Page 115 of Of Flame and Fate

I don’t stop moving, my lightning shooting toward Johnny. I scream when it collides against the fans who throw themselves in its path.

Johnny is using his magic to seduce and lure his fans. Everyone in the audience is clamoring up on stage to shield him, climbing all over each other in their desperation to protect him.

I lose him in the crowd overtaking the stage, calling my fire when bodies in black armor form and rise beneath the skulls.

Shayna rushes to my side, ramming her sword into the eye socket of the warrior who lunges.

Her sword smokes and the skull splits in half. She yanks out the blade, gasping as the magic eats away at the metal. “What are they?” she asks, pushing her power into the blade so it mends and sharpens.

“Whatever Johnny wants them to be.” My lightning strikes, taking out the next few warriors who advance, as well as another human rushing to fight for Johnny.

“Damn it!” I yell.

“T, we can’t attack, not without killing the humans,” Shayna pleads. “They’ll die for him.”

“We don’t have a choice,” I say, tears dribbling down my cheeks. “Johnny has been draining Destiny’s power.” I lash out, jolting another warrior who charges and stunning a woman with long black hair. My lightning electrifies the piercings along her bottom lip, burning her mouth. I sob as she falls to the floor screaming.

“T,I can’t,” Shayna says, watching the woman clutching her face writhe in agony.

“Shayna, we have to.” I take a breath, trying to keep it together as I send more lightning soaring across the tightening expanse. “Destiny says if Johnny doesn’t die, our kids will meet their fate with death.”

Her face goes white. “Our kids?”

“Our babies, Shayna,” I rasp. “Just like we’ve stood by Celia, our children will stand with hers.”

She hesitates for just a moment before slashing her sword across the shoulders of three more warriors. Their bodies slump, their heads rolling away from them, and still more come.

I scan the arena, watching helplessly as Johnny’s fans lead him further away and Koda’s howl reverberates in the distance. “Where are the wolves?”

“With the shifters, T. There’s at least two and a whole army of neophytes.” She brings down her sword on the head of another warrior. The skull cracks and the body slumps, but these things are everywhere and drawing closer.

“We need to take out Johnny!” I holler over the growing chaos.

He’s almost to the door and all we’re doing is backing further away from him.

She slices the limbs off the warrior, trying to grab her. “We also need to get these people out of here.”

My lightning explodes two more skulls, their remains falling against a small man with a long beard. She’s right. We have to get the humans out. I just don’t know how.

The doors leading to the food court bust free from their metal frames when an elephant-sized grizzly bear demolishes its way through. Pack wolves cling to it, trying to bring it down. I know it’s a shifter, its immense size and the way it mows through the fans continuing to rush toward Johnny, proclaim it loud and clear.

Theweresfighting it are not alone. Emme races in behind Bren’s large wolf form. Even from this distance she sees us, and her eyes lock on me. It’s the only warning I receive before she lifts me and Shayna with herforceand hurls us at the arena floor.

Shayna howls, her high-pitched battle cry and the light reflecting from her spinning swords alerting everyone in the vicinity that she’s coming, she’s ready, and to get the hell out of her way unless they’re prepared to die.

From the moment my feet leave the floor, I’m screaming my mother-fucking head off.

Emme has bad aim. Horrible aim. Dear God, I’m going to die.

The floor packed with people comes at me at full speed. I crash into a beefy guy with way too many piercings, but just enough bulge to keep me from landing spread eagle with a splat.

Shayna descends doing some sort of flippy thing, housing her swords the minute her feet connect with the concrete, and reaching for her toothpicks.

I peel myself off the pleasantly plump guy, jerking my foot when he snags my ankle. “Don’t hurt Johnny!” he yells at me.

“Fuck off,” I yell at him.

I zap him with a jolt of lightning and crawl away, hurrying to my feet and taking point behind Shayna as those rising to protect Johnny close in.

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