Last time, one of Logan’s scales had fixed Nadine right up, so maybe we could patch Gear first and then hit me with the pain of a thousand burning suns.
Eva was rubbing her hands together to warm them. “Gear will be fine. I’ll heal him next. This must be done now. They’ve been following us ever since we left the club. Gear says they are about twenty minutes behind us. We need to break the spell and get back on the road.”
I looked around. We were in the field of a heavily-treed rest stop and it was pitch black. It must have been the middle of the night.
I dropped Logan’s hand and stepped forward. “Do it.” I flinched, balling my hands into fists and tensing every muscle I had.
Eva looked at me and then at Keegan. “Hold him,” she murmured, and Keegan rushed forward to pull Logan back.
“Hey, what the hell!” Logan yelled, fighting his friend.
“I’m sorry,” Eva muttered, and clapped her hands together loudly. When she pulled them apart, there was a yellow glowing geometrical shape between her palms. “I’m going to cleanse every one of your cells of any magical spell. They will all be broken, including the one I put on you to cover your scent.”
I just nodded, feeling the urge to run. Knowing something was going to hurt and willingly walking into it was against my self-preservation, but I forced myself to stand there. As she held her hands over my head and brought the yellow glowing geometric shape over my face, a white-hot pain seared my skull. A scream tore from my lips and it haunted me to know that it was my own. I didn’t recognize the sound.
“Hold her!” Eva yelled, and suddenly arms were around me, holding me up, keeping me from falling. My sense of smell told me it was Sophie.
“You got this,” Sophie said firmly in my ear as her grip around my elbows tightened.
Eva moved the shape farther down my face towards my neck and the pain intensified. “No, stop!” I screamed, as the searing heat nearly brought me to my knees. A black smoke was coming off of my face, and I had a horrible thought: Was she burning me? I could hear commotion behind me as Logan struggled against Keegan’s hold.
“Eva!” Logan growled, and I knew his dragon was close to the surface.
Eva looked like she was in pain herself, her forehead covered in sweat, her hands shaking. “Danny, ground me,” she called out, and Danny rushed up behind her, placing a hand on each of her shoulders. The moment his hands touched her, he winced.
Blackness was creeping at the edges of my vision as I swayed on my feet.
“Keep her conscious or it doesn’t work!” Eva yelled to Sophie.
Sophie shook me. Hard. “Stay awake, buttercup!” she said through gritted teeth.
My entire head felt like it was being squeezed in a vise, and at the same time like someone had thrown boiling hot water on it. My dragon flared to life then, lending me some of her strength as another wave of pain crash through me. Eva brought the yellow shape to my heart; black smoke was leaking out of my every pore. The burning was causing me to have a full-blown panic attack. Was I going to light on fire?
“What. The. Hell. Is. This?” I said between labored breaths as the black smoke left my skin and floated towards the sky.
Eva moved the geometrical shape down to my abdomen and I whimpered, sagging against Sophie’s chest, pain exploding in my belly. I couldn’t take any more. I couldn’t. This pain was as if every single cell in my body had been cut in half, electrocuted, and then burned.
Eva’s face contorted in agony. “This,” she said with great effort, “is black magic.”
My stomach dropped. I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Jeanine. I had been scared and didn’t think things through.
Keegan’s growl from behind me pulled my attention away from the pain for a half a second. “They’re here!” he shouted.
Eva paled. “I’m sorry, Sloane.”
My eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “For wh—?” Pain like I could never imagine exploded in my legs as Eva rushed the geometric shape down the rest of my body, stopping at my feet. Black smoke puffed up so thick and strong that I couldn’t see … and that’s when I passed out.
When I came to, there was screaming. A lot of it.
“Gear!” Nadine yelled as my eyes peeled open and the mother of all aches slammed into my body. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck and then given the flu for good measure.
“Keegan!” Sophie screamed.
So much screaming. I let my eyes adjust, and what I saw stole my breath. Chaos had descended on this small rest stop in California. I could hardly process everything at once. Logan was in dragon form, his outstretched wings pinned to the ground like a staked tent. At each wing was a druid holding the metal stake, Keegan crouched before Logan, like a sentinel ready to take on Steven—the Irish druid that I now very much wanted to kill.
Nadine was fighting a hunter with her left hand, using a dagger to jab and thrust at him, while keeping Gear’s falcon tucked tightly in her right. She was careful not to further injure his wing, but in the process was having a hard time with the bushy-haired hunter.
My attention was thrown back to Logan when Steven, standing before him, thrust his hands out—Keegan’s wolf was tossed to the side by an unseen force, snarling and growling the entire way. Wind. Hadn’t Logan said he was a wind druid? Keegan landed before a pack of hunters and I could see now that Danny was holding at least a dozen hunters off, while Eva and Jeanine went head to head, throwing yellow magic spells like they were water balloons just off to his side.
This was what it must be like for people in war zones, I thought sadly. So much going on, so many people getting hurt, that you froze and didn’t even know what to process first. I was frozen. It was too much, I didn’t even know where to look. I could hear Ruben’s bear and Dom’s cat growling but I couldn’t see them. It was pandemonium.
Sophie’s blond hair suddenly appeared before me, her face swimming into view. She reached out firmly and grabbed each of my arms, hauling me into a standing position. I hadn’t even realized I was sitting down. My body screamed in protest; the aches were bad but it wasn’t the searing pain from before. Aches I could handle.
Where was Cooper, Dom, Ruben, Roxy? My mind was frazzled and I didn’t know what to do. Apparently, neither did Sophie. “Do something,” she said, and her eyes glowed yellow with the force of her inner coyote.
As if those words alone spurred me into action, my dragon began to rip from my skin. Do something. Me. She wasn’t asking anyone else, because next to Logan I was the most powerful person on our team and I needed to pull my shit together and prove it. I would not let anyone die because of my mistakes—my need to run away from everything. Apparently, my need to breathe in dark magic as well.
Jeanine’s spell had been broken. My dragon could come forth and come forth she did. Faster than ever before, those red pearlescent scales flared along my limbs, and Sophie stepped back with a grin. My bones cracked and my muscles bulked until I was standing on my hind legs, ready to fight.
Sophie approached me with her harpoon lowered. “I’m riding you,” she stated and I lost sight of her behind my wings.
What did she just—? A heavy weight crashed down on my back and I groaned. What the hell did she think I was, a circus elephant?
“They’re going to kill Logan. Fly!” she roared in my ear. Damn, this woman was annoying, but she was right. The Irish druid was throwing red ball after red ball at Logan, and I could feel my own chest searing just watching it. Logan was breathing fire right back at him, but the druid had a shield up and so it was bouncing off and scorching the ground.
‘We’re coming!’ I tried to use the newly formed bond. I still hadn’t fully processed this mate thing but in this case the mind speak would be a benefit.
Logan’s eyes met mine from across the grass. ‘No. Stay safe.’
I growled, kicking up off the ground, trying to adjust for Sophie’s weight.