Natural Dual-Mage

“What do you do, pet dragons?” Reagan muttered.

The stone throbbing in Emery’s hand stilled his thoughts. Power pumped through his body. Like a heartbeat.

“Blood magic,” he said, spells running through his head from a book long since forgotten. Something he’d found in his surrogate father’s room—a tome about circles and demons and bringing back the dead. He’d devoured it, fascinated by stuff straight out of bad horror flicks and gruesome tales told around the campfire. He’d even tried a spell or two before his brother had found out and ratted on him.

“They sacrificed someone for that spell—tore their soul from them so it could be used as the watcher, the keeper of the compound. Living flesh would’ve gone into the spell. The victim’s screams. The blood of the lost.” Emery racked his brain, trying desperately to remember if he’d ever heard about a counter-spell. Or something to peacefully set it off. “Peace,” he said, ripping his eyes open.

He wished he hadn’t.

The mages of the Guild had come to a stop on the other side of the ward. One of the three barons, dressed in a blood-red robe, stood out front, leading the spell they were calling into existence. It was hidden behind a shimmering, moving wall of magic, but Emery could see it rising.

“Shhhiii…” Emery gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut again. “Get ready, Cahal.”

“Don’t you get ready, Cahal,” Penny said. “Emery has this. He’s right there. He has the answer. I feel it in him.”

“Ra ra ra,” Reagan said, shaking Emery’s hand a little, whether cheerleading or telling him to hurry, he couldn’t say.

“Peace for the tortured soul. Send the soul to its resting place.” He braced himself and reached out, finding Penny’s hand with the stone between it. Feeling a stronger force of serenity flow through him. Flow through Reagan. Sparkly white light danced behind his eyes. Deep black rolled through it. His grayish mutt met the two sides in the middle, and he held his breath. “Here goes nothing.”

He took Penny’s approach—rather than attack the spell, he embraced it with her serenity. With her care and beauty and love of all things natural.

“It’s time,” Cahal said, moving closer.

“I don’t want to rush you, Emery, but hurry,” Penny said, and for some reason, that was hilarious.

He laughed in deep belly chuckles as their combined magic surged around the watcher. The peaceful light infused the twisting and churning, anguished and decrepit spell. He wrapped it up snugly and sent the soul to its final resting place as Reagan stepped back into the ward and went to work, finding each crack and wresting it open. Lining the seams with fire or ice, depending on what was needed.

“Now blow it up, Penny,” Reagan said, letting go of Emery’s hand. “Then run like bloody hell.”

34

I didn’t wait, and I didn’t hang around. I shoved in a combination of Reagan’s fire, my own blend of magical heat, and Emery’s lightning, then I turned and sprinted.

“Wrong way.” A large, strong hand gripped my upper arm and whipped me around. Cahal gave me a little shove. “Now run.”

“Go, go, go, go,” Reagan yelled as she sprinted back toward the trees.

The shifters and vampires, temporarily short on enemies as the large group behind the ward readied their spell, watched in clear confusion as we ran through them, away from the mages. Darius and Vlad were the first to follow. Roger led his lot after them.

“This way,” Reagan said, turning left and running along the tree line.

Seek and destroy.

“We have a—”

Reagan whipped out her sword and stuck it up into the air, cutting through the spell filtering down.

“You got it,” I finished.

“Where are we going?” Emery asked, keeping up with me as I barely made pace with Reagan. Cahal loped easily by our side, and his perpetual ease was starting to get on my nerves.

I wiped sweat from my face. “Following her.”

Darius caught up to Reagan and looked at her.

“They took forever to get organized,” Reagan said as an explosion of air, sound, and color blasted out at us, the ward and all the spells attached to it coming down in intense splendor. The force lifted me off my feet and threw me. Emery landed before I did, and I crashed into him. A wolf went rolling past. Then a warthog.

“It is really weird fighting with shifters.” I pushed myself off the ground as Cahal swung up his legs and hopped from his back to his feet in a fluid motion. “Definitely starting to get annoying.”

“We need to keep moving,” Reagan said, pushing to her feet. “The ward is down, by the way. In case you missed it.”

She turned and ran for the compound as an undertow of power shook my bones. The force of the intent fused my jaw shut and tensed every muscle in my body.

STUN!

I staggered, almost fell. Emery steadied me.

“Loo—” I pointed behind us. Shifters and vampires lingered back there, taking up the rear. They’d get hit first. “Nnnn!”

My mouth still not working properly, I dragged Reagan out of the trees and into the clearing as the magic thundered down on us.

“Fucking turdswallop!” she said, dropping her sword and shoving her hands out in front of her.

“Get behind us,” Emery yelled at the vamps and shifters. “Hurry!”

A fog of thick, dense magic moved out from the compound, slow and strangely intelligent. It would track us, I knew. Sure enough, after a brief pause, it started drifting our way in no real hurry. No plans to dissipate until it met its mark.

“Fire,” Reagan said, her eyes sparking. “Fire!”

“Your fire or my fire?” I asked, leeching some of her magic. Fusing it with mine. Spinning a weave.

Emery pushed in beside me, working with my efforts. Taking what I created and building it. Shaping it. Basically, bedazzling it.

“Anything,” Reagan said. “Everything. It needs heat.”

“And life,” Emery said. “You were right, Penny. This organization is working with death. Decay. Magic works in opposites.”

“So much for the theory that they’d only use spells from a book,” I said, a trickle of sweat running down my back.

“This is from a book,” Reagan said. “Everything they do is from a book. And I sure as hell hope we don’t destroy the building it’s housed in before I get to see the beast.”

“Opposites,” Emery said, his face screwed up in concentration, the artificial lighting of the compound barely reaching us. “Balancing spells makes them stronger. Harder to break. Clearly the originator of the spells they are using didn’t know that rule. I didn’t know that rule until I met you.”

“I don’t understand how. It’s pure logic.” I added another layer to the spell, feeling the beast bear down on us. Fire rolled between Reagan’s fingers. She was going to use us as a cover to openly use her own magic.

“We can do it without that, Reagan,” I said, knowing that the right people would know mages couldn’t make fire like hers. Not even dual-mage naturals. Not even angel-touched dual-mage naturals.

“No, you can’t,” she said softly. “I made a choice to be here. So if my old man comes for me, you better back me up.”

“Done,” Emery said.

“How horrible is he?” I asked.

The beast of a spell had us in its sights, though I had no idea how it had identified us. The magical fog sped up, thundering toward us now, churning power and malevolence.

“Now!” Reagan yelled.

Emery and I shot off our spell, horribly small in comparison to the behemoth bearing down on us. It hit the mages’ spell, turning and spinning within it. Fire erupted around it, a great flame that then reduced in height but not width, spreading across the underside of the spell like flame crawling along a ceiling. Little sputters and sparks shot out of it, licking up the sides. Thank goodness we had Reagan.

“In this, you have excelled,” Cahal said.

“Not now, peanut gallery.” Reagan made a circle in the air with her finger. “Let it work. Let’s go.”