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It wouldn’t matter because all Madison could feel was the sting of something burning hot in her right shoulder, with scattering cold pebbles of rain dampening her exposed wound. There had been stillness before the collision, then inconceivable, sonic-bending sound, then utter silence again.
It was the secondary silence that terrified Madison more than the crash itself. She snapped her neck around to her king, who was hunched over the steering wheel, horrifyingly motionless. The rain hammered down on the car, which seemed to have crunched against the tree upon impact.
She began to panic, forgoing her own pain to whip off her seat belt and lean over to her king. She touched his shoulders delicately at first, disturbed by the cold sensation of his clammy skin.
“Fletcher? Fletcher!” she crooned desperately.
She began to shake him harder, his lolled head lifting and lowering against the steering wheel like a broken doll. She started to cry, shaking him with all of the strength she could muster, when the emblem of her necklace began to glow.
It was faint but, nevertheless, obvious in the gloom of the front seat. The woven gold stood out from her chest like bursts of lightning, spinning gems of blazing orange, deep purple, and sage washing over the unconscious king. Madison felt the urge to clutch it, and the moment she did, she recalled everything the woman from the coven had told her.
Her fingers intertwined around the stone, her fear lifting like a fog. The necklace was enchanted, of course, intended to provide her with both strength and courage during the most trying of times. Her confidence rose in her as she held the emblem. Madison closed her eyes, breathing deeper into herself, summoning the training she thought had been long lost inside the rooms of her memory.
From a young age, ever since their parents found that each of them was unable to shift, her father had trained her and her sisters in the same way that the enforcers who were hired to protect them had been trained. That, combined with their mother’s magical abilities, allowed them to protect themselves from danger. It was vital to their father that they learn such skills as royal daughters so they didn’t require a man to keep them safe.
The training returned to her like a long distant memory that she was pulling back against the winds of time. As the colors continued to pulse beneath her palm, Madison heard the screech of yet another oncoming car. Or even the very same car that had hit them. Everything had happened so fucking fast, she didn’t know.
It swerved around them, stopping abruptly in the middle of the road. The street lights swam over the sight like a soft sunrise: the image of five, maybe six mammoth-sized men climbing out of the car, shoving the terror back to the front of Madison’s mind.
She started to tremble again, but the tighter she held onto the necklace, the more the courage overrode the dread. She had to remember exactly who she was: a powerful witch with a strong magical prowess, not someone to be trifled with.
Madison gazed at the king, who remained motionless in the seat next to her. She moved two fingers over to his neck to feel a heartbeat and was relieved to pick up the vaguest rhythms. It was subtle, but he was alive. Possibly severely injured … but alive.
“I will be right back,” she whispered, then kissed Fletcher’s cold hands. “I promise. Everything will be okay.”
She tore herself from him, feeling a piece of her heart being ripped from her body. Upon muscling open the door of the car slowly, she realized that the burning sensation that had been radiating from her left shoulder was caused by a protruding piece of metal. It stuck out like a sword in a slab of butter, glistening with rubies of blood and droplets of glassy rain.
It rendered the nerves in that arm numb, but that wouldn’t matter. She had her right arm free, plus the enhancement of the necklace.
She waited in the pouring rain for the men to saunter over. She scanned them all quickly, trying to detect whether or not she recognized them from the few days before at Alaric’s den. None of them were familiar, but judging by their state of undress and use of loincloths for clothing, they had likely come from the same area.
They were all coming at her fast, some of them shifting and cackling like hyenas, not wolves. Madison held onto the emblem with her uninjured hand, requesting all of the bravery and fortitude from the power of her family heritage to siphon into her body to use against her attackers.
She closed her eyes and muttered a spell under her breath that would notify her sisters and mother, sending her their energy for the upcoming battle.
Madison hadn’t uttered the spell in years, thinking she would never have to. But there she was, shifters charging at her in the hammering rain, whispering Latin while the shades of the gemstones embedded in the necklace began to swirl faster and faster.
“Mater, sanguis, sorores, da mihi fidem et robur cordium, concors, ut unum hostem vincas!"
Madison howled the spell into the night, raising her opened hand into the air and releasing a burst of kaleidoscopic light. It shot into the sky like a flare, penetrating the layer of clouds, then reverberated back downward into her body. It felt like the most pleasant electric shock, filling her to the brim with a golden hum.
She swung her head backward, overcome with pleasurable and powerful sensations, groaning into the dim. Her brain was swarmed with magical pinpricks of delight, like shooting stars moving through her body, akin to the crescendo of spectacular sex.
It had frightened some of the wolves into hesitating, but only briefly. Madison brought her arm back down to her side and caught a glimpse of her aura in a nearby puddle. The violet of her eyes had spilled out and created a halo effect around her entire body. She was vibrating, a cosmic goddess.
I promise, Fletcher. I will save you.
The wolves came at her. The first few didn't stand a chance. Madison launched the entirety of her built-up mystical abilities through her glowing hand, a cascade of phosphorescent hues blasting two shifters backward and crashing into the windshield of their car.
Two more tried, and they suffered the same fate. They flew through the air and landed in the field just off the road, bones pulverized by the height of the fall.
They kept coming. Madison fired streams of magical light at each of them, taking the last two down with fleshy injuries, but was unable to completely render them defeated. She could feel her vigor waning along with her hope as two more cars pulled up, squealing against the road before a multitude of wolves bounded over to help.
“Fuck!” Madison grunted through gritted teeth.
The power of the blasts was fading despite the continuous twirling of colors flashing off the emblem. It was pushing them away, but not as far as the first initial firings. One wolf managed to duck out of the way and came scrambling toward her on all fours with deranged determination.
Madison tried to quickly redirect her powers, but she wasn’t fast enough. The wolf snatched her hand and gripped her wrist between his teeth, sinking his incisors into the first layer of skin.
