“There goes our way out.” I gritted my teeth, finishing up Emery’s spell as my mother continued to pepper the cars with bullets.
“The cars are in a single-file line because of the shape of the road. We’ll just steal a few at the back,” Reagan said, strapping on her own gun, which she’d previously stowed in the car. She didn’t take it out, though. Instead, she ripped her sword out of its holster and checked her fanny pack.
“Ms. Bristol!” Emery shouted.
My mother raised the business end of the gun toward the sky, but she didn’t step out of the way. Emery darted around her and released the spell. It hit the ground and expanded to his height, forming a perfect sphere. In a moment it started rolling toward the—now stuck—line of cars. Nearly there, it burst into blue flame, the heat so intense it blew back at us.
“Wow.” Callie straightened up just a bit. “I had no idea naturals got that kind of boost when they formed a dual-mage pair.”
The tires of the first car popped from the heat, the sound so loud they were nearly explosions. Paint peeled and shriveled as the magical ball of fire rolled over the vehicles.
“We’ve got special naturals. Come on.” Reagan took off at a jog. “We gotta get out of here. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to save my boyfriend. Again.”
The shifters didn’t follow. Instead, Roger looked at my mother, clearly waiting for her signal.
“Your mother has what it takes to be an Alpha,” Emery said with a smile, waiting for me while I waited for my mother. I didn’t want to run after Reagan until I was sure my mother was coming with us.
“Don’t tell her that. You’ll just encourage her.”
“I heard that, Penny,” my mother said, starting forward. The gathering pack of shifters started forward with her. “And Emery, acting the part of an Alpha is easy. You just have to know more than anybody else in the room, and not be afraid to stare the others down until you get your way.”
“Roger wasn’t even in that room.” I flinched as another roar rose from way off in the trees.
“Roger clearly has sense and listened to his second-in-command. Now, enough talking. We need to get out of here before we lose too many of our people.”
I jogged to her side. “What’s the plan, here? Do I stay with you?”
“Penny Bristol, stop being so worried about plans! Your friend is taking on a line of mages by herself. Get down there and help her out.”
A female mage broke from the tree line on the other side of the parked cars. She pinched something between her fingers.
Tear.
I didn’t know what her spell would do, but I could see it somersaulting through the air. I pulled elements from the organized mass hovering above my head quickly, intuitively, the counter-spell already in my mind. As I weaved it together, still walking toward the line of cars, Emery’s magic swished through me. He inserted some truly excellent embellishments into my weave, then took the whole thing from me and sent it off.
“Come on,” he said, starting to jog.
Our spell tore through the coming spell without a problem, without even slowing down. It rocketed on, splitting into two. One half cut right through the middle of the mage I’d seen, and the other sliced into a mage I hadn’t even noticed. All in a handful of seconds.
“Holy crap, that was a helluva upgrade,” I said.
“Penelope Bristol, just because we are in a battle, does not mean swearing is suddenly okay,” my mother berated.
“Yeah, okay, let’s run,” I said. If fighting an army of mages wasn’t a good reason to get away from my mother, nothing was.
Drops of magical fire from our sphere burned on the dirt or blackened the metal of the cars. Papers, seat covers, and, probably, people still burned within them. We hadn’t set the ball to track the people or cars, though, and certainly not the road. When it had reached a turn, it had kept on going, setting fire to a couple of trees and a swath of brush. Thankfully, Reagan had seen it and sucked the flame away, leaving only half of each tree a blackened mess.
“Oops,” Emery said, noticing what I had. We ran around the first couple of cars. He touched one of the hoods before flinching away. “The metal is hot.”
“Yes. It looks hot. Thank God for Reagan, or we would’ve set the whole place on fire.”
Leftover flames crawled out of the windows of a Ford, reaching through the air in my direction. I swerved on the crackly, burned ground beside it, reaching the first bend in the narrow road. Intact cars lined the way until the next bend tucked them behind the trees and out of sight. Mages had left their cars and were hurrying toward Reagan, satchels open and ingredients in hand. She stood in the middle of five mages with her sword in one hand, and her handgun in the other.
“Hurry.” Emery put on speed, rushing for her.
Two mages down the way slipped into the trees, and I knew they were going to cut through the woods to get to the house, avoiding us. No magic swirled around them, which would make them harder for the shifters to track.
“Roger’s people can get those,” I said, running right behind Emery.
A spell rose, shooting toward Reagan. With her left hand, she sliced her sword through it, unraveling it like a string on a sweater. With her right hand, she turned, aimed, and shot the mage who’d attacked her right in the middle.
“Crap, she’s good,” Emery said, and I could hear the competitiveness in his voice. If—no, when—we got through this, he’d probably train twice as hard to be better than her.
Feeling out the situation, I pulled down ingredients, weaved threads together, then braided them—what would have once seemed crazy complex felt freaking easy with the new magic at my disposal. I hop-stepped forward, turned, and ran my palms through the air, as though throwing a skipping rock across a calm lake.
The magic slid over the ground before it started rolling like rocks, picking up speed as it went. As I neared Reagan, I yanked my hands apart, still having control over the magic from a distance.
“Definitely a big upgrade,” I muttered, watching as the spell busted the kneecaps of three mages, bringing them to the ground, before covering them like blankets. Their screaming cut off quickly.
Emery looked back with wide eyes. “This magic suits you.”
“I feel your rage. Your wildness. It blends so perfectly with my magic that…I don’t have to think. I just…go with it.” I kept running forward as a fierce growl sounded somewhere to my right. A larger distance away, working toward us, another mighty roar shook my bones. Thank God the shifters were on our side!
“Scatter them so we can get by them,” I heard from behind, my mother yelling directions.
Kak-kak-kak-kak-kak.
Bullets slapped the cars farther down the road on my right.
“Too dangerous, Mother! You might hit one of us.”
“You do you. I’ll do me,” she yelled back.
I clenched my teeth and started another massive, rolling fireball.
“I need fire, Penny,” Reagan yelled, reading my mind.
I worked faster, knowing Reagan needed me to cover her using her magic.
“Now, Penny. Shoot it!” she said, jumping up onto a car, running across the hood, and then jumping down in attack mode, slashing her sword through a mage’s shoulder. These mages had never trained with a moving target as animated and deadly as Reagan Somerset, and they were caught standing still.
“I don’t know how to shoot fire—” I strained to grab more elements, bending them into my fireball so it would ignite and grow. Spark, heat, and a touch of destruction. For balance, I threaded in some of Reagan’s icy magic, then something that gave me a feeling of glitter. Sparkly and fun and wonderfully explosive. “I might still be cracking up…”
I scrabbled up onto the trunk of a car, not able to jump as high as Reagan, and stomped onto the roof (not as graceful, either). Leaning on Emery’s energy, I pulled strength up from my toes and shot off the spell.
Magic roared from my hands. For five feet, nothing happened, and I worried I’d just wasted all that energy. But then blue heat twisted to life, turning yellow and then orange before flaring. A stream of blistering fire spewed down the line of cars.