I got air. My exhalation vented below the magic and around the skin of my face and out around my ears.
It had edges. I clawed at where the magic touched my hairline, looking for something to hook onto.
But the amber magic didn’t so much have an end but a point at which it foamed—it would not touch my elven tattoos, but had filled in around the lines in a filigree that felt like a nest of glass under my fingers.
What was on my face? I inhaled again, and felt air pull in through those little filigree holes—and I was pretty sure Yggdrasil and my Alfheim enclave markings had just unintentionally saved my life.
St. Martin stumbled through the snow. He hunched as if the hit against the tree had done real injury, and swung his gun up once again. “My genie says you’re not a real jotunn, you liar.”
He fired.
A yellow and orange flash of light blossomed around the muzzle. A boom followed, one loud enough it would echo through the trees, even with the howling of the wind. And a bullet smashed into my shoulder.
Flesh parted before its force, as did my clavicle. Bone fragments erupted into the non-parted flesh as the bullet, too, fragmented.
Those fragments kept moving. Most embedded in my shoulder blade. One exited and struck my tricep.
I’ve been shot before. I’d fought in the Civil War. I’d had a magic pike through my chest. But this was the first time my reconstituted body had to deal with a high-velocity, modern bullet.
It wouldn’t kill me. I might bleed, and I might deal with the excruciating fire of the pain it caused, but I would not die.
That is, if I could get enough air to not pass out.
I dropped to my knees.
St. Martin sneered once again, but then looked up as if he heard something my preoccupied body did not.
He tipped his head as if listening to an earpiece, nodded once, and shot another bullet into the air.
I gasped but did not fall. My blood dripped onto the swirling, pristine whiteness of the snowfall. And St. Martin grinned like the monster he was.
The amber darkened, or my brain contracted what sensory information it would process as it prioritized surviving. I couldn’t tell which. I gasped again, and…
Clockwork magic lifted St. Martin off the ground. Magic that filled the gray between the snowflakes with a blinding brilliance dimmed by both the amber suffocating me and the pain ricocheting through my shoulder.
Dagrun, I thought.
The elven magic contracted. Did St. Martin drop the gun? I couldn’t see. The amber stopped my attempt to inhale. Was I blacking out?
“Gee…” I tried say. “Genie…”
Dag’s armor flashed as she flipped St. Martin onto his back. He landed in the snow with a thud loud enough I heard it through the amber and the roar of my own blood.
She punched a glowing fist straight into his face.
I tried to gasp. I did. I wouldn’t die. I hadn’t yet, and magic bug glue on my face wouldn’t do it today. I’d survive…
“Frank!” Other hands touched my neck along the edges of the amber. “He shot you.”
Axlam’s glowing golden wolf eyes and extending canines appeared in what little I had left of my field of vision.
She growled. “What kind of magic is this? Dagrun!” she yelled.
“Sif…” I panted.
Axlam wrapped her fingers around the sides of my face and yanked. “Dagrun sent her for the other elves.” The amber didn’t move. She yanked once more. The magic still did not move.
Whatever Dag hit St. Martin with wasn’t enough, nor had he lost his gun. He rolled to the side and fired again.
Axlam ducked. “I will string… his entrails… through the treeeees,” she shouted. Her fingers curled around the edges of the amber again, but this time, her now-claw-like nails dug into my skin.
She snapped the murky amber and the chunk over half my mouth pulled off my skin as if she’d ripped off duct tape.
I gasped.
St. Martin fired again at Dag. She twisted with such speed she moved out of the way of the bullet and crossed the distance between them before he could compensate.
Dag hit him with a straight-on jab to the nose.
“Hold still,” Axlam said. “You bleed.” She ripped another piece of the amber off my face and fully uncovered my mouth. “Do not wiggle like prey, Frank Victorsson.”
“He… said… he worked… for a… genie,” I gasped.
Axlam whipped around. She was about to bound toward St. Martin, but I grabbed her arm.
“He wants to feed the kids… to you, Axlam,” I panted. “After you… turn for the run.”
She howled, but her more wolf-like traits receded. She was holding her wolf magic in check by sheer willpower.
But some of that rage remained. She raked her nails over the largest piece of amber clinging to my face. If the magic hadn’t been there, she would have taken both my eyes.
The amber cracked. She swiped again, and the cold, crystalline wind blasted against my now raw skin. The amber still clung to me, but I could see. I could breathe.
I slowly stood. My head swam, and the whipping snow blurred the fight and Axlam, but I wouldn’t topple over.
I bled and my shoulder had yet to stabilize or reset itself. “Stay behind me,” I said. “Stay out of his magic’s reach.” But I could still help.
Axlam shoved me backward. “You bleed.”
St. Martin rolled. Dagrun hit him with another bolt of elven magic, yet he continued to dance in and out of the increasingly thick storm. He continued to hold the gun.
The blizzard hissed like a distant plane engine, or a nearby magical serpent. It was both mundane in its power and charged with duty as a veil—this blizzard, on this approaching evening, had taken on much more meaning than stay inside. A lot more.
The gray of the storm was rapidly changing over to black. “How long before the moon forces you to change?” The sun,
