Page 26 of Midnight Witch

She looked at Nikolai, confused. “What…just happened?”

Fear locked Nikolai’s breath in his throat. A sinister energy was coiling through the church. The susurration intensified.

His heart thumped against his ribs as he drew on his white magic, the bond connecting him to Alastair flaring brightly inside him while he attempted to keep whatever was trying to get inside his mind out. “Mae! UseNegate!”

Mae nodded. Her lips parted. “Ne…ga…”

Her voice trailed off mid-incantation. Her expression became glassy. She took three steps toward the black stone and touched the roiling sphere atop it.

A silent wave boomed outward from the obsidian altar. It thumped in Nikolai’s ears and lifted him off his feet. He caught a glimpse of Mae flying through the air as he sailed backward across the chancel. He crashed into the front pew of the nave. Pain lanced his flank.

Mae smashed through the opposite row with a grunt.

A cacophony of voices and images filled Nikolai’s skull with his next heartbeat.

Alastair’s panicked croaks reached him dimly as he fell to his knees. He clasped his head and tasted blood on his tongue as he bit down on his lip to stifle the scream bubbling up his throat. The vice-like pain squeezing his mind was like nothing he’d experienced before. He blinked, his vision hazy.

For a moment, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing.

Debris was swirling through the church.

It was as if a storm had exploded inside the building.

The boards ripped from the windows with torturous sounds, exposing broken, cracked panes.

“Shield!” Mae barked.

Her barrier dropped around Nikolai a heartbeat before all the glass in the church imploded. The fragments bounced off Mae’s defense as she climbed to her feet, the crimson aura engulfing her reflected around Brimstone and Hellreaver where they’d assumed their true forms at her side. She stumbled over to where Nikolai crouched.

“Soul Shield!” Mae growled. She resisted the tempest dragging at her limbs, dropped down on her knees, and wrapped her arms protectively around him. “Multiply!”

Brimstone crouched and curled his giant form around them to protect them from the brunt of the whirlwinds roaring inside the church.

Nikolai felt Mae’s spell take root deep inside his core. The voices and pictures inside his head abated, along with the agony they had brought. He took a shaky breath and clung to her, grateful for her warmth.

His body felt like ice.

Alastair swayed on his shoulder, feathers drooping in pain. Nikolai touched him with trembling fingers.

The roof tore off with a sound that seemed to herald the end of days.

“Shit!” Mae cursed.

Bricks and wooden beams crashed down into the church and atop them. Her barrier held.

Nikolai’s heart stuttered when she stiffened against him. He followed her stare to where the roof had been. His eyes rounded.

The clouds above them rippled before parting violently, as if struck by a powerful detonation. They thinned and vanished in an outward radiating circle, leaving a vapid sun pouring down upon the land from a pale blue sky.

The floor started trembling beneath Nikolai and Mae.

Brimstone snarled, snatched them up in his jaws by their jackets, and bounded out of the church, Hellreaver humming angrily beside him while Alastair kept pace above them.

The demon fox didn’t stop until he reached the bottom of the hill.

A sickening magic filled the air as he lowered them to the ground. He whirled around and took up a defensive stance in front of them.

Nikolai shared a stunned look with Mae. “What’s going on?!”

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