He just spread his arms and shot her a crooked smile, his elongated teeth flashing like fangs in the moonlight. “See? You’re not always faster than the other guy.”
Shit.
Chapter Fifteen
The Nightstalker’s next crackling silver attack hurtled toward Cheyenne before the last two he’d thrown had fully passed her in their suspended motion. She tried to duck out of the way and hurl her sphere of black energy at Corian’s face, but she wasn’t fast enough. The lightning bolt caught her in the left shoulder this time and sent her spinning. The halfling shouted in pain and frustration as her knees hit the cold, damp grass. It knocked her out of her drow speed, the two silver attacks she’d dodged whizzed behind her into the woods, and the Nightstalker’s low laughter rang out again.
She jerked her head up to glare at him and rubbed her burning shoulder. Corian’s sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight as he prowled back and forth in front of her, chuckling. With his head ducked low like that and his fur-tufted ears twitching above silver eyes, he looked a lot less like a man and way more like a wild animal. Like he wants to eat me.
With a grunt, Cheyenne pushed to her feet. “That’s not fair.”
“Who’s gonna fight fair, Cheyenne?” His voice burst across the meadow as he spread his hands. “This is how you learn. This is how you seize your—”
She hurled another black sphere of churning magic at his head, followed by a second. The Nightstalker jerked his head to the side and avoided the first completely. The second he caught in his outstretched hand with his magic. Purple and black light lit up his face, the fur on his cheeks and temples ruffling in the breeze. Then he pressed his other hand against her spell and shrank the black-and-purple orb until it disappeared between his clasped palms.
“You’re not listening, and you’re not staying on task.” He tossed a small object toward her, which glinted under the stars before she snatched it out of the air.
Cheyenne scowled at the four-pointed metal star, then chucked it into the grass. Nightstalker trick. Not just Mattie’s.
“I told you to focus on your shield. Bring it up when you run out of options, or I’ll end up dragging deep-fried drow halfling back through the portal when we’re finished.”
Cheyenne snarled and dropped into a defensive crouch, clenching her fists. “Fine.”
“Fine.” Corian grinned and threw another silver bolt right at her.
She burst into drow speed to leap out of the way and was ready for him to join her there. The black tendrils shot from her outstretched hand and lashed out at the Nightstalker’s face before coiling around his wrist and forearm. She didn’t have the chance to jerk his hand aside. He beat her to it and spun away from her, yanking on her drow whips with his forearm and ripping her off her feet through the plane of enhanced speed.
As she lurched through the air, Cheyenne threw out her hand. Pull up the damn shield! Nothing happened, and one more Nightstalker lightning bolt burst across her right hip and the freshly healed bullet wound. Her scream cut off as she crashed and slid across the grass, but she twisted around and summoned another black sphere of magic to toss at Corian’s head. He jerked her toward him again, with her lashing black tendrils still coiled around his forearm. The halfling’s spell went wild, arcing up toward the night sky instead, and before she could lift her hand again, another silver streak slammed into her chest.
It knocked the air out of her lungs. The black tendrils wilted and dropped from around the Nightstalker’s arm before withdrawing into her fingertips. Her next breath seared into her lungs, and she coughed, gasping for another.
“Get up,” Corian growled. “Walk it off.”
Easy for him to say.
With a growl of her own, Cheyenne pushed to her feet, her chest heaving. They circled each other on the dew-studded grass, silver eyes locked onto gold. This time, when Corian unleashed another bolt of silver, she raised her hand fast enough and locked onto something—another sharp burst of heat beneath her skin, a tightness in the air. Shimmering black light bloomed in front of her. Only half-formed, the shield was large enough to deflect the silver lightning crashing against it and rang like a gong struck over a radio full of static.
Then the ground lit up beneath her feet, and Cheyenne’s eyes widened.
Silver light snaked toward her faster than she could react. In less than a second, the Nightstalker’s magic crackling across the ground struck her feet and shot up her calves, blasting her backward across the air. A shield!
The halfling’s back slammed into the ground. She skidded across the grass with a groan, then pushed herself up and tried to shake off the electric jolt. “Okay…”
Doubling over, she lifted a hand toward her new Nightstalker mentor and shook her head.
“Okay, I just need a second.”
“That’s not gonna work on the battlefield.” Corian stalked toward her. “Not with the scent of death in the air and your blood boiling inside you.”
“Come on, just let me—”
He struck her with another silver bolt just below the collarbone.
“Ow! Damnit, Corian. Give me two—” She staggered backward, but his next attack hit her in the upper thigh. She stumbled and managed to regain her balance as she flung out a hand, trying to find the pressure in the air again for a goddamn shield.
The Nightstalker relentlessly pressed on, and Cheyenne got maybe two inches of a shield up before he sent another blinding silver attack toward her shoulder again.
The drow halfling roared and turned back to face him again head-on. “I said, stop!”
The ground erupted in front of her, spraying clumps of grass and soil as thick shards of rocky pillars burst through the surface at an upward angle, all of them pointed at Corian. A spiderweb of thick cracks
