Part 28 (2/2)

Drake shrieked, his hide burning, but he whipped around and struck, full force of body and tail. Not at Mick-at Colby.

Colby couldn't dodge in time. He almost managed to dive out of the way, but Drake's long, barbed tail caught him under one wing.

The wing tore in a crackling of cartilage, and Colby rolled like a fighter plane shot out of the sky. Fire burst from his mouth as he fell and caught Drake on the belly. Drake screamed and winged higher, trying to let the wind put the fires out.

Mick was on Drake in an instant, but Colby plummeted from the heights, straight toward rocky ground.

I shot out a cus.h.i.+on of wind to try to help break his fall, but the problem with being part of such a huge storm was that its strength dispersed the farther I moved from its heart. The dragons were fighting on the very edge.

I slowed Colby's descent a little, but still he tumbled end over end until he crashed into tall gra.s.ses and rock. A billow of dust shot up from his landing place, then Colby lay still.

Mick saw, but he had Drake on him. My attention was jerked back to the canyon, to Pericles and Emmett, who'd both decided that the biggest threat they needed to take down was me.

I whacked away the tubes of light surrounding Nash's truck. As reluctant as I'd been to touch the tubes when they'd first appeared, I now dispersed them with a flick of my fingers.

”Grandmother!” I called. ”Colby needs help.”

Elena started the truck. ”Where is he?”

I pointed, unable to explain. Elena gave me an annoyed look, but they were magical women -they'd sense the fallen dragon's aura and find him.

Gabrielle rolled off the truck and came to her feet as Elena drove away. ”I'm not leaving.

Bring it on, mages.”

They did. I left the barrier up around Nash to protect both him and the pot from physical injury. He sat in the middle of it, arms around the pot, and watched.

”Can I dust them, Janet?” Gabrielle turned her face up to me. ”Please?”

”In this case? Sure!”

She whooped, and I felt her burst of Beneath magic as she rose into the air beside me. She somersaulted once in midair, laughing. ”And people say sisters don't do enough together.” The two mages faced us in silence. Whether they'd discussed working together or just realized it was expedient, they'd put aside their differences to tackle us. Emmett and Pericles locked hands, raised them, and each sent one half of a spell at us.

The spells combined into a furrow of darkness. My newfound clarity told me that the darkness was designed to get past our magic and rip into our bodies. Neither Gabrielle nor I was immortal. We could die, and with us, our power.

Gabrielle gleefully whacked at the spell with a shaft of Beneath magic, then she screamed.

The darkness wound onto her magic like a sticky web and started crawling toward her outstretched hand.

I sliced down with my own power, not onto the dark web, but to Gabrielle's magic just above it, cleanly cutting off the white shaft. The web found itself wrapping around nothing and it drew back, pausing like an animal scenting the wind.

Then it reared up and it came for me. I flew upward, rolling out of the way as quickly as any dragon. I came down again, landing on the earth outside the barrier surrounding Nash.

The mage's web of darkness followed me down. I swatted it with a swirl of wind, but as it had done with Gabrielle, it tried to cling to my magic and follow my own power back to me.

I realized that I couldn't fight the spell itself-I had to fight the mages. I had to release myself from all the restrictions I'd put on my use of magic in the past year, and go for the end game.

I closed my eyes.

I might have been born with G.o.ddess magic deep inside myself, but fortunately for me, my father had come from a line of shamans who carried strong earth magics-powers bound to this world, not the worlds below.

Grandmother, by making sure my latent evil didn't destroy me from the inside out, had given me the strength to steady myself against the Beneath magic that threatened me every day.

My father, with his silences and the quiet composure with which he approached all things, had shown me the value of patience and endurance.

Jamison, the man I'd fought so hard this afternoon, had taught me to calm myself, to meditate and control the impulses that raged inside me.

Then Mick, my first and only lover, had taught me spells to help balance and hone my storm magic into an efficient, controlled power.

I'd learned so much from them-family, friend, lover-and now their lessons let me hold the storm, center myself, and marry the storm with my Beneath magic.

I opened my hands and filled my palms with the winds. The web of dark magic still watched me, waiting for me to strike, but I ignored it.

Instead I gathered the dense cloud of dust and swept it around myself and the two mages, blotting out everything and everyone but us. I heard Gabrielle's snarl of frustration, but I didn't want to let her in here. She was strong, but not strong enough.

I couldn't see the mage's faces now, only the white shafts of their true selves. They threw another collective spell at me, this one designed to squeeze all the breath from my body and leave me flat.

I sent the winds into the spell to pull it asunder. As it shattered, I snaked the storm between the two men and flung them apart.

The mages fell, but were up again at once. They stopped trying to work together and just started throwing spells at me.

I laughed as I smacked down spell after spell. I left the ground again, laughing, joyous, pounding the two mages with the wild mix of my magic as quickly as they shot their spells at me.

Bear had stopped chanting. Through the dust, I saw that she now stood with her hands at her sides, her head bowed, the bearskin on her back shrouding her body.

I didn't have time to wonder what she was doing now. That is, until I felt the weight of the auras of the canyon.

The larger magics of Emmett, Pericles, Gabrielle, and the storm, had s.h.i.+elded me from the auras that usually drove me crazy. But now that Bear had sung to the spirit of the canyon -its collective aura-I felt them with a vengeance.

The auras swirled together like those I'd awakened from the artifacts in Richard Young's collection room. They gathered around Bear, joining together like a dark cloak around her.

She'd tried to help them, she'd caused them sorrow, and now she'd come to awaken them and protect them.

I felt the crush of the auras start to weaken me. Bear was on their side, and I knew I'd be foolish to a.s.sume she was still on ours.

I had another worry. I was drunk with power, riding this wonderful storm, but storms don't last forever. This one would disperse when nature had finished with it, and I'd be left with a bad magic hangover and only Beneath power on which to draw. Beneath magic was strong, but these mages, especially together, were the equal of it. And with no storm to steady me, I might end up destroying the entire canyon.

I kept sending bursts of storm at Emmett and Pericles, and they shot things back at me- death spells, fire spells, ice spells, spells designed to eat my organs from the inside out, spells intended to separate my physical self from my magical one.

The last one made me cold, even as I kicked it aside. I hadn't realized spells like that existed.

The glow of the golden tubes flashed and went out. For a second, I had no idea what had happened, then I realized that Nash had approached one of the tubes of light and reached out to cancel its magics.

When it went down, all the others did too. Nash disappeared into darkness, but I saw his silhouette against my next burst of lightning.

Nash held his Glock in his hands, and he aimed it and shot Pericles straight through the heart.

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