Page 28 of A Lost Light

I glanced over my shoulder and Zhong stepped forward. Disregarding the spells and wards completely, the gargoyle used his amplified supernatural strength to literally rip the door off its hinges.

River eyed the situation warily from a few feet away, and I hissed at his hesitation. “Come on, get over here with the rest of us and the spells won't reach you.”

“Are you… nullifying their magic?” he asked gravely.

I rolled my eyes. “Do you want to stay here? Cause we are leaving, cat.”

He took a deep breath, barely dodged a stray spell, and stepped forward, moving through the nullified zone.

I don't know how it happened. The combination of nullified zone and Hasumi and Dyre's shields had so far stopped every attack, both magical and mundane. And yet, somehow, as River dashed the six feet or so between his cell and safety, a bright gout of blood sprayed from his side. He stumbled and would have fallen, but Elijah reached out lightning fast, grabbed the shifter's arm, and yanked him inside the amplified zone.

“Lucky save,” the man bit out between clenched teeth, blood seeping between the fingers of the hand he had pressed to his wound. He swayed on his feet. “Though I did rather like this suit.”

I shook my head. How did I always end up saddled with the weird ones. “There's a spell bag in my back pocket for bleeding,” I said tiredly. “Somebody grab it. My hands are a bit busy right now.” The strain of maintaining this spell was wearing on me. We needed to make it back upstairs to the portal room. I had no idea what kind of protections and tech the SA possessed, but there was less chance of them tracing us back to the pocket world through magical irregularities if we used their own semi-public entry point.

A soft touch slid over my ass as someone removed the pouch from my back pocket. I looked over my shoulder to find it was the cat. No modesty or hesitation. Although, hewascurrently bleeding out. He had a bit of motivation to look past social niceties at this point. Holding out the pouch, he glanced around. “I need a witch to activate this,” he said calmly, despite the bleeding and the utter chaos around us.

Dyre took the bag and dumped the contents out into one of his hands, then muttered an activation spell. Taking the cat by the shoulder, he quickly and efficiently turned River to the side, ripped open what was left of the shirt and vest on that side and slapped the spell powder over the wound. A little surge of his magic—blood magic, which made the spell even more effective than it would have been for any other witch—and the job was done.

“Great,” I said as Dyre stepped away from the cat to reveal that the wound was no longer gushing blood. “Someone take care of that?” I asked, nodding at the group of SA agents who blocked our way. “Preferablywithoutkilling them.”

“I've got them,” Hasumi assured me. The water weaver's magic surged as they manipulated the emotions of the people in the room. The agents slowly dropped their weapons and started staring off into space with dreamy looks on their face.

A tiny trickle of the euphoria they felt made its way through our little bubble and I had to shake myself to get my legs to move. “If you could have just done that all along, then why were we killing and maiming people?” I demanded.

Hasumi spared a glance for me. “Because I'm not entirely sure their minds will recover from such heavy-handed manipulation. They might prefer death, if given the option.”

Oh. I just had to ask, didn't I?

“Let's go,” I muttered, leading the way back up the stairs with my little doughnut trick, a herd of murderous weirdos in my wake.

Chapter 15

River

“Well, that was exciting,” I said as I stumbled through the rather concerningly unstable portal and into a small courtyard that was bursting with plants. The sky was the wrong color, and though there was light, there didn't seem to be a sun.

I took a moment to center myself, brushed my hands down my skirt, and straightened. Then I winced. Gunshot wounds were so inconvenient. I was immensely thankful my luck magic had saved me from the experience up until now.

The green-haired witch let out a short, wry laugh. “Exciting. Right.” She shook her head at me, her eyes going to the hand I held against my side, over the bullet wound. “I take it you don't have supernatural healing abilities?”

I shrugged. “I heal faster than a human. About like a witch. But that's it.”

She nodded and turned toward a door on the far side of the courtyard. She recoiled in horror when she almost ran into the man who had come up behind her. “Goddess fucking hell! Why does he keep doing that?!”

The tall, eerily handsome redhead behind her chuckled and waved a hand in a dismissive gesture, and the other man shuffled around the witch to resume pacing the perimeter of the courtyard. “You keep getting in his way,” the redhead said, clearly suppressing a smile. “He's just following his usual route, doing his job. Stop interfering with his work, Lovell.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. But I looked away from their banter to watch the odd man as he shuffled about. He looked a bit shabby. And his skin was certainly not a healthy color. The magic around him seemed dark. I shoved my glasses up on my nose and peered through the lenses at the enhanced auric field that leapt into view.

“He's dead,” I observed to myself. “Interesting.” I wanted to go take a closer look. Inspect this new discovery and learn all I could about it. But the pain in my side stopped me.

“He attacked us,” the tall, handsome blond man at my side commented, clearly having overheard my comment. “It was self-defense.” An angel. Bella was right. Her sister's harem was… certainly varied. And tall—except the one I could feel glaring daggers behind me. And they were all ridiculously good-looking. It hardly seemed fair.

“And were you self-defense as well?” I asked the one who had spoken, as I peered through my glasses athisaura. It was very strange. Powerfully angelic. But kind of… layered on top of more of that dark magic.

The open expression on his handsome face closed off, and he looked a bit hurt. “I'm… no. I'm just… I'm different.”

“Elijah is alive,” a pretty, ethereal being with silvery blond hair and stunning turquoise eyes informed me in a voice that almost made mepurr.

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