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“NO!” I cry.
The arm chases after him, but Orson leaps and lands astride the girthy tentacle, snapping his wolf jaws at its wound. Max joins him, but quickly both are thrown to the floor. Hard.
Oily arms twine around them, squeezing them in the air. I picture what Simon did with the Blood Mages. I picture them exploding like pinatas above us. I send my magic out like daggers and the arms around my men are cut off. The three wolves fall to the floor. They struggle out of the arms, try to rise, then fall again, unable to fight any longer.
Turning to Simon, I lift my arms to fire, but find myself exhausted. Hollowed by adrenaline, I don’t know if I have any magic left in me. I’m a platinum-haired husk staring down an inexhaustible gelatinous foe. The goop creeps over the face inside it, erasing my only gains in this fight.
How? With all this firepower meeting him head on, how can he be completely unfazed?
My spine steels. My dark magic. I need to use it, if I can. It’s the only way.
Lifting my hands, I watch as Simon continues to swell, and I pause, something bothering me. Turning to the rest of the room, I observe the black magic of my packmates striking the mass. Their magic dissolves into it, and I realize they’re not hurting Simon. They’re feeding him.
“Stop!” I shout, my voice hoarse. Waving my arms at them, I repeat, “Stop!”
I catch their attention and they pause their barrage, a matching look of puzzlement on each of the dozen faces.
“Your dark magic, it’s only helping him!”
Having collected the necessary payload to destroy me, Simon charges his final attack. And it is absolutely a final attack. The swell of dark magic that grows as he weaves the spell seems to contain so much power that it feels like he’s about to unleash an atomic bomb.
He doesn’t just want to kill me, he wants to send a message. He wants to level this place to the ground, killing everyone within it, save himself. And then, no one will be able to stop him.
Beneath the grotesque mask, a bright green spot glows beneath the muck. It grows so bright it’s painful to look at. The energy prickles my skin like tiny needles. Spots seem to bleed, running down my skin. This is it; he’s going to kill me.
Nothing we can do will stop him. There’s no dark magic left inside of me I can use as a secret weapon. There’s simply nothing that can help me defeat him. My mates lie injured on the floor. My pack is no match for the monster. I’m utterly spent, barely capable of summoning any magic at all?—
That’s it.
In a split second’s revelation, the solution comes to me, a providential vision. Maybe I don’t need the strength to defeat him. Maybe I just need to be smarter.
I think of my mom, my brother as he was, and my sister. I think of my pack. And then I think of my men and our future together. A future with a beautiful home and children. I focus on all the beautiful, wonderful things in my world until I can feel that silver magic within me answering my desperate call. The last shreds of magic within me.
A horizontal column of neon green magic expels from the belly of the monster, overwhelming the room with dark power as it comes to life. It closes the distance between us, fast as a bullet. My hands conjure the silver magic once more, but instead of pressing back against Simon’s attack, the silver twirls in elegant spirals around the column of green dark magic. It forms a double helix that bends the green back on itself.
Return to sender.
The killing blow veers back to its source and strikes with so much force that the air’s sucked from the room, and then I’m bathed in darkness. Within seconds, his spell unleashes a dazzling light show of green fireworks bursting from the pile of black slime.
In its wake, a terrible silence follows.
Tears spring to my eyes, but I haven’t the energy to weep.
Turning to my men, I meet their gazes as they rise to their feet in their human forms, looking battered and bruised, but no worse for the wear. They nod, confirming they’re okay, then gesture toward my brother, giving me permission to do what I need to do.
I shamble to my brother’s side and collapse there.
He’s finally free.
SIXTEEN
Asha
The monster goes limp, its mass deflating like a popped tire. The black ooze thins and runs away from the body it holds, leaking into a sticky puddle that surrounds us. I dig my arms into the substance to fish out the body of my dead brother, my heart aching more than I thought it would. The ooze sleeves my arms in awful slime, but I don’t care. All I want is to hold Simon one last time.
“Simon,” I whimper.
The boy who bought me a stuffed bear when I was five. The boy who used to save his chocolate pudding for me, because it was my favorite. The boy who could grow anything in the garden.
