Page 74 of Faerie Hunted

He brought his hand down and the vacuum seal popped. Whoever had been on their feet now fell.

A cruel, wicked, beautiful smile pried his lips open.

I shifted back to human form. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He winked at me. “You’re a hard girl to find!”

Laina swung her whips and set her eyes on Morgan, who seemed to grow with the weight of the challenge. He barked out another command but a flash of movement came from the corner of my vision.

I lurched aside in time to make room for Bronwen and Onyx. They moved in tandem, faster than I would have thought possible, and a shower of blades hurtled toward Morgan and his cronies.

Whatever order he’d managed to release didn’t matter. We rushed for him, a battle cry uniting us, and the daggers struck home at the same time. Burrowing in a circle around him and his friends.

Onyx snorted and the weight of the power in the room crashed against me as he lit the daggers on fire. Through the flames I saw Morgan glaring at me, his one good eye mirroring the gilded flames.

Bronwen tensed and ducked as someone swung a sword toward her head. The tip nicked her shoulder and she lost her balance, keening forward closer to the flames.

“No!” I cried, and the word echoed from somewhere around me but I couldn’t spare Mike another glance as I stepped up to protect Bronwen.

A thought—and weight filled my palm, a replica of the sword the other man carried.

Immediately the use of magic took a toll and I lost my breath, my heart beating wildly. I lifted the sword in time to parry a strike from the man, blocking him at every turn.

They were too close to us, and the fire might keep Morgan and the others blocked off but it also filled the small bar with too much heat. My skin was turning to ash and my forearm burned where I’d been bitten.

Bronwen got to her feet, wincing at the spray of blood across her shoulder. Her magic pulsed and she sliced her own sword at the man.

“Don’t tell me you’re tired already?”

My head snapped toward her but the pause cost me. The pain in my arm flared and traveled up to my back, hammering every vertebrae of my spine.

Mike brought a solid shield of air around us and stopped the man’s next parry dead in the air.

“Tavi?”

I recognized the concern in his voice.

“We have to get out of here.” The press of heat, the cost of the shift and conjuring the sword, threatened to weigh me down and I gritted my teeth to remain standing. Several members of the Claw & Fang managed to get themselves together and they threw a blast of water magic at us with such force it nearly sent me flying.

It also doused the magical flames around Morgan.

Laina’s whip darted out snake-fast and wrapped around the arm of the nearest attacker, pulling him backward and off his feet. He collided with the back wall and lay still.

“Time to move,” she called out.

She was right. We needed to get away from Dorian Jade’s followers and get far enough from this place to recover.

Had I thought the Faerie Trials were bad?

If I had half the strength I’d had during those, I’d have blasted every last one of these dudes with magic and gleefully watched them bleed.

But every time I tried to call my power back to me, it receded a little further. Even Mike had gone pale and his spells were losing their potency.

I swung my blade again and my muscles burned from too much force. We were close enough to the door to get out of the building. Laina cast her final spell and it spread out through the interior of the bar, chains of magic the same color as the lethally tipped whips keeping them pinned in place.

I didn’t give a crap what happened to them once we left.

Bronwen was the closest and I grabbed hold of her, my body shivering with the effort of trying to continue. She wrapped an arm underneath mine and cried out at the top of her lungs, “We’re out!”

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