I gasped at the sudden drain to my rune as it mitigated her attack.Thankfully I wouldn’t be able to feel the wards on the men; they would protect them from any lethal damage until they were used up without affecting me whatsoever.
“George!” Indra whirled to me, but a vampire caught him around the waist and took both of them from my view. Akiva was also too far from me, though I could hear the snick of metal and hissed curses that I couldn’t understand.
That left me an entire clearing to work with.
“Did you ever stop to wonder why I came here? Why I’d throw my luck in with his?” I asked as the woman rounded on me, her fingers curled loosely.
She hissed, licking over her fangs before finally speaking. “Because you thought those men would protect you,” The vampire flicked her fingers dismissively towards the others while she circled me like a lioness.
“I’ve never met them before tonight. Why would I assume they’d protect me?” I lifted my hand, fingers twisting slightly, and watched her as my card materialized, the white lines glowing between my fingers on the black surface.
Her face fell in confusion. “What is that?”
I smiled at her, maybe a bit manically. My attention was focused on channeling my inherent power into the card that I held. I could summon either an Aspect of the card’s power or the Form of the card itself. In my hand I held The Chariot, which would give me either incredible agility and near-flight, or her.
I chose her.
The ground lit up around my feet, light seeping from the earth itself and soaking into the card.
“What the hell?” I heard someone hiss, but I was focused only on the magic required to call the Form of the Chariot. Not even the closed-fist blow of a vampire hitting my wards was enough to deter me, though the tug of energy made me note grimly that the rune wouldn’t last too much longer under that kind of strength.
Suddenly the light from my magic dimmed; ground fading to darkness once more. I blinked in the sudden dimness, half-glad for the brightness to no longer be assaulting my vision.
The card disintegrated into white sparks, and as I dropped my hand to my side I felt long fingers curl around mine as heavy, folded wings pressed against my back.
I didn’t need to turn around. I knew that the Form of the Chariot stood at my back filled with my magic and my will. A breeze seemed to ruffle the feathers of her wings, and her pale skin was cool against my hand, the ornate rings on all of her taloned fingers biting into my flesh.
“You are a summoner,” the woman said, lifting slightly from her crouch. “But you’re–“
The Chariot Form screamed and I stepped aside as she dove past me, long arms extended to dig into the woman’s shoulders and tossed her backwards. Large pearly wings obscured most of her from me, though as she moved I could see flashes of the long white hair and feathered headdress she wore that covered the upper part of her face.
As she fell on the downed vampire, claws ripping backward and glistening with black blood, I whirled to face the other side of the clearing. Akiva took that moment to separate a man’s head from the rest of his body neatly with what I assumed to be his khopesh and was already rounding on another that was attempting to catch him unawares just as Horus hurtled down from the sky and battered the vampire with his enormous wings.
The Chariot screamed her victory, her cry like a raptor’s, and I twisted my hand to redirect her to a vampire circling Cian and Gavin’s fight before she could deliver a killing blow. Without hesitation the Form used her powerful legs to lunge forward, knocking one of the women into the thicker trees, where she followed.
“George watch out!” Indra’s voice brought me up short and I whirled into the face of a pale vampire who grinned, one hand balled into a fist that made my stomach twist in fear. He hit my wards with his closed fist, the motion a blur, and I felt it in my gut like a roil of nausea. My barrier shattered around me and I gasped, throwing my hands up in front of me like a plea to stop him from coming closer.
He knocked my arms aside easily and threw me to the ground, fangs visible as he tackled me. I lifted my hands again, pressing them to his bare chest that was slick with blood. Please Goddess, I wanted to wail. Don’t let him kill me. Not that she could do much, with the vampire already moving for my throat.
His fangs never found my neck.
Indra was there, though he had shifted to a great, black furred dog sometime in the past few seconds. He roared in the vampire’s face, his chest igniting like fresh embers and eyes echoing the appearance of orange flames.
He was a hellhound.
Indra knocked the vampire down and snapped his jaws closed around the man’s neck, ignoring the pained screeches and writhing body of the man he had pinned. Instead he only shook the vampire like a rag doll until he went limp, the screaming becoming gurgled protests and then nothing. Finally he looked up, ears twisted back, and I stepped towards him, gore stained muzzle and all.
“Thank you–“ my words were cut off by another vampire grabbing Indra and flinging the canine to the ground. He yelped, and I twisted to see where my summon was.
Unfortunately, when I’d been knocked down, The Chariot had faltered as well. Now she was being pinned by two vampires and I knew I’d have to give her an extra burst of my power for her to get up.
But I didn’t.
Instead I called her back to me, the magic coming to rest in my body again. Inhaling sharply,
