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The basilisk attacked. It’s fucking chaos.
Where are you?
Eli and I are protecting everyone who’d been watching the show. Monty and Ashworth are chasing the basilisk.
And Aiden?
Organizing ambulances and trying to keep everyone calm.
I’d half expected him to be chasing the basilisk with Monty and Ashworth, but he was the new alpha, and his duty did now lie with the pack.Were many hurt?
Two frozen. A dozen or so mown down and partially crushed.
Which was bad but, in many respects, it could have been far worse.
Yeah, came Belle’s response,the vamp mages could have used the basilisk as a distraction.
She’d barely even finished that statement when magic burned the air. Dark magic, not clean.
The vampshadused the basilisk as a distraction.
Eli’s and Belle’s magic flared in response. I pushed upright once again and stumbled forward, zigzagging through the layers of protection spells before falling again. My hands hit the ground so hard they wedged into the soil, and in that moment, I felt the vampires. Felt their movement. Each step they took was a heavy weight that stained the ground with darkness.
There were three of them here, which in itself was rather odd if Mariehadintended serious destruction. But perhaps this was nothing more than a magical test, a means of discovering the strengths and weakness of the witches who lived within the reservation. Aside from the fact the vamps cast spells that were gradually ramping up in power rather than hitting Eli and Belle with everything they had first up, all three moved with unnatural speed. Vampires were fast, I knewthatfrom experience, but this was next level, and very much suggested they were using spells to enhance their physical capabilities.
Which meant that this secondary attack could also be nothing more than yet another distraction.
After all, Marie would have felt the flare of power as I’d entered the wellspring. Perhaps she’d sent her troops in to uncover what was happening.
Or perhaps she intended something more nefarious, like kidnapping me while everyone else was otherwise occupied.
I suspected the latter was probably true, but right now I couldn’t feel the presence of anyone else other than those three vamps. I had to concentrate on the problem thathadpresented itself, rather than the one that might.
I gathered the shredded remains of my strength and reached for the wild magic—the wellspring’s rather than mine, simply because mine couldn’t do what I needed it to do. Just for an instant, the Fenna’s chorus ran through my mind, sitting in judgement of my need. Then the connection formed, and the wellspring’s magic answered my call. I gathered it around my fingertips, then narrowed my gaze and concentrated on the trails of darkness. After a few, very long seconds, I found the pattern in their movements and sent the wild magic after all three.
Not to kill but to capture.
These vamps might be capable of dark magic, but even they couldn’t break or bend the threads of this wellspring. Not now that the Fenna had acknowledged and accepted both its protector and its temporary guardian.
As the wild magic leapt away to do my bidding, the inner pain exploded. A groan escaped, and I fell forward, my forehead hitting the ground hard enough to bruise. I barely felt it. I just huddled in on myself, hugging my body tightly and rocking back and forth in an effort to keep awake, keep aware.
There had to be more behind this attack.
Had to be.
It didn’t make sense otherwise.
Movement echoed once again through the earth, heavy with the weight of dark intent. A vampire, coming straight at me. I tried to raise my head but couldn’t. Tried to reach for Belle, but the pain locking my mind was somehow interfering with the signal. I could feel her, but I couldn’t hear her.
The darkness was growing stronger, closer.
Magic flared around me, a protective net that wasn’t as fierce, wasn’t as strong, as the power coming at me.
More footsteps vibrated across the soil. Light, fast, and from the left.
Not a vampire. Not a mage. Aiden.
“No,” I somehow croaked, “don’t—”
