Anne moved beside me. “Do you trust me?” I asked her quietly.
In the shadows it was hard to make out Anne’s expression, but I could sense she was watching me. “. . . Yes.”
“Don’t move,” I said. “When I press down on your shoulder, get out of the way as fast as you can.”
Anne nodded. I took a stance in the middle of the clearing, most of my weight on my back leg with Variam’s sword held down by my side, and rested my left hand on Anne’s shoulder. She didn’t tremble but held still. Ten feet away against the tree Variam watched, tense. The only light in the woods was the orange-yellow glow of the motorway lights, broken up with the shadows of the trees. There was no sound but the steady
I closed my eyes.
The flicker of gate magic came right when it was supposed to. I pushed on Anne’s shoulder but she was already moving, ducking down and away. As the construct blinked in, reaching out for where Anne had been a second ago, I called “Variam!” and thrust.
My plan back in the car had been to try to set up the constructs to teleport onto the sword. It hadn’t worked; the gate spell the constructs were using had a fail-safe preventing them from teleporting directly onto something. But after they teleported there was a brief window in which they couldn’t teleport again.
Variam channelled and the edges of the sword lit up with licks of orange flame just as I rammed the blade through the construct’s torso. It jerked and staggered but I was already turning and as the second construct blinked into view next to us I got it with a kick to the body that knocked it over. Turning back to the first construct I forced it back, pushing it with the blade. I could feel the heat radiating as Variam poured fire magic through the sword and into the construct. Its clothes were smouldering around the wound and as I watched they caught fire. The construct tried to teleport away but couldn’t and I kept pushing it back, feeling the sword go loose as the construct began to melt from the inside. The construct fell over backwards and I followed it down, took a two-handed grip on the sword, and dragged the blade out sideways. The construct kept trying to grab me, empty eyes locked onto mine, and I stabbed it again and again until heat melted its body and the scrubby grass and dirt it was lying on ignited.
I turned to see Variam with his hand raised towards Anne and the second construct gone. Anne was standing at the centre of the clearing again, looking around. “Get down!” I shouted and ran towards her, bringing the sword back for a swing.
Anne dropped instantly and the second construct blinked in behind her. I’d already started my slash and as I did I felt Variam’s fire magic flare to an inferno. The sword flashed white-hot, the heat scorching my arm and hand, and it cut through the construct’s neck like butter. The head and body ignited, falling in different directions, and the sword spun away and went into the earth with a hiss.
And suddenly the clearing was quiet. The light of Variam’s fire magic blinked out and the only light was the glowing remnants of the two constructs. I shook my burnt right hand and gave Variam a look. “Ow.”
“It’s dead, isn’t it?” Variam was still propped up against the tree and he looked very tired. “Anne, you okay?”
Anne nodded. “Let me have a look at you.”
“After we get out of here,” I said. “You can patch us up later.” I couldn’t hear any sirens yet, but after the mess we’d caused on the motorway I knew they wouldn’t be far away.
Neither Anne nor Variam argued. We limped back to the Jaguar, put Variam in, and drove away. As I did I realised my phone was ringing, and I took it out. “Hey, Luna,” I said wearily. The aftereffects of the fight were starting to kick in and it was suddenly hard to talk.
“Hey!” Luna sounded excited. “I’ve been trying to call you!”
“Sorry. Something came up.”
“I won the duel!”
“Good job.” A sign passed by overhead and I began signalling to take the turn that would lead us off the motorway, northwards back towards Fountain Reach. “Meet us outside the mansion in half an hour. We’ve got some news too.”
chapter 11
It was one hour later.
Anne, Variam, Luna, Sonder, and I were in the woods behind Fountain Reach, in a small clearing on the other side of the hill from the mansion itself. The winter night was only a few degrees above freezing but a small fire burned at the centre of the clearing, its heat forming a bubble of warm air that kept away the cold. The five of us were spaced around the fire, Luna a little farther away. Around us the forest was dark and quiet, the only sound the rustle of wind in the trees.
We’d assembled on the grounds of Fountain Reach before heading into the woods. Sonder had been the last to arrive, having had to make the journey up from London, and as soon as he’d shown up we’d gotten out of sight. The burns on my arm and hand were gone; Anne had healed them along with Variam’s broken leg to the point where I couldn’t even tell where I’d been hurt. Now everyone was looking at me. I’d led them out here and they were waiting for me to tell them what to do.
“Anne,” I said. “Before we start—are we alone?”
Anne nodded. She was sitting on the thin grass with knees up and hands clasped on top of them. “Yes.”
Luna looked at her curiously. “How do you know?”
“I can feel them.”
“Who?”
“Anyone,” Anne said in her soft voice. “Their body, their shape, whether they’re hurt . . .”
“How much can you see?” Luna asked.
Anne looked at Luna. “You’ve got a bruise on the side of your left knee from where you fell a couple of hours ago fighting Ekaterina. And you pulled two of the muscles in your thigh a little.”
