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Her warlock powers must be growing.
Battle by battle, little by little, Caleb and Maddy work their way toward each other. Cora reappears, and she stops in front of a shifter in mostly human form.
His long strands of hair down the back of his head seem to mark him as some kind of hyena shifter. His random raucous laughter doesn’t dispel Caleb’s guess.
“You got this?” he calls to Cora.
“Yeah. Don’t worry about it,” she yells back.
But the beast jumps toward her, shifts mid-air, and knocks her to the ground, snarling and snapping in her face before she can throw him off.
Cora catches his muzzle in her hands, and Caleb streaks toward her.
“No, I’ve got this,” she sing-songs over her shoulder.
Caleb slows. Behind him, the fighting continues.
Cora throws the shifter aside and leaps back to her feet. She turns to face the creature, and they circle one another. She peers into its eyes, drawing the hyena in with her vampire hypnosis. The line of hair on its back relaxes, and finally, she reaches for his ears. When she scratches behind the shifter’s ears, their circling halts, and as he yawns, she puts him to sleep.
Cora glances up. “What now?”
“I don’t—”
“How about that troll-tree-thing behind you?” Her voice gets louder at the end.
Caleb whirls and drives his palm into the center of the attacking monster’s trunk, sensing it stumbling back. Cora positions herself beside him, and they charge toward Maddy, punching and kicking. When they reach Maddy, she’s standing over two shifters, and her chest heaves.
“Do you still have it?”
Maddy’s eyebrows pinch. “I have it.” She lifts the edge of her shirt, and the stake rests in her waistband. “Where’s Orion?”
Caleb looks around, hating that he doesn’t have the answer.
“We can’t keep doing this,” Maddy pants.
“The battles have been hard all over,” Cora answers. “One falls and two more show up.”
Caleb curses and scans the battles all over the front lawn of the mansion. The sounds of more fighting come from inside the mansion. They aren’t winning. Ending Orion is the only way to win this. His skin stings from the scratches all over him.
Maddy lays her hand on Caleb’s forearm. “What is it?”
Caleb’s powers pulse through him. “We can’t hold them off much longer, and we can’t pretend we’re going to win.” His fingers twitch, and he imagines himself sending a burst of energy through their enemies. “We have to find Orion and use the weapon.”
“But we don’t know where he is.”
“Yet. We don’t knowyet,” Cora interjects.
“He has to be hidden somewhere here,” Maddy agrees.
At the crest of a hill to the east, a pack of wolves appear. Their howls reverberate through the valley. It’s Isabelle, Kade, and Land! The Archivists must have let the werewolf clans know about the battle here. Between them and the flying warriors, maybe they could hold their own long enough to find Orion and drive the stake through his chest.
Caleb wants it so badly he can nearly taste it. He grits his teeth.
At the pinnacle of the low cliff, Isabelle lifts a sword.Excalibur!She’s carrying the magical sword—the queen-maker. It glints in the sunrise light, and an orange glow surrounds them.
Cora grins. “Well, that’s a good sign.”
Maddy laughs and throws herself into another enemy.
