Another streak of lightning brightened the room, and a glint from near a large gap in the outer wall caught my eye – was that one of the bracelets Victor was using for his spell? I couldn’t be sure. There might be beer cans tossed around the ruins or some other metallic trash reflecting the storm’s light.
There was no sign of Victor in the area I could make out from the stairwell, so I had to assume he was lying in wait somewhere behind it. Which made running for the exit a poor idea unless I wanted to wind up skewered by his crossbow before I made it halfway there.
A low moan sounded from my right, but it was just the wind blowing through a partially ruined wall. The rain began to abate, and the patter of drops on the stone floor lessened as I held my breath, waiting for something to give Victor away.
“All right! I’m here. Where is she?” Jared’s voice called from one of the gaps in the wall to my left. My blood ran cold at his words.
I couldn’t see him, but I knew that the moment he stepped into the ruins, Victor would close the square with the fourth bracelet. I was going to scream a warning, but before I could, another flash of lightning lit the chamber and I spotted Jared, now already inside the fort.
“Jared, no! Run!” I yelled.
He turned toward me, and a shaft appeared above his right hip, impaling him at an angle and knocking him to the floor. Victor’s boots scraped on the stone behind the stairwell as he moved to put the final talisman into place, spurring me into motion. I bolted from the stairs and sprinted for the entrance where I’d seen the reflection, and was almost there when I tripped on a piece of rubble and sprawled forward, scraping my hands and knocking the wind out of me.
“There’s no escape,” Victor said with a laugh, and set the last bracelet by the far wall.
Jared moaned, the crossbow quarrel now affecting him as it would a mortal, his rapid healing no doubt short-circuited by the spell. I heard Victor’s boots crunching on the debris as he approached Jared, and I forced myself to my knees, my breath coming in rasps. I dragged myself toward the entrance and was almost to it when Victor materialized and kicked me in the ribs hard enough to lift me off the ground.
I cried out, the pain blinding, and nearly passed out. Victor snickered and then growled at me.
“First your boy gets it; then I’m coming back for you, doll face.”
I struggled for air, my ribs sending white-hot spikes of agony through me with each breath. Victor must have seen that I was incapacitated, because his footsteps moved away from me, back to where Jared was lying motionless. Rain ran down my face in streaks, blending with tears of pain and frustration. The entrance was only a few yards away, but it might as well have been a mile.
Another flash of lightning split the sky, and I saw the bracelet by the threshold. I mustered my strength, and with a superhuman effort lunged from the ground, ignoring the risk Victor would shoot me in the back. I hit the stone floor near the bracelet hard and frantically groped along the wall…and then my fingers felt metal and I had it in my hand.
I didn’t know how the spell worked, but if it had rendered Jared powerless in the interior of the fort, I figured it had to remain somewhere it would form one of the corners of the square. I pushed myself to my knees, and Victor screamed at me in rage.
“What are you doing?” he bellowed, but it was too late.
I hurled the bracelet into the rain through a gap in the wall to my left, and was rewarded with an infuriated roar from Victor that told me my instinct on how to destroy the spell had been good.
“Noooo!!!”
Everything happened so fast. The moon appeared from behind the clouds for several moments, and I saw Victor with the crossbow in hand, night-vision goggles on his head and a backpack strapped to his back, standing no more than ten feet from Jared’s inert form. Jared’s legs moved, and then his arms. Victor fumbled with the crossbow, working to cock it as Jared’s powers returned and his body began mending before my eyes.
Victor had seated a bolt and was raising the weapon when Jared moved in a blur, so fast I could barely follow it. The crossbow went sailing through the air and skittered along the stone floor. Victor howled in pain and swung at Jared with a roundhouse blow, but he was punching at a shadow, a ghost – Jared was now behind him and delivered a powerful kick to Victor’s lower spine, knocking him forward.
Jared was in motion again before Victor could regain his balance, sweep-kicking Victor’s legs from under him as he stumbled toward a rubble pile, and sending him sprawling onto his hands and knees. But Victor recovered faster than I would have thought possible even as Jared lunged at him, and then they were on the floor, grappling with each other and battling to deliver blows to each other’s heads.
Victor sucker-punched Jared in the side, where the crossbow bolt still speared his abdomen, and Jared cried out and rolled away. Victor pressed his advantage and threw himself at Jared, who blocked another blow with his arm and struck Victor in the side of the head with a closed fist.
I could see in the dim light that even though Jared was regaining his powers, Victor was more than evenly matched in strength, if not speed. The crossbow had definitely done some damage, and it was affecting Jared, who was obviously struggling; and Victor had enhanced his own
