Page 85 of Total Eclipse of the Moon
Determination to see his orders through to the end glowed in the redheaded lycan’s gaze as he pushed off the ground to a stand. He held a new knife. She backed up against a van. Nowhere to go.
"Madeline. Center yourself."
"Cora?" she asked out loud. She looked around and gasped when she saw Cora behind her.
"Seems I was right to think you needed me." She pinched her lips together. "I can’t believe that lycan was so irresponsible as to put you in the middle of this shitshow. I brought help." Cora waved behind her to where Roman and Ky stood, evaluating the action.
"You’ve done well kid." Roman squeezed Madeline’s shoulder before he ran into the fray, knocking the lycan that’d been her aggressor in the head. Over his shoulder Roman yelled, "Stay alive. Both of you."
"I thought they were under orders to stay away. Won’t the curse hurt them for being here?" Madeline watched in awe as Roman and Ky plowed through humans on a direct path toward the leader with the disc. Injury didn’t faze them. Shane had been good but these two were bulldozers.
Thank God the boomerang curse had been rescinded yesterday or she'd be catatonic by this point.
"I may have done some curse modifying of my own," Cora said. "Something small to buy them time to do this."
"Won't it hurt you? Zap you of energy?"
"Hon, I'm not silly enough to give up that much energy."
"Can you reverse the big curse without me having to go through with it?"
"No." Cora pulled something out of her jacket and held out a ring. "Time to move up to level three."
"I’m barely to level two. I’m not ready for the Ring of Perpetuity."
"Things are about to get—"
The redheaded lycan who’d attacked her moments ago was up again and headed her way. Persistent guy.
Madeline held up her hand, the ring on her middle finger, and froze the man without uttering a spell. "Kind of in the middle of an important conversation here. You’ll have to wait." Then she realized what she’d done. "Holy cow, that’s cool."
Cora beamed. "Congrats. You’re level three. Remember, with the ring you must be focused."
"Why am I moving up now?"
"Things are about to get much worse. As in, right now. We’re going to need you fully functional because it's going to take two of us to handle this."
"I don’t see Shane." Madeline squinted into the dark, through the people and chaos to find Shane, but couldn’t. Had he been hurt or captured? Where was he?
"Trust his brothers. We have to face…"
The slithery evil of dark magic snaked through Madeline’s shoulders. She whispered, "What is that?"
"Something vile," Cora said.
A slim woman in black meant to blend with the night in calf-high boots walked through the chaos without being affected. The redheaded lycan ducked his head and ran away into the chaos around the man with the Curmsun disc.
"Who’s that?" Madeline whispered.
"Georgiana Sigge. Top level dark one. Half witch."
"She’s a part of all this?" Madeline hurt from too many physical wounds to do a magical battle tonight.
"Must be. Maybe those mental triggers aren’t all a human’s doing but magically implanted instead. I’ll hold her off, but I need you to focus and get that dragon here. He can protect you."
"I’m not sure Aldri will actually show up." Madeline’s stomach squeezed so hard out of fear of letting everyone down that it hurt. "Are you sure you're not tapped out from helping them with their curse?"
"I don’t know." Cora cringed, a facial expression Madeline had never seen.
