Page 80 of Twisted Magic

“I’m counting on Han to lead those of you who can fight in covering the others.” He caught and held the blond familiar’s gaze. “You might have to fight your way free.”

Han nodded reluctantly, but with solemn acceptance of the assignment.

“Iliana, Quinn,” Nic said, “I’m hoping you two will take charge of the children, injured, and other noncombatants. Many will have to be carried out on stretchers. Asa and his assistants are getting everyone prepped to be moved.”

Quinn nodded, weeping openly.

“What about Nathi?” Iliana cried. “She won’t be able to escape, especially now that the lake is dry.”

“Tell her to go deep,” Gabriel answered. “She survived the sinking of the manse before. Tell her to go wherever she went then.”

Iliana accepted that with poor grace, her transparent face revealing her doubt. Nic looked up at him, smiling with rueful resignation.

“Lord Phel!” one of the house pages called out as he came running in. He’d been assigned to lookout duty. “There’s activity on the far side of the lake.”

He repressed a growl of aggravation. Reinforcements, just as they’d been about to act? More terrible luck. “Can you be more specific?”

“We can’t tell yet. I was told to come fetch you, Lady Phel, and Commander Han immediately.”

“We’re coming,” Gabriel replied, then raised his voice over the exclamations and murmurs. “Meanwhile, proceed with our plan. I want those noncombatants prepped to move.”

Being in wild cat form was even more fantastic than Selly had anticipated—and she’d anticipated a lot. She hadn’t wanted to test out her skills in a situation this dire, but the sleek, inherently lethal body served her well in this instance. It had been great for scouting, especially since the automatons and hunters—even when they did spot her—ignored her as irrelevant and unintelligent wildlife.

Apparently they lacked the ability to discern her magical nature as wizards and other familiars could. Interesting to know.

The form had been less great for, at long last, seeing her parents again. She’d been about to fling herself into a big hug when she remembered she didn’t look like their daughter anymore. Jadren had been willing to shift her back to human form any time she signaled her desire, but that hadn’t been the moment to introduce them to her new and even more magically bizarre self. Time enough to phase them into another startling change in their children when they won this battle.

Keeping an eye on Jadren for his signal that he needed her, Selly guarded the phalanx of minor water-workers—those expert at wicking moisture out of most anything—led by her own mother. Jadren had simply told them Selly was a magical guardian who’d protect them from the hunters and they’d accepted it with only a bit of jaundiced side-eye. If Daisy gave her a harder, longer look than the others, Selly put it down to her mother’s fiercely protective nature, not any kind of maternal instinct. No way could her mother sense Selly inside the body of a big, black marsh cat. Right?

Going with the water-wickers to the point where the attackers had dammed the inlet to the lake went fairly smoothly. As Jadren had observed, the hunters and automatons had no fear of reprisals from the rear. The disadvantage, he’d sardonically observed, of the masterminds absenting themselves from the actual battle and leaving a mindless horde to carry out their evil plans. The horde focused on simple tasks: surrounding the manse, draining the lake, uncovering and penetrating the arcanium. Oh, and killing anything in their way.

Once Daisy marshaled the water-wickers, the lot of them chanting a familiar work tune to stay in sync, encouraging the water to push through the hastily constructed earthen dam, then they attracted the attention of the enemy.

Several hunters and two automatons—one in humanoid shape and the other like a spiky wheel with blades for legs—headed their direction. Selly left the machines to the El-Adrel wizard–familiar pair Jadren had assigned to them and hurled herself at the hunters without waiting for them to get any closer.

In this form, she was far larger than the weaselly canine creatures, and she outweighed them. Three on one didn’t give her fair odds, but her fangs outmatched theirs, as did her razor-sharp claws. She didn’t need moon-magic silver to slice her way through their foul, yipping flesh, nor did she pause to exchange taunting comments with them. She immersed herself in her hot-blooded predator’s mind, giving up all reserve and human niceties. This was the red rage she’d experienced before, when she’d lost her mind to the insane whirl of the need to escape, to fight her way free, but focused like cold silver. She could be the wild cat and not lose herself.

The best of all her selves.

The chanting continued, a rhythmic song of simple home life, of wringing out clothes and cloths, of sending water away from bedding and places meant to be dry, a homey backdrop to her systematic dismemberment of the creatures whose kind had terrorized her and Nic, who’d done their best to kill Jadren. They were no match for her, the last falling to twitching slices of rotten flesh at the same moment the water gladly punched through the dam, gushing into its rightful place.

The lake was big, so the wave didn’t overwhelm the hunters guarding the automaton crew noisily banging on the arcanium, but it did get their attention. Long snouts swiveled around and the loose circle of them dropped to all fours. The more distant individuals, the ones on higher ground, began loping toward the group of water-wickers on the high shore of the slowly refilling lake, but others simply forged into the water. Disconcertingly, they didn’t swim, not even to dog paddle. Instead, they disappeared beneath the surface as they clawed their way along the muddy bottom in single-minded purpose.

The automatons, on the other hand, bent to their task with intensified purpose, their clanging increasing in speed and volume as they became aware of the changing circumstances. The water-wickers intensified their own efforts, the chanting growing faster and louder also, the water eating away the last of the earthen dam and flowing with renewed force into the basin, becoming a roaring waterfall at the edge of the inlet. Selly herded her mother, and thus the others behind her, back from the ledge, lest it collapse. As waves hit the arcanium, a couple of automatons floated free, waving their arms and legs in futile distress.

Also, she knew those hunters arrowing toward them underwater would arrive sooner than anyone expected. She had experience with the foul creations and could anticipate better than her mother, who remained relatively innocent of encounters with monsters.

On the other side of the lake, her father led a group of workers in employing their digging equipment to fill in the outlet that had been widened to drain the lake. They used a mixture of mix of lime, clay, and sand, a recipe Gabriel had found in the musty old library of the house, using it to reinforce the sides.

Jadren led the El-Adrel wizards in powering down the automatons, one force focusing on the arcanium, while other wizard–familiar teams burst of the woods, taking on the metallic sentries circling the manse just beyond the silver shimmer of Gabriel’s wards. Alise remained with Jadren, a slim, shorter and darker form, the Harahel librarian at her other side as she lanced her magic toward one humanoid automaton after another. In the wake of her magic, released spirits wafted into the air, angry and confused. Some tried to attack the arcanium again, seeming not to understand they lacked any kind of corporeal form anymore to do it with. Other spirits misted toward Alise, vanishing into puffs of nothing if they came too close.

Surprised that she could visualize those spirits so easily, entranced by the magic radiating from Alise and the other wizards, visible to her as never before, Selly nearly forgot about the hunters coming for the group she guarded until they suddenly erupted from the water. The water-wickers behind her screeched in shock, their chanting breaking apart into ragged bits, their magic shattering.

That was all right, as they’d done their job, the water pouring into the lake. It would take time to completely refill, but the scales had been duly tipped, the balance restoring itself. Most of the water-wickers ran—as Jadren had told them to do—but not Daisy. Selly interposed her body between her mother and the oncoming hunters, snarling at her.

“Don’t you sass me, Seliah Phel,” her mother retorted. “I know perfectly well that’s you and I’m not abandoning you to fight these creatures alone.

Selly didn’t have time for surprise that her mother had recognized her in this form, she was too busy taking apart one hunter after another. There were too many, however, and she began to tire, dashing back and forth to keep them off the woman defending herself with a sharp-edged hoe. She needed help.

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