Page 63 of Warlocks Don't Win
His eyes refocused and then he closed his eyes, focusing as hard as he could on something I couldn’t see. Well if he didn’t want to watch me die, who could blame him? My perfect face makeup was long gone. My dress was tatters, and all of meneeded a hospital and a spa. What would be really great would be if I could break the binding between her and Winston. Then Sage House could defeat her easily. We wouldn’t be working against our own energy.
“Mom, could you tell dad to break the bindings between the witch and Winston?” I said out loud. Man, I sounded rough.
A slight hint of green was the only thing that signaled she’d heard me.
“Also Tolly, it would be awesome if you got Jessica and Jordan. They’re kind of cute as a couple. Maybe some sorcerer could give them a ride through a portal so they don’t miss the whole thing on a train.” We’d left her in Apple City.
I closed my eyes while my legs twitched. It’d been weird. And wonderful. What more could a girl ask for?
Chapter
Twenty
Acrash of glass and a flash of green lightning had me blinking my eyes open. Someone was pelting fireballs at the house. Green fireballs, the color of the unholy pits of my father’s eye sockets.
The witch turned to the attacker, hissing. “What manner of construct is this?”
“Love,” I mumbled as I struggled to raise up on my elbows. Hm. My legs didn’t look so good. Broken. Those were bones sticking out of them, but there wasn’t as much blood loss as you’d expect. Right. Because I was Rasputin’s daughter, ergo, hard to kill. Convenient.
“Love?” She didn’t bother looking at me, but she was sweating, trying to put out all the fireballs while holding Winston in the air, and struggling against Sage House. I could feel her efforts sucking the life out of me.
“Love is strong.” I patted the marble floor. “Like Sage House, looking out for us even though I abandoned her. I always loved her, but it hurts. Love hurts.” A flash of feeling in my legs had me blinking out white pain.
I screamed and threw that pain at her in a bolt of raw energy that struck her in the chest.
She stumbled back, and then Winston fell out of those compressing coils. He landed on me.
I gurgled and flopped back down like a rotting fish. He scrambled to his feet in those shredded pants and then the skin on his body came to life with more mage marks than I’d ever seen. They were from all over the spectrum, light to dark, and all of them were powerful.
It was her turn to be wrapped in compressed air. Very cool. He slashed his hands apart and she fell. I felt the bindings to her break. She was cut off from my magic, from Sage House, and from Winston.
I patted his bare foot with my hand. “Good job.”
She threw a bolt of lightning at him, throwing him back into the wall. He fell down on top of me. Again. This time we were face to face.
“Got to stop meeting like this,” I said and then kissed him. It hurt. But also felt so good. My husband.
He rolled off me and stalked towards her, dodging a fireball easily as he went. So beautiful, my warlock with lightning coiling around his arms. He was going to have lots of glass sliver in those feet when we were done.
He shot lightning at her, but she raised a shield and threw them back at him. He also raised a shield, sending them back at her. They bounced a few times before discharging into the floor. Except that one hit my foot. I felt that. My hair was going to be so bad after this.
The world rocked and a dark pulsing portal appeared. Jessica, Jordan and Tolly stumbled through then stopped, staring at the scene for a second before she threw a curse at Winston’s mother and then dropped next to me, grabbing my hand like my fingers weren’t crushed.
“Are you okay?”
“Seriously? My foot is charred, my legs are broken, and my hair is sticking straight up. And you ask if I’m okay?” I grinned at her. “Never been better.”
A thud and then Parody came in, followed closely by Portalia and the rest of the Singsong Coven. Rynne looked way too pulled together to belong to that bunch of mayhem. The Warlock’s Kiss had brought their instruments.
A stray bolt of lightning had them backing up in the hall.
“That’s why your hair’s so bad!” Jessica said, crouching down behind me so I could take any stray bolts of lightning as her shield. Such courage.
Winston and his grandmother were in a stand-off, probably because he’d already lost so much energy and strength to me and her with those nasty bindings.
He probably also wasn’t comfortable killing the woman who’d raised him, even if she had killed his parents. He might not know about that yet. If he couldn’t kill her, because he wasn’t a killer, however dark he thought his warlock was, that left it up to me.
“I could use an iron nail,” I told Sage House. When I spread my fingers, I felt it under my hand. It was forgiving me for making it break the curse? What a good house. I shouldn’t have abandoned it.
