Pain. Worse than stubbing your toe.
Automatically, I bent over, to move my legs out of the range of his claws, and when he slashed at them again, I feinted backward. And stepped right into the ward.
Sucking pressure. No air. Legs limp as overdone noodles.
Pomeranian hanging off my arm.
And … memories. It was like touching Mad-one all over again. I saw into the kid, and inadvertently discovered pieces of his history that I never wanted to know. And perhaps, in exchange, he discovered little pieces of mine.
And hurting, too—when I emerged, the devil’s spawn was still attached by his incisors.
“Stop biting!” I hissed.
If anything, he just bore down harder, seeming to want to connect with bone.
“I don’t want to hurt you!” I yelled.
Half of a lie. You really do want to hurt someone when they bite you. But this kid, this brat, this little monster dubbed the devil’s spawn—he’d already been hurt so. Sweet and trusting he’d been once …
Blood began leaking from the corner of his mouth.
My blood.
“You little vicious…” In frustration, I pinched his nose hard, sealing his nostrils tight. “One thousand, two thousand…” His eyes widened and I fancied I could see him mentally assessing how long he could last without air.
Not long, apparently.
The devil’s spawn unhinged his jaw. “I’m going to tell him that you’re the Shadow’s sister,” he said, before using his forearm to get rid of that inconvenient dribble of my blood on his chin. Just to make sure I was truly scared, he aimed another kick at my kneecap, then darted for the safety of the ward, and would have slipped into its veil had I not lunged, and reeled him back by his shirt collar at the last second.
“You don’t have to go back to him!” I yelled.
It would have been easier to grab a wolverine by its tail. Little-boy ragged toenails jabbed for my shins, sharp feral teeth snapped for my fingers.
“Enough!” I yelled, giving him a shake. “Stop it, or I’ll…” I lifted my cudgel in an empty threat and immediately he stilled, his eyes dead, his face set in a sullen expression, as if I’d just fulfilled every one of his expectations.
If I’d wanted to kill the Black Mage before, now I wanted to feed his entrails to a Cuisinart. Because I’d
And now the sickening memory of it was in my head. Not like I’d read it in the newspaper, or watched it in a gritty documentary. It was as bad as that spring evening in the Trowbridge living room when all I’d smelled was blood, and all I’d known was that I was weaker than those who wished to hurt me. No escape. Just misery and endurance.
Pity swelled. “It’s wrong,” I said shakily. “What’s been done to—”
He actually cocked his head—and to this day, I’m not sure if it was because I’d reached him, or I’d shown a weakness he thought he could exploit. But suddenly, he saw something over my shoulder that made him go stiff as a mouse spotting the resident cat.
And that was about as much warning as I got.
I heard a sizzle, and out of the corner of my eye I saw an incoming flash of yellow and orange. Protective instincts, once prodded to life, are a bitch to ignore. I wrapped my arms around he-who-bites, and lunged for safety an instant before the burning fireball slammed into the ground not four feet from us, spraying moss, earth, and well … fire. Too damn close. Heat on my back, fear in my belly. I hunched protectively over the boy, and the flaming sphere bounced, once, and then began to roll toward the ward, frying moss as it did.
On contact with the Black Mage’s shield, the incendiary device broke apart. Relatively softly, almost like when a bath bead finally pops in hot water. The oil within spread over the ward’s invisible wall and burst into flames.
I spun around.
Mad-one stood outside her foxhole, weaving slightly, her right hand lifted shoulder high. She grimaced, and another fireball burst into life above her sooty finger.
“Don’t fire!” I yelled. “I’ve got it under control!”
As if the Mystwalker gave a damn—she saw her chance to remove two irritants and she planned to take it. With a deadly smile, she flicked her wrist backward. “Don’t!” I screamed as I pushed the devil’s spawn behind me.
The fireball arched through the air, and suddenly the stick in my hand was no longer a cudgel but a bat, and I wasn’t a girl one hiccup away from being crispy-fried, I was Derek Jeter. Her meteor of hurt came in from high, and then curved downward.
Mouth pursed, I kept my eye on it, not on the kid, not on Mad-one.
For once in my life, I kept my eye on the ball.
I swung.
The tip of my improvised bat hit the fireball with a shower of sparks. I cringed, protecting my head, expecting to be doused in flaming oil. But instead of breaking apart, Mad-one’s missile flew up in the air in a perfect arc, seemingly destined on a return trip to its origin, except out of nowhere, a strong, whistling gust of air caught it, and changed its trajectory. My mouth dropped open as my foul sailed sideways into the sky, brilliant orange and red, twisting and rotating.
Then it did the unthinkable.
Spitting sparks, it hit the dry tinder of the Old Mage’s wind-nibbled topmost branches—the ones flayed by wind and left splintered like an open book of matches—and the top right portion of his tree burst into flames. Just like that. As if someone had hit ignite on a gas barbecue.
Horror, gut-deep.
“Our mage!” cried my Fae.
She erupted inside me, and
Next thing I knew, I’d dropped my stick, and was streaking toward the disaster of my making, my Fae’s anxiety fuel to my flying feet. Behind me came a shriek, agonized, and awful. I flicked a glance over my shoulder.
Mad-one was following in my tracks, her face anguished, her blistered hand lifted skyward. “Storm!” she cried.
And holy cow, Batman. No sooner had she uttered the word, than it began to rain in Threall. Not a heavy downpour, but a barely there soft rainfall.
My Goddess must have heard my plea, because even as my Fae and I were reaching for that first handhold—a sturdy bough that led to an even sturdier one—the fire’s horrible, popping, crackling noise died into a
