Jessica Andersen - Magic Unchained

Oh, gods. She couldn’t do this. They couldn’t do it. There was no way a dozen magi and fifty-some winikin could fight an army of these things and win.

“Cara, no!” Zane waved her off with his free hand, his expression going wild. “Get back!”

Snapping from her paralysis, she bolted toward him, toward the demon, her legs moving while her brain screeched, Wrong way! But she skidded and got to Lora’s other side. Imagining the demon’s hot breath on her neck, she screamed, “Move!”

They ran for the shield, legs pumping, but Lora was deadweight, dragging them down. Rabbit extended a tendril of the shield, trying to meet them halfway, but it wasn’t enough.

Hearing the snap of feathers, Cara twisted around and muffled a cry of terror at seeing the creature nearly on top of them. She fired off a burst of jade-tipped bullets into its gaping mouth, but this time the bullets just seemed to piss it off more. It screamed and reached for her, claws spreading into a ring of wickedly curved blades.

“Down!” Rabbit bellowed.

Zane yanked Lora to the ground and Cara hit the deck a nanosecond behind them as the mage unleashed a huge fireball. A crackling roar seared over them and then the fiery missile slammed into the raptor, driving it back and away. The eagle was instantly ablaze. It screamed and flailed its flaming wings, then fell with a sickening thud that jarred the ground beneath them.

Cara and Zane lunged to their feet and dragged Lora up, but from within the shield, Natalie screamed, “Look out!”

Whipping around, Cara let out an, “Oh, shit,” at the sight of a huge, rangy, doglike creature bearing down on them. Its fur was mottled black and stuck up in spikes fouled by the ropy saliva that slicked its jaws and chest, coming from a mouth that showed huge fangs and barbed ivory teeth.

Throat closing with bitter panic, she yanked away and shoved Lora and Zane toward the shield. “Move!”

“No, damn it.” Zane spun back, eyes fierce. “Let me—”

“Go. That’s an order.” She got between them and the oncoming beast, heart thundering in her ears as she told herself, You’ve just got to slow it down long enough for Rabbit’s magic to recharge. They had trained on scenarios like this. Now it was time to put that training to use. Aware that Zane had followed orders—whatever he might feel for her, he was a soldier at heart—she aimed for the dog-creature’s legs and fired.

She got two shots off and then heard a sour clunk as the machine pistol freaking jammed.

“No!” She yanked at the receiver arm that had come loose, locking the bolt, but it didn’t budge. The huge dog—wolf?—seemed to understand what had happened. Its gleaming red eyes lit and it accelerated, jaws gaping.

“Run!” Natalie screamed.

Cara spun and bolted. The shield was farther away than she thought, the demon closing fast. Panic spurted, along with a thought of, Oh, gods, this is it. And then the world did a weird slow-motion thing around her.

She saw Zane shove Lora into the shield and turn back for her, but the beast was too close, too fast. She could hear it right behind her, could feel the jarring thud of its feet through the worn soles of her boots and smell its rotting stench. Her body tensed for pain, for fear, and incredulity flared at the knowledge that she wasn’t going to make it. She was going to be the second winikin to die in battle, wasn’t ever going to get the chance to live the life she wanted after the war. Her breath sobbed. Please, no.

She glanced back just in time to see the huge creature rock onto its haunches, preparing to spring, and—

“Cara, get down!” The words came from the other side of her, in a deep voice that jolted her like lightning and sped the world back up to normal once more.

Before she could react, a gray-and-buff blur raced past with a bloodcurdling howl of rage, and the hard, heavy weight of a man’s body slammed into her, knocking her out of the demon’s path and taking her to the ground. Her rescuer wrapped his arms around her and rolled them as they hit, so he took the brunt and cushioned her fall.

There was sudden warmth, solid muscle, and the yielding, unfamiliar press of a man’s body. And not just any man: She caught rapid-fire impressions of sun-bleached hair against deeply tanned skin, stormy blue eyes, and an air of wildness that defied the high-tech armband and warrior’s garb. Their legs tangled, and when they stopped rolling, he was on top of her with his hips planted firmly between her thighs. Instead of untangling himself, he reared up over her on one arm and lifted the other to summon first a shield and then a huge fireball, and although her brain was struggling to catch up, her soul already knew exactly what was going on.

“Sven,” she whispered, frozen with the shock of seeing her foster nonbrother again after so long, though her body reacted to the way his magic spit and sparked, prickling awareness across her skin.

He looked grimmer and more tired than he had a few months earlier, when he’d taken off for the south. There were new stress lines cut alongside his aristocratic nose and wide, slashing cheekbones, and his old trademark surfer’s ponytail was a grown-out military brush cut now, gone shaggy and adding to the sense of some wild creature contained within human form. He wore close-fitting armor and the Kevlar-impregnated black-on-black of a Nightkeeper, and he was all warrior as his eyes went to where an enormous gray-and-buff coyote—his bonded familiar, Mac—was fighting with the huge black demon.

“Leave it!” he ordered. Mac quickly tore away and leaped back, and Sven unleashed his deadly fireball with a heave that rippled through his body and into Cara’s.

Hiss-boom! Instantly engulfed in flames, the demon-dog reared back with a horrible, unearthly howl. A terrible stench filled the air as it struggled in its death throes. The other animals too were dead and dying, making Cara suddenly aware that the rest of the magi had arrived and were tightening around the winikin in a protective ring as the creatures melted to stinking black puddles. After a moment, even those faded and disappeared, leaving silence behind.

Dead. Silence.

As her pulse pounded in her ears, she thought crazily that it was the kind of utter quiet that came in the aftermath of a disaster that didn’t cause any actual casualties but had come damn close, to the point where everyone sort of sat there for a second, thinking, What the fuck just happened? Because that was what had to be going through the minds of the other winikin. It was undoubtedly what the magi were thinking as they watched the last of the creatures puff to greasy smoke. And it was what she ought to be thinking too. Because although the Nightkeepers’ former nemesis, the Xibalban mage Iago, had tricked his way into Skywatch twice, no demon had entered the compound in nearly thirty years. Not since the Solstice Massacre.

But although those were the questions she knew ought to be going through her head, her mind had blanked. All she could do was stare at Sven as he levered himself off her and rose to his feet with a loose-limbed grace that sharply defined the muscles under his tight black clothing, making her entirely aware of his body, and the imprint it had left on her own.

Don’t think about it, she told herself, but the familiar refrain barely registered.

There was a low whine and the scuff of paws on dirt as Mac trotted over to stand beside him, then looked at her with his pale green, human-seeming eyes gleaming, his ears pricked and his plumed tail wagging in wide sweeps. Sven and the coyote made a formidable pair, and the sight tightened her throat. It had been a long six months since they had gone down to Mexico to head up the Nightkeepers’ efforts to contain the spread of the xombi virus—an infection that was part magic, part disease, and thoroughly vile. She had worried about them, especially when the reports back from the southern front had grown increasingly grim. But her relief that they were home safe caromed off resentment that she hadn’t gotten any word beyond the official reports, nothing personal, nothing that acknowledged her and Sven’s connection or the fact that he’d been the one to bring her back to Skywatch to take on a job she hadn’t wanted. He’d promised to help her with the winikin… and then he’d taken off without a word. Which was just Sven, and shouldn’t have surprised her.