Page 43 of Mud

I’d never been shot before—magical creatures wehunted tended to stick to magic as their primary weapon, and it’s safe to say Idid notwant to be shot ever again.

I somehow managed to take off my leather jacket and wrap the sleeves around my leg, tie them up so I could add that pressure to the wound and hope for the bleeding to slow down.

I was still doing it, still trying when they came for me again, Michael limping on one leg, Erid behind him, Jim and Jam behind her, at least ten feet away.

“You could have made this easier for all of us,” Michael hissed, gun raised, his wand in his other hand that he rested against a tree to support his weight.

Goddess-damn it, I can’t be killed by the likes of Michael.It was almost offensive to my own self.

“Just get on with it. Hold her down and I’ll do the rest,” he then snapped at Erid, whose face was wet now. Wet with tears. She was crying, shaking, yet that still didn’t stop her from grabbing the bones of her necklace and whispering her spell—the same one she’d started earlier, the one that would paralyze me.

I held her eyes, and for a moment, I really did see my life flashing me by. It wasn’t much of a life, to be honest, but the time I spent with my parents, and then those six months before I finished high school…yeah, those were good days.

“See you in hell,” I told Erid, and I meant it. Regardless of whathellwas, or if it was real—it didn’t matter. Whateverbadplace came after this, I’d be there, and so would she.

Erid stuttered on the last paragraph of her spell, but my leg was still bleeding, and the colors of the world were fading away from around me little by little. I was losing consciousness, and I knew there was no escaping this. I hita tree trunk with my shoulder before I even realized it. I still couldn’t manage to tighten the jacket sleeves around my leg effectively to stop the bleeding—my arms were too weak—but what was the point? Even though my lips were moving and I was chanting a healing spell again, it would make no difference once Erid’s magic paralyzed me, then Michael shot me in the head.

Clean. Quick. Painless.

Maybe it’s for the best…

Then therealpain began.

I’d never been subjected to a paralyzing spell before, but I’d studied them in school. It was a known fact that it caused its subject a lot of pain. I’d just had no idea how much.

Another scream escaped my lips before I could stop it, and then Whitefire magic was all I knew. It slipped under my skin and began to consume me, making my own magic rage.

It was a strange thing, magic. It was part of you, at your command, but also a separate entity at the same time. It could control itself and react without my say-so if I wasn’t in control, and right now I couldn’t stop it if I tried.

And, yes, I knew how dangerous that was. How deadly to use magic without a spell, an anchor.

I knew.

Redfire came out of me all at once, trying toprotectme. It came out of me all at once, the way we knew it shouldn’t, because once I was open to the magic that was out there, there was no going back. A bullet between my eyes would be a favor—and knowing that I was already as good as dead was why my last survival instincts kicked in and took control.

I didn’t have the slightest hope that I would make it.

Except by some miracle, I began to realize my magic was actually blocking the effect of the Whitefire. I began to realize that I was starting to feel my limbs again while the foreign pain retreated, leaving me onlywith the one radiating from my torn calf.

Can it be?I wondered, but not for long.

The answer wasno, it can’t,because then Bluefire was coming at me, too, straight from Michael’s wand. And once it crashed onto mine that was vibrating all over my skin, I fell farther down that tree, barely keeping my head up.

Eyes half closed, I saw the colors—red and blue, and they were both fading by the second. So much magic. Entirelytoomuch, and I couldn’t even breathe in anymore from the intensity of it. The last of my energy was completely spent, and I suspected it wasn’t just the fact that I was being attacked by two powerful Iridians, that I hadn’t slept most of the night, that I hadn’t eaten, or that I’d already been attacked and almost killed by catfairies, no.

I suspected this weakness mostly came from the loss of blood from my leg.

The bleeding wouldn’t stop. I felt it trickling down my skin. It wouldn’t stop, and my magic was too busy acting out, throwing a damn temper tantrum, to give me a moment to chant a healing spell to stop it.

But it snapped eventually. I wasn’t strong enough to support it, and it snapped back into me like a rubber band, and then Erid’s Whitefire was on my face and chest, the flames slipping inside my open mouth and sinking into my skin, shutting me down quite effectively.

“Again!” Michael then shouted at Erid, more pissed off than I’d ever seen him before. “She better not move when I go closer, Erid!” He pointed his wand at her and his gun at me.

I couldn’t even focus on him because something inside me felt…strange. Notmagicstrange, but a different kind of strange.

Abadstrange, like a part of my insides had shifted. Or maybe even disappeared.

Erid began to whisper a new spell as fast as her tongue allowed as she shook, the bones of her ancestors rattling around her neck.

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