All of us stood transfixed, watching the weres shift. Alone among us, Saorla appeared to enjoy what she saw. A faint smile played at the corners of her mouth, and she stared first at one and then at the other, a disconcerting hunger in her pale eyes. Most of the others closed their eyes or turned away. Hain and Patty watched, but even they flinched at the men’s contortions and the snapping of bone.
“This can’t be good,” my dad said.
I didn’t bother to agree. After a few moments more, Hacker had transformed into the large coyote I’d seen at his single-wide. The second man had become a mountain lion. The transitions had taken less time this evening. I attributed that to how close we were to the moonrise and the start of the phasing.
The coyote padded toward the trailer and my dad and me. The cougar slunk toward Amaya and the others. Hacker growled low in his chest, and the big cat let out a hunting scream the likes of which I’d only heard previously deep in the Arizona wilderness.
Amaya and his men backed away. I cast the same spell I’d used in Hacker’s home-dad and me on one side, the coyote on the other, and a barrier of magic in between.
The animal stopped a pace short of my conjuring and bared its teeth.
“Big dog,” dad said. “I take it that spell will work.”
“It should. It has before.”
He nodded.
The cat let out another wail and went down in a heap. Amaya or one of others had attacked him with a spell.
“Don’t hurt him!” I called, knowing I was too late.
“We don’t have our weapons!” Luis hollered back at me.
Jacinto rounded on him. “He’s being controlled. Just like Hacker. Protect yourself, but don’t do anything more to the were.”
“What about them?” Luis asked, waving a hand in the direction of Hain and the rest.
Jacinto glowered at Saorla once more, murder in his eyes. “Them you can kill.”
I shouted a warning again, but not in time. I was too far away to feel the magic, but I saw Patty, Hain, Witcombe and their friends stagger and then watched as Amaya and his men were hit by the rebounding magic of their own conjurings. I didn’t know who had cast or what kind of spell he had attempted. But I had assumed that the dark sorcerers would all be warded in every way imaginable, including reflection spells. Fortunately, Amaya had followed my advice: His men were warded, too. He had even used protective magic on the men who weren’t weremystes, though a couple of them were knocked to the ground by the force of the reflected attack.
We had roughly equal numbers of runecrafters on each side, some more skilled than others, of course. But we were evenly matched. Except for Saorla.
“We are stalemated,” she said, a challenge in her eyes. “Is that not how it seems to you?”
It bothered me that she could give voice to what I had been thinking moments before. Was she reading my thoughts?
“Yes,” I said. “So perhaps you and your friends should go.”
“I do not think so.” She half-turned and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Patty stepped and spun, not toward me or Amaya and his companions, but toward one of the men standing near her. I recognized the motion, having seen it at Witcombe’s place the night before, and I saw the blade in her hand colored with that rich golden sunlight. But I didn’t have time to cry out a warning or cast a spell. I don’t even know what sort of crafting might have stopped her. There was nothing anyone could have done.
Her knife struck true and the man next to her went down, blood fountaining from the side of his neck.
My dad sucked in air through his teeth. “Good God.”
“Cast!” Patty shouted.
Light burst from the dying man’s body, from the blood on his neck and shoulders, chest and back. It was striated, gold from Hain was layered along with blue and green and red. I couldn’t help but think that there was something beautiful about it, even as those rainbows of magic leaped from the body in curving bolts that crackled and hissed like lightning.
Two of them arced toward my father and me; four more surged toward Amaya, Paco, Luis, and Rolon. They struck our chests, smashing into us with the force of freight trains, battering us to the ground.
I felt like I’d grabbed hold of a live wire and then been run over by the power truck that came to fix it. My father groaned.
“Dad?”
“I’m all right,” he said, sounding anything but.
In retrospect, I recognized the craftings. They had tried to control our magic, to bring on the phasing a few minutes early. That was why they had aimed the spell only at the weremystes, not bothering with Amaya’s other guards.
I forced myself to my feet. “All right, Amaya?”
Jacinto was still on the ground, though he was sitting up and rubbing his neck. He raised a hand in answer to my question.
“That didn’t work,” I said to Patty. “I guess we’ll all be going through the phasing together.”
She shook her head. “We won’t be going through them at all. As I told you the other day, dark magic has its advantages.”
“So you killed that man for nothing.”
“No. If it had worked, it would have saved us time, effort. And we want to see if we can control weremystes the way we do the weres. If not for your wardings, I think we would have succeeded.”
“You’re insane.”
“Enough,” Saorla said. “You heard her. The moon time is about to begin, and when it does, you, your father, and these others will be at the mercy of my weremystes, whom I protect from the moon. Or I can kill you all before the moon even rises.”
“So in your mind you’ve won already,” I said. “What’s stopping you from doing as you please?”
“A third choice. Surrender yourselves. Remove your wardings and submit yourselves to my power. You will live, you will be spared the phasing, as you call it, and you will serve the side that is destined to prevail in this coming war.”
“I’m not about to surrender to you. And I refuse to accept that my only choices are between death and betrayal of everything I believe in.”
“Then you’re a fool,” she said, snarling the words.
“You’re not the first to say so.”
I visualized the spell as I spoke, and released it before Saorla could answer. I didn’t know if it would work, and I didn’t have time enough to recite the elements. I just cast, as Namid had taught me. After what Rolon and I did to her in Bear’s house, I knew she would have warded herself against bullets. So I conjured a blade: my hand, her heart, and sharpest steel.
Saorla gasped, her eyes going wide. Blood stained the front of her dress, and she shrieked her pain and rage.
I knew I’d hurt her, and that was something. But I’d wanted to kill her, and, it seemed, I didn’t have the power to do so. An instant later I was in agony. Somehow I was on the ground again, magical spikes piercing my head, my chest, my hands.
I should kill you now, her voice whispered in my mind. You have earned a slow, agonizing death, and you shall have it. But I will have your blood and that of your father. And you will watch him die before I take your miserable life.
The anguish ended as suddenly as it had begun, leaving me gulping for air.
“Get up!” she said, speaking aloud this time.
I didn’t move.
“Get up right now or Leander Fearsson dies.”
My father helped me to my feet, his eyes locked on mine.
“Any ideas?” I mouthed.
He shook his head. “I’m already feeling the moon. I’ve got nothing. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not doing much better.” I cast a look Amaya’s way only to find that he was watching me. I read my own despair in his dark eyes.
We could use your help here, Namid, I said in my mind.
Saorla clapped her hands and laughed. The blood, I noticed, had vanished from her dress. For all her power, she had used her own blood to heal herself. Or to torture me. Whichever it was, I knew this was significant in some way, though I had no idea how or why.