Ilona Andrews: Magic Bleeds

He didn’t send them after the undead? Not yet. We’d agreed. I jerked upright and saw Erra in the middle of the street, the undead behind her, no shapeshifters in sight. The lone shapeshifter must’ve been hit with a stray blast of power.

Every inch of me hurt from magic spent too quickly.

You’re the distraction. Get up and do the distracting.

I got up and walked into the open, Slayer bare.

She started toward me, and I backed away. Half a block to go. Close enough to the Casino, far enough from the Mole Hole, the perfect distance for the shapeshifters to strike.

“Again you run.”

“Not my fault you walk too slowly to catch me.” Up close her armor resembled scale mail: bloodred scales, some large, some small, overlapping over her frame. Now why couldn’t I do that? What was I missing?

I crossed over the manhole cover. The last of the stragglers dashed by. The street was empty except for me and her, and her three corpses.

She charged. The world ground to a screeching halt. I heard myself breathe, my chest rising slowly, as if underwater.

In the three seconds it took her to cover the distance between us, I heard Voron’s voice from my memories. It said, “If it bleeds, you can kill it.”

She bled—her armor testified to it—and I was better.

Erra smashed into me. I leaned back, letting her axe swing past me, ducked, thrust, and sliced under her arm. Slayer glanced off. She whipped around, but I danced away. She lunged, I ducked and jumped clear.

“You can’t win,” Erra snarled.

Behind her, dark shadows lined the roof. Of the fifty Curran had brought, only half were left. Here’s hoping it would be enough.

“I’m not trying to win,” I told her.

“What are you trying to do?”

Keep you occupied.

The shapeshifters dropped off the roof like clawed ghosts.

A seven-foot-tall scaled monster hit Beast. They clashed in a mess of fur and claws. The primeval deep roar of an enraged crocodile rolled through the street.

I launched a whirlwind of strikes. My sword became a whip, cutting, slashing, dicing, left, right, left. Focus on me. Focus on me, damn you. As long as I kept her busy, she would have trouble coordinating the movements of all three undead at once and keeping me at bay.

Over Erra’s shoulder, Gale rose into the air, clutching Darkness in his arms.

The shapeshifters had missed them. Damn it.

Erra’s axe ground against Slayer. She drove me back.

Gale soared above the street twenty feet in the air, wrapped in a cone of wind. Foul magic pulsed from Darkness.

A chorus of enraged snarls and howls answered, punctuated by an eerie slice of hyena laughter.

Erra kept pushing me back. I veered from the wall and danced back, toward Gale. I ducked and dodged, trying to turn her, but she barreled at me like a freight train.

To the left of me an enormous werewolf crouched on the pavement. She hooked the manhole cover with her clawed fingers, did a 360, and hurled it at Gale. The metal disk cut like a knife through the whirlwind surrounding Gale and smashed into Darkness.

A deep female voice yelled, “Noboru! Sekasu kodomotachi! Noboru! Noboru!”

Red-furred shapeshifters surged up the walls of the buildings—the foxes of Clan Nimble.

Erra elbowed me. I flew back and rolled into a crouch, just in time to swipe her legs from under her. She fell. I struck her twice on the way down and withdrew.

Dark slashes scored her armor, like the strikes of a whip—places where Slayer connected. None looked deep enough to do any damage. Voron had promised me that the saber would slice through blood armor, given enough time, but so far Slayer wasn’t cutting it. If she’d been wearing regular armor, she would have been bleeding like a stuck pig. If wishes were money, the world would have no beggars.

Still something looked different about her. Something . . .

The spikes on her armor were gone.

I backed away. Where the hell did the spikes go?

Erra hefted her axe, her face demonic in its fury. Her chest heaved. My arms ached like they were about to fall off. A slow pain gnawed on my back, and when I turned the wrong way, something stabbed my left side with a hot spike. Probably a broken rib. That was okay. I was still on my feet.

The werefoxes launched themselves at Gale from the roof. They clung to him, biting and clawing. The fox on the left ripped out an arm.

Erra snarled. Gale dropped Darkness, shuddered, and plummeted to the ground, banging into the buildings as he fell, the foxes still clinging to him. Gale bounced once off the pavement and the rest of shapeshifters swarmed him.

Erra looked no worse for wear.

When out of options, mouth off. I nodded at Darkness, lying only twenty feet away. “Whoopsie. Did that hurt? Now there is only one.”

“One will be enough.” Erra grinned.

A small chunk of her armor broke from her shoulder and fell to the asphalt, turning liquid. I watched it sink into the snow. A tiny streak of vapor escaped and then it vanished into the white.

A crumb of her armor. Her blood. A drop of her blood.

Behind us, the snow churned by our feet marked our trail—we’d drawn a circle in the street and all the while we beat on each other, she’d been dripping blood from her armor.

A dark shadow loomed on the roof behind Erra. Curran.

“No!” I lunged at her, but it was too late.

He dived off the roof. Erra dodged at the last moment, but Curran’s paw connected to her skull. The blow took her off her feet. She flew, nearly plowing into me.

“Run!” I lunged at her prone body and stabbed with all my strength, again and again. “Run, Curran!”

Erra roared. Slayer’s blade kept glancing off.

A wall of red flames surged up from the snow, sealing the four of us from the shapeshifters. She’d locked us in a blood ward.

Erra rolled, knocking my legs from under me. I stumbled back and she jumped to her feet. Blood dripped from her cheekbone and poured from her mouth. The left side of her head was caved in, dented by Curran’s blow.

I lunged at her and ran right into the spike topping her axe. It took me in the stomach, just below my ribs. Pain exploded. I jerked free and she kicked me, driving me back into the snow. The axe jabbed through my left side. I screamed. She’d pinned me to the ground.

Erra spat blood and teeth and swung, as if throwing a baseball. Spikes shot from her armor, falling in a ragged line between Curran and me. The blood ward snapped up just as he charged and he crashed into it at full speed.

She’d halved the circle: her and me on one side, Darkness and Curran on the other.

“You want to rut with a half-breed,” she snarled. “Watch. I’ll show you exactly what he is.”

Curran spun toward the undead.

A torrent of magic burst from Darkness, tearing at Curran. The blood ward cut us off and I felt nothing—Curran got the full dose. He stumbled, shook once, as if flinging water from himself. His body shifted, growing leaner, slicker. Fur sprouted along his back.

This was it, the Darkness’s power. It would make Curran go wild.

I writhed under the axe, trying to break free. The Beast Lord took a step forward.

Erra’s hand clawed the air. Darkness vomited another torrent of crippling fear. Curran shuddered. His hands thickened, growing longer claws.

Another blast of magic. He kept walking.

Another blast.

“Look!” Erra leaned into the axe, grinding it into me.

Curran crouched in the middle of the street. Dense fur sheathed him, flaring into an enormous mane on his back and disproportionately huge head. No trace of a human or lion remained—his body was seamless and whole, a nightmarish mutated blend that was neither. Long limbs supported a broad, muscled body, striped with dark gray. His eyes glowed yellow, so bright and pale, almost white. I looked into their depths and saw no rational thought. No intelligence or comprehension.