“I love you,” Alessandro said.
“I love you, too. Take the sword.”
“Keep it.”
Nathan flexed and leaped off the fountain, a veiny, flesh-colored membrane popping open along his arms. Alessandro lunged left, while I dodged right. Orange sparks burst above Alessandro’s hands, coalescing into a shotgun. The Mossberg thundered in a three-shot burst.
Boom-boom-boom!
The slugs hit the simian beast in midair. Nathan screeched, dropping, his trajectory aborted.
Luke charged toward us from my right.
I lunged into his path, feeding a wallop of magic into my null blade.
Alessandro spun toward Gabin still perched in the tree on the left and fired again.
Boom-boom-boom!
Luke barreled at me, fast, eyes shining with malice. I spun out of the way half a second before he would’ve hit me and sliced at his side as he tore past me. The null sword carved through ribs, muscle, and gristle like they weren’t even there. The beast screamed, an eerily human sound coming from an animal’s throat, and kept running, ignoring me.
Boom-boom-boom!
Alessandro sank a three-round burst into Nathan as he twitched on the ground, spun, fired toward Luke, and dashed to the side, as Gabin pounced on him. Alessandro backed away, dodging the claws like he knew where Gabin would strike before he even aimed. The cat’s shoulder bled. Alessandro must have grazed it with that second burst.
Luke missed Alessandro and clumsily turned around. I had wrecked his insides with my slash. Even with the insane healing powers of the metamorphosis mages, it would slow him down.
Pain tore at my mind. The flexible shell of my magic blocked most of it, but what filtered through slashed me like a white-hot buzz saw. Kaylee.
I cut off the magic flow to the sword and strained, sending more vines to wrap around my mind. Her range was longer than mine. I could barely sense her to my right, somewhere in the house. I needed a boost to take her on. The mat was four feet away.
The PDX machine gun materialized in Alessandro’s hands.
Kaylee struck at me, her magic a torrent of hatred. The world turned scalding white. The tatters of my magic slithered, trying to close the gap Kaylee had torn open. I went blind.
Gunfire erupted.
I kept moving, taking tiny steps in the direction of the mat. She tore at my shell, gouging chunks in my vines.
My foot nudged the edge of the mat. I took a big blind step onto it and stomped. A dry crunch announced the hidden reservoir on the underside of the mat breaking. The bottom part of the mat melted as the two chemicals mixed, and the liquefied plastic slipped between the pavers, anchoring the mat in place.
Kaylee cut through my shell. Pain scalded me. I wrapped more vines over the wound, pulled the chalk out of my pocket, crouched, and drew a perfect circle around my feet on pure muscle memory.
A short guttural grunt came from the left. Alessandro. He was hurt.
Kaylee hit me again. A burst of agony exploded in my mind. I gritted my teeth and added another circle to the main one.
She pounded on my mind. Cutting hadn’t worked, so she’d resorted to brute force, raining blows onto me. Like trying to draw while someone smashed the back of your head with a baseball bat. I moved faster, the chalk gliding across the mat. The shell over my mind was paper-thin. A few more hits and I was done.
Punch. Rage sparked inside me.
Punch.
Punch.
You fucking bitch. You want my attention, I’ll give you some.
I finished the last line, not knowing if it connected, straightened, and sank a pulse of my power into the circle. A geyser of pure magic burst through me, surging through my veins, purging pain, uncertainty, and fear. Only power remained, streaming through me like the current of a great river. I sent another pulse, and the circle responded. There was so much magic, I was drunk on it.
My vision cleared and I saw everything at once: the house in front of me, Kaylee grinning on the Juliet balcony, and Alessandro to my left, tossing an empty gun at Gabin. The feline monster and Nathan had boxed him in. Luke was limping over, trailing blood and pieces of his guts. Alessandro was trapped between them, and his back was red with blood.
The furious thing inside me howled, trying to break free and screech its fear at the world. They’d hurt him! They’d hurt him and I had to hurt them back! I would kill them. I would rip their pitiful minds to shreds.
I felt Kaylee gathering her power for another blast, her mind a brilliant white star.
Inside me dark wings flailed, straining, trying to emerge, their tips glowing with ruby red. They wanted to rip open my body and mind and burst forth like a butterfly from a chrysalis. They wanted to punish, kill, and protect.