They reached the top of the cliff, and Wei sniffed the air. “They fired from over there,” she said, pointing to a group of rocks a few feet back from the cliff edge.
Mordred walked over and searched the ground by the rocks. He picked up a shell casing and was looking at it when Wei knocked it out of his hand.
“Venom,” she said by way of explanation.
“Any idea what kind?”
She licked the shell casing. “Gargoyle. I’m sorry.”
Gargoyle venom was exceptionally potent and quick acting, but more than that it had an awful tendency to bypass any magic that might allow someone to heal. “Gargoyles are rare,” Mordred said. “Most sorcerers aren’t stupid enough to want to become one. Hell, not even I was that far gone.”
“I never understood the appeal,” Wei admitted. “Allowing your magic free rein to change your body, allowing blood-magic curses to tear you apart and put you back together in a new form. It’s an act of someone as depraved as I could possibly imagine.”
“I’ve met two gargoyles in my life. Killed one, Nate killed the other. Both deserved to die. If there’s a gargoyle here, we need to kill it, and kill it quickly.”
“First we need to find the shooter.” Wei set off into the forest, with Mordred close behind.
CHAPTER 22
Mordred
Mordred and Wei had gone several hundred meters when Mordred thought he saw a shimmer of something up ahead. He immediately put up a shield of dense air and moved aside as a bullet tore into the tree beside him, causing it to rip apart as if it were paper.
Mordred kept running, changing direction and throwing the occasional blade of ice at where he thought the sniper would be hiding. Two more bullets hit trees close to where Mordred ran past, and a third struck a stone, showering tiny spikes of sharp rock across Mordred’s side and arm, cutting open his hand. He dove for cover to take a look at his hand, which had a three-inch shard of rock protruding from it. He removed the shard and placed one hand over the other, using his light magic to heal the wound. In seconds it was as if nothing had ever happened, although the memory of the pain still lingered.
Mordred concentrated, allowing his mind magic to activate. While what he’d told Fiona was true—he couldn’t use his mind magic except in defense—he could use it to see how many living people there were close by. It would only work over a few dozen feet, and he was forced to sit and concentrate, but it wasn’t like he could go anywhere while someone with a rifle was firing shots at him. It took a few seconds, but when he opened his eyes he could feel two people close by. One was Wei—that much was clear—but the other was a young woman he’d never met before. She was twenty feet to the left, trying to flank his position.
He waited until the last second before throwing a blast of water in the direction he knew she’d be. There was a scream of shock and pain, followed by a gunshot and then nothing. As he stood Mordred froze the water in place around a large tree. He walked over and picked up the rifle from the ground. It was the same make as the ones the humans had been using in the village.
Mordred moved the ice aside, revealing a young woman wearing a black balaclava and combat fatigues. “You feel like telling me your name?” Mordred asked.
“Emily Rowe,” she said.
“You’re English.”
“Yes. I’m a witch. I live in England.”
“You shot my friend.”
“I’d have shot you, too, given the chance.”
“Are you the same woman that Diana said knows Nate?”
At the mention of Nate’s name, there was a tiny amount of recognition and some fear. “You’re afraid of him?” Mordred asked.
“I’ve met him, so yes. He is incredibly powerful, and the last time we met he told me he’d kill me should our paths cross again.”
“My name is Mordred. Have you heard of me?”
“Yes, everyone has. I was told to kill you and your friends. You aren’t the scary person you used to be. Shame, I’d have liked to have met the old you.”
Mordred laughed, although there was no humor in it. “No, you really wouldn’t have. How’d you keep your scent masked?”
“Witch magic.”
Mordred grabbed her arm and pulled up the sleeve, revealing the dozens of small tattoos that were there. “That’s a lot of power for a witch. Trying to get yourself killed?”
“That’s what sorcerers always say to a witch trying to unlock their potential. The more magic we use, the quicker we die.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I’m not dead yet.”
“An antidote for the venom. Now.”
“I’ve got a better idea.”
Mordred saw the shadow cast over him a second before he flung himself aside, dropping the SG 553 and narrowly avoiding the descending gargoyle. The creature stood to its full seven-foot height and stretched out its enormous wingspan. Its body was covered in gray armored stone plates, and it had a foot-long horn growing out of each temple. A long red tongue flicked out of its stony mouth. Venom dripped from its claws onto the soft snow.
“I think you have bigger problems,” Emily said with a chuckle as Mordred took off at a full sprint into the forest. Gargoyles weren’t great at flying, but they could move in a straight line with incredible speed, and Mordred wanted to put some trees between the two of them.
A fox ran into Mordred’s path, turning into Wei a second later. “You get to kill another gargoyle,” she said.
“You feel like helping?” Mordred asked, looking back at where Emily was and finding both her and the gargoyle gone.
“I can’t puncture the stone plates. I can, however, keep Emily occupied. I promise I won’t kill her, but I’ll keep her and her rifle busy until you can join us. I assume you have questions.”
“We need an antidote.”
“And you think she has one?”
“I’m just hoping more than anything. It’s that or make one from the venom of the gargoyle.”
“There’s another way,” she said, but a rifle round smashed into a nearby tree, forcing Mordred and Wei to cut short their conversation. Wei turned back into a fox and bounded off into the forest, vanishing from view.
The gargoyle roared and began to tear its way toward Mordred, who tried to remember how he’d managed to kill the last gargoyle he’d met. Luck, and a lot of cheating. He remembered Nate telling him about how he’d turned the air so cold that the plates on the gargoyle’s chest had moved just enough for him to get to the flesh beneath.
He watched the gargoyle crash through the forest toward him, tearing apart trees, which Mordred decided was more about instilling fear than anything else.
Mordred started to hum the battle tune to Final Fantasy IX and readied two blades of ice in preparation for what was coming.
“You can’t hide from me!” the gargoyle shouted. “No one can hide from me.”
Wei stepped out from behind a tree, as if appearing from nowhere, directly between Mordred and the gargoyle.
“Where’s Emily?” Mordred whispered.
“Busy hiding from me,” Wei said. “I gave her a nice bit of poison to slow her down. She didn’t have an antidote, by the way. I checked. She’ll be preoccupied for a while as she tries not to throw up her lungs. “