“Get behind me,” I barked.
“There’s no need to fight,” the head honcho said. Even in the gloaming, I could see the bright green of his cloak. Mr. Tall and Threatening wanted to shine.
I stepped forward. “That depends on how reasonable you are. What exactly do you want?”
“The stone,” he said.
“Bad news, friends,” I said. “The stone isn’t here and we don’t know where it is.” If the wizards didn’t have the stone, that likely meant they didn’t kill Maria.
The Green Wizard gave me an appraising look. “You’re a knight.”
“Congratulations. Your prize will be death if you threaten me again.”
He lowered his hood to reveal a shaved head with a yellow sun tattooed on the top. Interesting placement.
“Are you authorized to use magic?” I asked, brandishing my axe, affectionately known as Babe. “Because I am.”
“We do not follow the rules of vampires,” he said. He snapped his fingers, prompting his five friends to lower their hoods.
“Now it’s a party instead of a date,” I said. I craned my neck to look at the two archeologists. “Go!”
A golden lasso lashed out and grabbed the duo before they could make a move, holding them firmly in place. My head jerked back to my opponents. These wizards weren’t thugs looking for an easy score. They were skilled fighters.
Welp. My job just got a little bit harder.
A blast of air slammed into me and knocked me flat on my back. Elemental magic.
I jumped straight back to my feet and faced the wizards. “Is that the best you can do?”
“You’re only one girl,” the Green Wizard said. “How do you expect to oppose the six of us?”
“Stand still and I’ll show you.”
I tried to identify which wizard hit me with the gust of air so I could stay out of his direct line of sight. Air magic tended to require a direct path to the target. My mother had spent countless hours teaching me the finer points of every aspect of magic she knew. The magic she could do, she taught me. The magic she wasn’t capable of herself, she found another source to show me.
Axe in hand, I spun toward the two excavators and sliced through the lasso. “Go!”
I turned back to my new wizard friends. “Now we can party.”
It never ceased to amaze me how frequently I was underestimated. It didn’t matter how many weapons I carried. How special my armor looked. How good my trash-talking skills were. I used their error in judgment to my advantage. Every. Single. Time.
I lunged at the nearest wizard, a move he clearly wasn’t expecting because I struck his solar plexus without interference. He fell into a pile of rubble and groaned.
“Why are you wasting all this juicy magic on me when you could be putting it to good use for the realm?”
I elbowed him in the clavicle and spun around to kick the next one in the groin.
“For the realm?” The third wizard spat. “Why would we do anything for the realm? We are mere cogs in their wheel of torture.”
Although I didn’t disagree, I wasn’t in the mood for a political debate. I needed to know more about these wizards and why they wanted the stone.
I hooked one arm around a wizard’s neck and pulled him in front of me as a shield.
“Hold your fire,” he yelled.
I squeezed. “Why is the stone so important to you?”
“It is to be our salvation,” he choked.
“That’s a lot of pressure on one little stone.” The ground rumbled below me as another wizard tried to carve a line of earth between my feet to throw me off balance. Fancy.
Remnants of the cathedral tipped into the crevice.
My magic bucked inside me like an angry stallion, desperate to run free. Nope. Not today. Not ever.
The wizard hooked under my arm began to chant. A blast blew me backward and knocked the axe from my grip. I scrambled to recover it and dove straight back into the fray. This time I slashed through the sleeve of one of the brown-cloaked wizards and nicked his arm. Blood spread across the fabric like a crimson tide rolling to shore.
The six wizards formed a semi-circle around me.
Uh oh.
I used the most effective tool in my magic box. I willed myself invisible.
The Green Wizard blinked in confusion and I took the opportunity to creep behind him and whack him on the back of the head with the blunt side of the axe. As he pitched forward, I sprinted to the closest wizard and sliced his calves. Howling, he dropped to his knees. I couldn’t hold this form for very long, so I had to inflict as much damage as I could before I became visible again.
A third wizard tried to locate me using some sort of mind map magic, but I stopped him with a blow to the back before he could complete the spell. He toppled forward and writhed in pain on the ground.
The Green Wizard found me just as I reappeared. He used a tight ball of air to knock me sideways. I hit the ground hard but managed to hold onto Babe.
I rolled to my feet and prepared for another strike. As I zeroed in on my target, a soft wing brushed against my neck and I shivered. I turned expecting to see Barnaby.
Instead a butterfly landed on my shoulder. Its wings were decorated with a brilliant shade of green I instantly recognized.
Shit.
The butterfly shot forward and a vampire erupted from the delicate creature. The wizards drew back.
“Surprise. I invited a friend,” I said. “Hope you don’t mind the extra mouth to feed.”
A mass of corded muscle and sharp fangs launched itself at the nearest wizard. Together they toppled over and I heard a crunch as the vampire’s fangs hit bone. He quickly moved on to the next wizard, who released a ball of fire at the vampire. Callan shook it off like a ball of dust and then broke the wizard’s neck.
Swallowing my revulsion, I focused on the Green Wizard.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
He said nothing, his eyes pinned on his falling comrades. One by one the wizards succumbed to the Demon of House Duncan.
His bony fingers shook as they curled around a pendant that hung around his neck. A final prayer to the gods, perhaps?
The Highland Reckoning came to stand beside me.
“Why don’t I take him to see the Royal Inquisitor?”
The wizard’s mouth formed a thin line. He knew as well as I did what that meant. Torture. I’d never known anyone to return from a visit to the Royal Inquisitor. They were either killed or the person who left the chamber wasn’t the same one who entered. Their scars ran too deep to see.
Whatever this wizard’s motivation was for attacking us, I couldn’t bring myself to subject him to the R.I.
“This is my job, Your Highness. Why don’t you let me handle it?”
The wizard’s eyes bulged as he strained to speak. “Yes, listen to the wise young lady.”
I twisted to face the prince. “See? He thinks you should submit to me.” I turned back to the wizard and saw only empty air. “What the devil?” I swiveled left and right in search of him.
The prince scratched the back of his neck. “Huh. He teleported. How about that?”
That must’ve been what he’d worn around his neck. Some kind of teleportation talisman.
“He must’ve used every last shred of energy he possessed to trigger that spell,” the prince said.