Baccio flew between me and my target, vines twisting and curling. The demon surged toward him, and one dragon leg lifted from the hole it had created. Baccio flew backward with a heavy wingbeat, and he was out of reach.
Kaippa flew among them, slashing out with his claw-tipped wings to slice the demon’s glittering, gray scales. He could see the beast, obviously. Was that because I’d hit the wyvern with the Yew Bow’s arrow and broken the glamour?
I focused on the creature’s glistening right eye, but Aurelio’s arm broke my line of sight. The leaves of his wings shuffled as he swooped low to lash vines around the dragon’s leg. Kaippa slashed the beast’s leg with one of his wing claws and ripped a chunk from the back of the demon’s head. Teeth bared, Hekla jumped at the creature’s leg. So she could see it too.
My stomach dropped as she dug into the demon’s flesh and the beast flung her into the neighbor’s yard.
My fingers gripped the magestone, my knuckles cracking and magic snapping around me.
It was too dark. I couldn’t see if she was moving.
I took aim, but my body seized up. Lucus glanced at me. His emerald eyes somehow sent a zing of strength. The sensation straightened my back and put fire in my veins.
I loosed another lightning arrow.
My magic crackled, and the demon screamed as the arrow dashed its side. I dropped the Bow to put my hands over my ears. Corliss had joined the other fae in the sky, her ivy wings fluttering as she flew one way and then the other. Sebastian and Oliver crouched beside the car. Sebastian held his hands over his son’s ears.
The demon thrashed its great head and struck Aurelio and Baccio.
A stream of fire caught both fae brothers as they fell to the ground. Their wings smoking, broken, and bent, they lay motionless on the street.
My hands tingled and went numb.
Aurelio and Baccio were gone. Just like that. Gone.
Lucus’s mouth opened in a raging shout. The trees around the street lifted their roots and grabbed for the demon.
My ears rang as the creature blew rippling fire into the trees. The trees shrank back, limbs ablaze as Lucus and Kaippa flew closer to the beast. Using my lift spell to rise into the air, I blasted pulses of lightning toward the demon, hoping to distract it so Lucus and Kaippa could attack. As my magic exploded against the creature’s skull, fire burst from the demon’s maw, barely missing Lucus as he soared above its head. I wished my magic could simply kill the thing, but Lucus had told me only the Yew Bow would bring it down for good.
The demon extended its tucked wings, so much like Kaippa’s, and a clawed tip caught Corliss in the chest.
She dropped like a stone. Dead before she hit the ground.
Sebastian tucked Oliver behind the Volvo, then used his lifting spell to rise into the air on billowing amethyst clouds. Together, we cast lightning across the demon’s body and face. Our combined blasts shunted a tooth like a scimitar from the creature’s mouth. The fang drove down and stabbed the earth. Black blood poured from the demon’s neck, but it kept fighting, untouched by pain, unhindered by injury.
It was unbeatable.
“Use the Bow again!” Sebastian’s face was ruddy and sweating as he cast a spinning cloud flashing with thunder and light.
I released my lift spell and ran to where I’d dropped the Yew Bow, my blood frigid. I pushed my mind away from the horror we would discover when this was over. If we lived to see it.
Taking aim, I ignored a loud grunt from Sebastian and a blur of light, then I drew the magestone back. Pleaseworkpleaseworkpleasework. I loosed a blazing arrow.
The magic flashed against his wing. Damn! I’d missed again! Thunder from my magic shook the ground as the arrow’s power exploded outward, only tearing a rip in the beast’s side.
The demon roared, leapt high, then dove into its hole. It disappeared into the ground beside a fallen Sebastian. My hands shook. He must have been hit when I was focused on raising the arrow.
The Binder was gray as a tombstone. Dead.
The demon wyvern had slain Corliss, Aurelio, Baccio, and Sebastian. All of them were dead. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
Cries and shouts from neighbors rose.
“I saw it!”
“What is this?”
The chaotic mess of questions and exclamations grew louder as sirens tore at the night.
I slung the Yew Bow on my back and raced to Hekla. She was human again, her limbs splayed awkwardly on the ground. Her skin showed through a long rip in her shirt, and blood stained one leg of her trousers. Holding my breath, I set a hand against her bloodied cheek.
“Is she…” Kaippa had landed beside me. All humor had been erased from his features.
“Hekla?”
13 Coren
I exhaled a breath that felt like glass in my throat. “She’s warm. She’s alive.”
Her chest rose and fell, and I put a hand on the pulse faintly beating under her jaw. The beating grew stronger, and Hekla opened her eyes.
A slew of police cars and ambulances sped down the street.
“What happened?” Hekla asked. “Am I still…you know?” She patted herself down.
Kaippa knelt, his hand on his knee and the Mage Duke’s ring still on his finger. “Too bad.” His eyebrow lifted. “I liked your wild side.”
I pressed a quick kiss to Hekla’s cheek, then stood, knowing what I had to turn around and see. “Stay here and rest. I’ll be right back.”
Hekla began asking Kaippa questions as
