The low, manufactured rumble of the killer’s voice made my ears hurt. I cringed and felt my power flare in self-defense. The arcana rushed along the ground in search of something it could raise to protect us. However, I hit the killer’s wall of arcana. It flung my own arcana back at me.
“No games. Submit, and I will give you the human.”
Cerri laughed, but it was drowned out by Maddox’s growl. This would be his second shift of the day. I had no idea if he’d eaten anything. If he didn’t have enough energy to pull this off, then he could lose control, too. It would be way worse if Maddox lost control. Unhinged shifters were capable of bloodshed on a terrifying level.
I reached out and touched his shoulder before he could change shapes. When he looked back at me in surprise, I shook my head. This was it. We’d reached the end of the line. I wouldn’t let anyone else endanger themselves for me.
The killer must have misread our silent communication. He bent, and Cerri let out a scream. The sound was swallowed by a splash of water as he shoved her head under.
“Shift into that wolf form, and I’ll kill her!”
“Let her breathe! She has nothing to do with this.” I didn’t beg or plead. I made a demand.
I was oddly proud of myself for standing my ground. The only thing that mattered right now was that Cerri and Maddox left here safely. I knew how this would end. I wasn’t leaving here alive. If the killer wanted me, he would have to meet my demands, first.
But he waited a heartbeat too long. Panic slapped me across the face. Every second that Cerri struggled underwater was a second she lost.
“Let her go!” My arcana surged outwards.
This time, it hit the killer’s wall of power and burst through. My skeletal fingers reached to surround him. I would drain the life out of him if I had to. My arcana never reached him, though. He shoved back before I could take ahold of him.
That was new. However, it meant that he could do the same to me. If I could target him and steal his life force, he could very easily do the same to me.
What had he called me? A Reaper?
What did that mean? While I’d hoped to learn something from that, it told me nothing. My head swam with images of black-robed skeletons, which I certainly wasn’t. There were more important matters at hand.
Already, I could feel the fingers of the killer’s arcana reaching for me. I threw up a solid wall that he prodded and poked at. He was searching for weak points. This was the first time I’d had to guard against someone’s magic. There had to be weak points. It was only a matter of time until he found them.
It was only a matter of time before Cerri ran out of oxygen, too. I couldn’t stand here in this silent face-off forever. When I glanced over to Maddox, my stomach flipped when I realized he’d vanished. The distraction cost me. My guard slipped for a moment.
The killer’s arcana wrapped around me like a fist. It jerked me forward, but it didn’t pull at my body. Instead, it yanked at my soul. If I didn’t do something, I would lose everything.
At least, Maddox would be free. He’d escaped. He was…
He was behind the killer.
I’d assumed that Maddox had fled to save himself. It seemed that I’d forgotten what kind of man Maddox was. He’d signed up to save lives and catch killers. The man wasn’t going to run.
Maddox’s body bent and grew in size. Fur grew in a wave over his skin. He crouched low, ready to pounce, but the killer half turned. With one arm extended towards me, the killer raised another and pointed his arcana in Maddox’s direction.
“No!” I screamed.
The shout rang out. It shattered the killer’s arcana. I shoved mine outwards and into all the cracks in the killer’s power. He flinched and twisted to look in my direction. I liked to think that he was glaring under that mask.
With my power slowly squeezing his own and breaking it down, I could absorb the energy he’d sent out. I turned that energy into life force and shoved it deep into the earth. I couldn’t afford to fear my own power when my friends’ lives were at stake.
Had I hesitated, the killer would have taken control of Maddox. The new shifter stood with one foot in death, which left him vulnerable to those like myself—to Reapers, apparently.
I turned my palms towards the sky and lifted my hands. Thankfully, we were in Lakesedge. No one would bat an eye when I lifted bones from the earth. We were on top of Beryl’s fae court, though. That meant there was an odd bounty of dead things that her people had left here to rot.
I pulled the pieces into a new being. The bones came together to create a long, wyvern like creature that snapped out ethereal wings made of pale blue light.
Just as the creature appeared, Cerri let out a scream. The killer had split his attention between Maddox and myself, setting her free. A new wave of power flooded out of her. I was reminded of the day we’d broken the hex that Alvin’s son had tried to put on Ness.
Cerri and I had polar opposite arcanas. And as the glow within the lake brightened, so did her power. She screamed and a wave of life spread in my direction. I grabbed it and eagerly devoured it. Cerri’s brand of life turned into greenery that spread across my bone beast like tendons and sinew. Flowers spread along the creature the same way fur covered Maddox.
The beast tossed its head and stomped, much the way we’d seen Ryder of Morgan do when they took on their dragon forms. Beyond the flowered bone-beast, the killer and Maddox stared up in disbelief.