Page 103 of Shadow's End

About five minutes in, we found the house. It was exactly as I’d seen in my astral vision, right down to the broken windows that looked like eyes staring desolately into the darkness.

“There is no one inside,” Maelle said. “No one who lives or who walks the edge of life, anyway.”

I glanced at her. “Meaning something else awaits?”

Her smile flashed, though it held little humor. “I would advise you not go inside. I would also advise those who remain outside the dead zone watch their backs.”

“We always do when dealing with evil,” Monty murmured, looking Maelle’s way.

She raised that eyebrow again, but otherwise didn’t respond.

“We should also spread out a little more,” Ashworth added. “We’re a bit like skittles at the moment—easily taken out by one well-placed ball.”

A well-placed ball would probably be the least of our problems. No one said it, but it was pretty obviously what most of us were thinking. I moved on cautiously, leading the way down the side of the house. Its broken “eyes” seemed to follow us, and my back itched as we moved into the trees behind it. The others fanned out, walking to my right and left, the wild magic floating along beside them.

It was my dream come to life, though the shadow walking by my side was Maelle rather than Aiden or Belle.

The closer we drew to Marie, the more the dead area of ground stood out. It was a widening gap in the music that surrounded me, a blot on the landscape I wasn’t sure could be healed.

And yet, in the middle of that deadness, fires flickered. It wasn’t magic. It was silver.

The staked body in that last dream … It had been Aiden, not Roger.

Anger surged, but so too did hope.

Silver might be very deadly to werewolves, but it was also very good at countering dark magic. Where those silver stakes plunged into the earth, wild magic stirred.

Marie had made a mistake.

Now I just had to hope I could make full use of it.

The mage fire I’d seen in my dreams began to flicker through the darkness up ahead. I stopped, dug my toes deeper into the soil, and reached for Katie.Can you raise that barrier now?

Luminous threads of moonlight immediately crawled around the flickering mage fire, creating a barrier around it without ever touching it.

Marie would know we were coming, if she didn’t already.

That thought had barely crossed my mind when the shit hit the fan.

Creatures roiled out of the trees all around us, creatures that were little more than shadows with bloody red eyes and long, vicious claws. I swore and cast a repel spell past Belle. It hit the creature that had leapt toward her and sent it tumbling back into a tree. Its diaphanous body splattered like paint across the trunk. It didn’t remain that way—globs of black began to roll back toward each other as the creature reformed.

“Liz, keep on going,” Ashworth shouted, his magic searing the night. “We’ll take care of these beasties.”

Belle?I said silently.You coming or staying?

Monty and I are both coming. She paused to cast another shadow into a tree.Someone needs to have your back, because I doubt these things will be the last of them.

The four of us moved on but had barely gone a dozen steps when something thin, white, and armed with a wickedly gleaming axe lurched out of the trees and came at us.

“Keep on keeping on,” Monty said. “I’ll deal with whatever the fuck this is and catch up when I can.”

And then there were three, I couldn’t help but think.

Maelle, I noticed, was smiling. Either she approved of her maker’s tactics, or she was simply anticipating the final battle. Maybe even both.

The purple glow of the mage fire now peeled back the darkness, and its caress burned the air, sharp and unpleasant, a stark contrast to Katie’s net.

More movement caught my eye, this time from the trees to the right. Human-based rather than demon or spirit. Five of them at first, with more movement in the trees suggesting there were others. They were thin and disheveled, their wild eyes showing little intelligence and their teeth long and pointed. Vamps. New turned, totally untutored, and without restriction. They were snarling as they ran at us, their hands slashing at the air, eager to rent and tear. I flung a cage spell, capturing two and pinning them to ground. Belle pinned one magically and the other two telepathically, brutally sweeping into their minds and destroying their motor functions. As they crumbled to the ground, she said, “Go. Monty and I will take care of the remainder.”

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