Page 61 of Midnight Witch

Mae twisted around and met their worried gazes. “I’ll meet you inside! Make sure you don’t hurt the coven!”

She shot across the grounds, her attention focused on the unstable magic she could feel pulsing inside the mansion.

The harpy eagle’s core was minutes away from imploding.

Dammit, I hope we’re not too late!

It will be faster if we go through the roof, my witch!Brimstone said.

Mae nodded briskly. “Hell, you’re up!”

Hellreaver detached from her neck and transformed.

They slowed to a hover where the bird’s unbalanced power throbbed the strongest. Crimson erupted around Hellreaver. He dropped and carved out a hole in the roof and the floor of the attic space below it.

A violent outburst of magic raised the hairs on Mae’s arms when they descended inside the suite. Brimstone leapt off her shoulder and transformed as she alighted on the floor.

Mendes’s head whipped around. He was trying to contain the screeching harpy eagle inside a cage of Arcane Magic. Horror widened the High Priest’s eyes. Gold bloomed in the pupils of the black hare at his feet.

Mendes turned and cast a spell bomb at them. He cursed when Hellreaver sliced through it in a flash.

Someone shouted in the distance. The sorcerer’s startled gaze cut to the door. The sound of fighting and detonating spell bombs could be heard rising from the floor below.

“Look, we don’t want to hurt you or your people!” Mae told Mendes urgently. “But if you don’t let me help, she won’t survive what’s happening to her!”

Her belly twisted when she glanced at the harpy eagle. The bird’s core was close to cracking.

Spell bombs burst into life before the panic-stricken Mendes. The hare hissed as he augmented his sorcerer’s magic.

Mae cursed and unleashedDevour.“Brim!”

“On it,”the demon fox growled.

Devourswallowed the sorcerer’s attacks with gluttonous gulps. Mendes took a step back and clenched his jaw defiantly. His hare bared his teeth at the demon fox looming over them.

“Shield!” the sorcerer barked.

“Absorb!” Mae countered.

Her spell consumed Mendes’s defensive barrier even as it formed. He cried out as Brimstone gently pressed a paw to his chest and backed him all the way to the wall. Hellreaver blocked the hare’s path when it made to attack Brimstone.

“Keep them there!”

Mae crossed the floor briskly, her pulse racing. She had seconds left to act.

“No! Please!” Mendes’s voice broke where he struggled beneath Brimstone’s hold. “Don’t—don’t kill Sable, I beg of you!”

“I won’t.” Mae lowered her brows. “I’m going to save her.” Power thrummed across her bond with Brimstone and Hellreaver. “Absorb!”

Mendes’s Arcane Magic spell wavered. The cage started to disperse as her magic ate away at it. The harpy eagle’s mad gaze swiveled to the hole in the roof, her wings bunching and quivering as she prepared to launch into an escape.

“Contain!”

The bird screeched when she found her flight path blocked by Mae’s crimson prison. She scratched and batted at the barrier in a frenzy, heedless of her damaged claws and the blood seeping onto her feathers.

Mae’s heart thumped heavily as she pressed her hands toContain. Her gaze met that of the enraged bird briefly before she closed her eyes and focused on the wrongness within the maddened familiar.

The bird’s dull core appeared in her mind’s eye.

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