“Classy.”
The gargoyle laughed. “You’re going to stop me?” he asked Wei.
Wei took a step forward and then vanished from view, leaving a trail of mist where she’d once stood.
The gargoyle looked around, trying to find her, until he’d turned in a complete circle and was staring at Mordred again. He looked confused.
Wei reappeared next to Mordred. “He’s forgotten I was there,” she said. “It’s easier to do with simple people.”
She sprinted toward the gargoyle and vanished again just before reaching him, causing the gargoyle to roar out in anger for a second before once again appearing to be incredibly confused.
“That has got to be winding you up,” Mordred said, and his thoughts immediately went back to Morgan, who was dying not too far away. He blasted the gargoyle in the chest with ice, taking the large creature off its feet and smashing it through several trees.
“You want to hear my plan?” Wei asked as Mordred walked toward the gargoyle, who was pinned to the side of a tree with thick ice.
“Morgan needs help,” Mordred said. “What’s your plan?”
“My blood can be used to poison people,” she said. “But if I’m infected with poison or venom, I can also use it to create an antidote.”
“Which means you need the gargoyle’s venom inside of you.”
Wei nodded. “I’d rather not be sliced to ribbons by those claws, though, and Morgan doesn’t have long enough to wait while we kill it.”
The sound of shattering ice filled the air, followed quickly by a roar of anger as the gargoyle freed itself, dropping to the ground. It charged forward without a word, forcing Wei to vanish once again while Mordred threw himself aside, using his air magic to propel him further than his own strength would have managed. He threw a ball of light into the gargoyle’s eyes, blinding it enough to send it careening into a huge, ancient tree, knocking it slightly askew. The gargoyle tore into the tree, cutting through it with ease, until he could smash it down onto the ground where Mordred had been.
Mordred wrapped air around the legs of the gargoyle and pulled, tripping the beast and forcing it headfirst into the tree trunk. The gargoyle roared in anger once again and leapt toward Mordred, who blasted it with jets of ice, freezing it in place. He continued to pile on the pressure as Wei reappeared next to the gargoyle.
“Leave one claw free,” she called over to Mordred.
“Just do it so I can kill it already,” he said.
Wei took hold of one finger of the gargoyle, the claw popping out into her palm. She yelled and stepped back as the ice began to crack once again.
“Go,” Mordred said. “I’ve got this.”
Wei nodded and turned into a fox, sprinting off through the forest to hopefully save Morgan’s life. The brief lapse in concentration was all the gargoyle needed to tear his way out of the ice and move toward Mordred at frightening speed. He picked Mordred up in one hand, throwing him back into a nearby tree. Mordred’s shield of air saved him from serious injury, but even then the wind was knocked out of him, and he fell awkwardly to the ground.
The gargoyle was upon him in seconds, forcing Mordred to block the attacks lest he be infected with the same venom that was killing his friend. His mind was on Morgan, not on the fight at hand, and that would get him killed.
Mordred blocked a swipe of the gargoyle’s claws and blasted him in the chest with blinding light, allowing Mordred to escape and put some distance between the two of them. Whoever the sorcerer had been before turning into a gargoyle, he’d been incredibly powerful. Much more so than the gargoyle who Mordred had fought all those centuries ago.
“You’re like a rat,” the gargoyle bellowed. “I’m going to enjoy crushing the life out of you.”
Mordred bit his tongue and kept quiet as he moved behind a large tree to figure out his next attack. Fighting head on wasn’t getting him anywhere, and despite the cold of this part of the world, combined with his magical ice, he hadn’t seen much movement in the plates that kept the gargoyle safe. If he was going to get through to the flesh under them, he needed a different strategy.
He glanced around him, trying to figure out if anything in his surroundings was going to help in the fight, and spotted Emily’s rifle lying thirty feet away to the side. The gargoyle was close enough that if Mordred ran for it, he wouldn’t have enough time to get to the rifle and use it before the gargoyle got to him. Mordred would have liked to have gotten hold of the SG 553 again—it had silver bullets and would have probably done some damage even to a gargoyle. He couldn’t remember if silver could kill a gargoyle, but he was certain it couldn’t hurt to find out.
“Where are you?” the gargoyle roared. “You coward. You sniveling little nothing.”
“Aren’t you just a joy?” Mordred asked, using his air magic to throw his voice fifty feet to the right of him, deeper into the forest.
“I’m not going to fall for that trick,” the gargoyle said.
“You sure? You look exceptionally stupid.”
Mordred felt a trickle of blood run down his scalp and touched it, rubbing the blood between his finger and thumb. “Damn you,” he said. “I really don’t want to be that person anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” the gargoyle asked with a laugh. “You just gave your position away.”
“I know.”
Mordred stepped out, whipping a tendril of blood magic at the gargoyle, wrapping it around his arm.
The gargoyle laughed as he walked toward Mordred. “You can’t hurt me if it doesn’t touch my skin.”
“I know,” Mordred said, and launched a second, much thinner tendril from his other hand. It slammed into the open mouth of the gargoyle, muffling its screams as he pushed it further and further inside. The gargoyle thrashed and bucked, trying to swipe at Mordred, who remained just out of reach.
The use of so much blood magic made a smile tug at Mordred’s lips, and he knew he could keep going. Just keep pouring more and more blood magic inside the gargoyle until there was enough to tear him in half from the inside out. Mordred stopped and switched the blood magic off as tears of blood fell from his eyes. “Not like this,” he whispered.
The gargoyle was on his hands and knees, coughing up blood onto the snowy ground, as Mordred tried to push away the need to keep using the blood magic. It called to him, screamed at him to continue the assault on the gargoyle, to allow himself to give in, but he wouldn’t. The desire to use blood magic would always be with him, and sometimes he had to give in to that to do what needed to be done, but to use so much all at once was inviting something back into his life he wanted no part of.