Page 55 of Bound and Tide

“All right, listen,” began Xander. “Scheming is twice as important as striking, so—”

Red’s battle cry filled the still air, drawing the knights’ attention and ire. She ran, producing a sachet of something and tearing it open so that its powdery contents exploded in the faces of the nearest three. Her targets began to cough and sputter, so blinded that when they swung their arms, they immediately began beating one another.

Xander cocked his head. “Well, I suppose we’ll be fighting them without observation first, but you should wait for the most opportune—”

Maia darted away from them then, tossing the jar of minnows as she went. Xander’s instinct was to catch it even as he watched the girl’s tiny figure slip right between two of the idiots as if they stood still. The knights turned and swung, but their own speed was abysmal, their aim even worse, only managing to bring their makeshift weapons down on one another.

Maia laughed like it was a game. “They’re so slow!” Another swung at her, but she barely had to duck to be missed and then ran out of their range.

Xander tucked the transformed imps under his armpit and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “They might be, but that doesn’t mean—”

Costa’s strangled cry cut him off, stepping forward and raising both arms. Every bit of snow in the courtyard followed the flick of his wrists, coalescing above the largest group of knights like a cloud, crackling as the crystals within hardened. The ice was sent spearing downward, splitting skulls and ripping off limbs until half of the squadron were all but chunks left on the ground. The arcana tried but could not cobble the corpses back together when they were so squashed.

“Well, that will certainly work,” Xander mumbled, then caught Costa with his free arm as the boy reeled backward in a swoon. “And that bloody won’t.” He dragged a too-quickly-spent Costa up against the stone fence with some difficulty as he juggled the jar of minnows. “What am I doing?”

Xander threw the jar to the frozen earth where it shattered. The tiny fish flopped about the broken glass helplessly.

“Transform, you idiots!”

Three imps popped into existence, their forms floppy until they remembered how to breathe air, and then with a kick, they were sent scurrying out into the fray where Red and Maia ran circles around the remaining undead knights.

Red had apparently dried one out with a sack full of some powder, the body shriveling there on the ground at her feet, and Maia had convinced one to run through another, the two left struggling to pull away from each other’s weapons and failing.

So close to the temple, Xander’s noxscura was overcoming Father Theodore’s spell. Drawn from him like a diverted river, his skin went taut and his brain rattled. The shadows around the temple took to wobbling, and his blood pumped too loudly in his ears, but he was bound to embrace the darkness eventually, and so Xander no longer held back.

Precision was his preeminent goal, being sure to wrap only a single knight and nothing else in the shimmering darkness that escaped the tenuous hold he’d been fighting all day. It squeezed its target’s middle, and Xander could feel the moving corpse’s pinch of panic, all that it contained, just before it burst like a sausage over a fire.

“Repugnant,” Xander murmured but then grinned and did it again.

This time there was a feminine shriek along with the explosion of flesh, and Xander’s heart leapt into his throat. Had he not been careful enough?

In the wake of the ruptured knight stood Red, arms held aloft and face twisted into disgust, unwounded but absolutely covered in gore.

Xander sucked in a breath between grit teeth. “Sorry, darling,” he called. “You still look utterly ravishing though.”

She wiped a bit of organ meat off her cheek, gave him a smirk, and went back to blinding the others.

As Xander pulled more eager noxscura from his own depths, there was another squeal, and this one woke something dormant in Xander that told him to run. He didn’t have to see her to know Maia was hurt, and he darted toward the cry, evading a slow-swinging knight and skidding around a corner of the temple. Two undead were there at the entrance to an alcove-like shrine. In the shadows at their feet, he saw a body crumpled on the ground up against a stone wall.

Shadows shot out first, boring between the two, but they had to be weak so as not to hit her. With only a sliver of space knocked between the attackers, Xander wedged in and threw himself over the girl. There was a crack at his back, and he swore at the pain, swiping a blind arm and more shadows behind him. Something wet and gooey splattered up his back.

“Are you hurt?” he shouted from his place on his knees, grabbing at her huddled form.

Maia blinked up at him, hair disheveled, a cut across her cheek, eyes as big as saucers as every breath came labored and fast.

“Say you are all right!” he demanded, tugging her head to the side and pulling at her tunic to check for wounds.

“I’m all right,” she breathed between gulps of air. “I just fell, I…I’m not hurt.”

Xander swallowed hard, his brow pinched painfully. “You are sure?” He turned her head to the other side and scrutinized the new bruise along her jaw.

Maia nodded, eyes glassy, but then she huffed. “Get off me.” Her hand shoved at his chest.

Xander grunted, pulling her to her feet but not letting go.

Red was hobbling as she supported Costa away from the last of the knights. Xander chucked Maia toward the temple door and cast at the pursuing knights, meeting Red and catching Costa. All four stumbled over the threshold into Ironwood Hollow’s Temple of Osurehm and slammed the door behind them.

Chapter 24

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