Page 66 of Hunted
I nodded. “I agree. If we can keep the creatures busy, maybe that will…” I shook my head. “I don’t even know what I’m saying. How are we going to hold them off? I don’t have any Arcadian magic in me, and you don’t have a weapon.”
“Have you forgotten where you are, dear?” asked Pepper, approaching with Evie at her side. “We don’t need Arcadian magic here.”
“And as for weapons,” Evie said. “You said these things don’t like light?” She clasped her hands together, then slowly pulled them apart. As she moved her hands away from each other, a bright white glow began to grow. There, in the space between her hands, appeared a glowing blade of pure light, complete with a handle and a cross guard.
“Evie… that’s incredible,” I breathed.
Evie picked the blade up with her hand and offered it to Valerian. “Maybe this will help,” she added.
Valerian took the sword, though carefully. He swung it once, twice, and I heard it sing as it cut through the air. “This will do…” he said.
“We knew the light wouldn’t do much,” Pepper said, “But the creature shouldn’t be able to snuff it out, which means we’ll be able to see it—them—more clearly.”
“So, your intention was always to fight this thing?” I asked.
Pepper’s hands began to glow red-violet, while arcs of purple magic rippled across Evie’s fingers.
“I haven’t had a good fight inbloody ages,” said Pepper. “I think I’m due one.”
“And Evie makes three,” Evie said. “We need to give Helen all the time she needs to get that portal open… I’ll do whatever I have to do.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything, dear,” said Pepper, “Just don’t get hurt, and make it back to Arcadia. Your mother needs you.”
“I don’t intend on getting hurt,” I said, turning around to face the darkness. Looking at my hands, it only took a thought to make them glow the way my grandmothers’ hands were glowing. My color was pale blue, the color of the Arcadian winter sky on a sunny day. I turned my eyes up at the stoic creatures. “I guess we’re making a final stand.”
“Hopefully not afinalstand,” said Valerian.
“Don’t go throwing yourself into the fight. Let us try to hurt it first.”
Valerian nodded.
Evie and Pepper stood at either side of me, my grandmothers raising their hands and aiming them at the creatures across the way. “Ready?” Pepper asked.
“Ready,” Evie said.
“I’m ready,” I echoed.
“On my mark,” Pepper continued, “Unleash hell!” she chuckled to herself, “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
“Concentrate, sister!” Evie hissed.
“Of course, of course…mark!” Pepper yelled, and from her fingers issued crackling bolts of red-violet light that streaked across the way to illuminate the encroaching darkness. Evie’s purple magic shot out of her fingertips too, racing toward the darkness like lightning bolts.
I wasn’t nearly as practiced as the two of them, but right now, practice and discipline weren’t as needed as raw power. It took a moment of concentration, a thought, for me to manifest my intent. When I felt the power bubble up inside me, I let it rip through me, and shoot out of my hands.
It was a rush unlike any I had ever experienced before in my life. Whipping arcs of blue lightning careened across the snow to strike the creatures wreathed in darkness, my light joining the lightshow my grandmothers were putting on.
I couldn’t tell whether or not I was hurting the creature, but one thing was clear.
The only way out of this was through a portal… only this time, I didn’t intend on using it as an escape route.
I was done running from this thing.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
The lightning worked… until it didn’t. My grandmother Pepper, Evie, and I had been unleashing steady streams of coruscating magic at the creatures standing in the darkness. Magic tore at their ragged clothes, bit into their bones, and whipped across their antlers, but they remained entirely still, like dreadful statues.