someone—probably that dolt Harrison—had gotten those vampires worked up, then unleashed them onto the tower. On the bright side, they’d probably do as much damage to their allies as to their target. Unfortunately, they could do a hell of a lot of damage before they conked out. They’d tear the tower down brick by brick to get to their target. Sera’s guess was that target was either Kai or her. Harrison wouldn’t have had to look far to find a sample of their blood. The top room of the tower was practically painted with it.
“It would seem Finn’s revolution goes beyond a few disgruntled mages,” Sera told Kai.
“So it would seem,” he agreed.
A gust of northern wind rocked the tower. Snowflakes fluttered in through the window. They coalesced into a single ice block that attached itself to the ceiling.
“I’ll take the vampires,” Sera offered as the block cracked open and tiny snow flurries began to fall softly to the ground.
“They’re at the back of the army.”
“Not anymore.”
A pale hand plunged through the window, grabbing Dal by the throat. The vampire thumped him against the wall, then tossed him aside. The beast began to claw and scrape at the bars, his ruby eyes locked onto Sera. So Harrison had teased the vampire with her blood after all. Oh goody.
“Where do you think you’re going?!” Kai shouted out.
She kept on walking. When she got to the window, she slammed a brick against the vampire’s hand. As it roared out in pain, she did the same to the other hand, and the vampire dropped. Unfortunately, there were five others waiting to take his place.
“You’re insane.” Kai grabbed her arm, pulling her away from the window. “They’ve fed on magic.”
“What?”
“You can see it in their eyes. That’s not just plain bloodlust. They’re high on magic too.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve seen it before. It just isn’t done very often because no sane person would feed magic to a blood-starved vampire. It makes them stronger and meaner.”
“Hmm.”
He moved in front of her, blocking her view of the window. “Long range attacks only on them. Don’t get within grabbing range.”
“I don’t have any long range attacks. Unlike some people, I can’t shoot lightning bolts out of my fingers.”
Kai didn’t move. He looked so weak right now that she could have pushed right past him, but that wouldn’t solve their problem.
“How’s Dal?” he asked.
Tony looked up from Dal’s body. “Unconscious.”
Which meant he probably wouldn’t be fighting, and someone would have to carry him out of here. Assuming they could get out. The barrier at the door wasn’t looking good. The magic was mostly drained. Callum lifted his hands to refill it, when the snowflakes in the air exploded into a net of lightning rays. Sera spun and tackled Kai to the ground before it hit them. Tony and Callum weren’t so lucky. They hung suspended for a moment, convulsing on the line of pink and purple lightning. Then the magic flickered out, and the two men tipped over and hit the floor.