“My mate.” Hudson held her against him as Rosalie gave him a dazed look.
“I… I’m okay. I think Cece took the brunt of it.” Her eyes widened. “Cece!”
She struggled to sit up, but Hudson tightened his grip on her. “Briggs has her. Stay where you are, my mate.”
A shriek of laughter echoed in the cold air. “Come out and play, dirt witch!”
More fire blasted across the top of the truck, and the smell of burning rubber filled the air.
“Shit, if she sets the gas tank on fire, we’re dead,” Ronin said. “We need to move.”
“No fucking place to go,” Bishop said as he studied the parking lot.
Kat had her phone to her ear as Mal peered over the top of the truck.
“Kat, she’s coming.”
“I’m calling him,” Kat snapped.
“Call fucking faster,” Bishop said. He had Ava completely covered by his big body, and he stared grimly at Mal. “With the protection spells and if we shift, we might be able to slow her down until he gets here.”
“No!” Willow said. “What if she breaks the protection spell?”
“Magic doesn’t work on us as well in our shifter forms,” Mal said.
“It can still kill you!” Willow said.
“We have to risk it, my mate,” Mal said.
“Bishop, no,” Ava said, her voice and body shaking. “I won’t watch you burn to death.”
Briggs stared at Cece. Her face was pale, and when he peeled open an eyelid, he could see nothing but the white of her eye. Fear rocketed through him, and he shook her roughly. “Cece!”
Ronin knelt beside him and pressed his fingers against Cece’s neck. “She has a pulse.”
Already, there was a glint of tears in Ronin’s eyes, and as he bent over Cece, another blast of red light shot off the truck, and fire struck the windshield of the car beside it. The windshield exploded, showering them with glass, and Mal took another look over the truck. “Fuck me, she -”
He dove back behind the truck as a beam of light shot directly at him. It hit the car, which flipped over and over, then smashed into a light pole at the edge of the parking lot, bursting into flames.
“I’ll distract her,” Ronin said from his spot crouched over Cece. “Let her waste time killing me while the rest of you make a run for it and -”
The witch rounded the truck, red light blazing from her eyes and her hands.
“Give me the dirt witch, and I’ll let the rest of you live,” she said.
“Fuck you!” Briggs snarled as tears fell from Ronin’s cheeks and landed on Cece’s forehead.
“You had your chance, shifter,” the witch said before she spoke an incantation and thrust her hands toward him. A stream of teal light met the beam of red light, and Briggs’s bear growled with relief when Monroe, his body lit up in bright teal light, stalked toward the witch.
He shouted something that the wind snatched away, and the teal light pulsed bright in his hands, breaking the beam of red light and hitting the witch squarely in the chest. She squealed, the light in her hands dying as she was flung backward and hit the ground with a hard thud.
Monroe ran past them without a second look, as the witch scrambled to her feet and screeched an incantation at him. Monroe dodged to the left, and the spell’s light hit another car in the parking lot, flipping it over and smashing it into another car before they both burst into flames.
People were starting to emerge from the restaurant, drawn by the fire and the noise, and Ronin waved his arms at them. “Get back in the fucking restaurant, you idiots!”
They screamed when a blast of fire hit the side of the restaurant and fled back into the building.
“Goddamn humans, am I fucking right?” Ronin said to Kat.
