Ivory Inferno

by LeAnn Mason

  “It is merely your word against mine. And I am loved in my town.”

  “Bullshit,” Allya coughed roughly, the curse hidden in the sound.

  “Actually, I have a spell recording the proceedings, and you have confessed,” Gloria said smoothly.

  “Well, in that case.” Circe shrugged like it didn’t matter. A flash of anger in her eyes was the only precursor to the violent twisting of the earth beneath the feet of everyone gathered. With a scream, the earth split, and Jasper, Gloria, and Elsie disappeared, dropped into the chasm.

  “No!” Allya yelled, lurching toward the place where her last remaining family member disappeared. “Rory, get Mae outta here!” She ordered the Regent before changing her trajectory and shifting as fast as any natural-born Shifter I’d seen, leaving her clothes lying in a shredded heap.

  Jason joined her in a shower of golden sparks. The two wolves taking off over unsteady ground toward where Circe continued to manipulate the earth around us. The dwarfs had scooted away from the crevasse where the Elders had disappeared. Their personal weapons drawn and gleaming in the spotty light filtering from between bare branches as the sun climbed higher in the mid-morning sky.

  The branches twisted and morphed into grasping bark-covered arms that reached for my guardians. While they chopped and hacked, the roots rose to tangle around their feet, bringing them into the dirt. They had to fight their way out. Every root or branch a dwarf cut with their ax recoiled as if burned, shriveling and curling upon itself as it lost the magic coursing through it. The cuts taking even the former vibrancy of life from the stump left behind.

  Those weapons were badass. No wonder everyone wanted one. Something to keep in mind. I ran my thumb along Birdie’s guard, feeling her readiness vibrate beneath my grasp.

  “Now then, it’s just us again. The way it should be. If I can no longer be Elder of Andersenville, I will find another position befitting my considerable power. Too bad the Lupo Coven has been annihilated. I could see myself doing great things with a man like Seth Lupo. I’d always had a bit of a thing for the man, but as you know, Mages and Witches don’t mix well.”

  “Stay behind me. I’m going to shift,” Nick instructed, pushing me bodily behind his large mass and taking up a defensive position to face off with the bat-shit-crazy Mage. “I won’t hurt you,” he murmured almost as if to himself before he disappeared in a shower of golden sparks much like Jason had prior. The roar that he let loose was enough to shake the already loose footing we stood upon but had surprisingly little effect on Circe’s forward march.

  “Not a chance I’m going to stand back here and cower,” I growled, pulling Birdie from the safety of her sheath. “You ready to kick some ass?” I asked the weapon, bringing Birdie to rest in my ready position. The blade arced overhead while she radiated an aura of readiness and strength.

  Nick charged, giant paw swiping as Circe entered his kill circle, stalling her advance. Stepping up his intimidation game, he hefted his oversized furry self onto strong back legs so that his enormous torso and horse-size head loomed menacingly.

  The Mage rolled her eyes with as much vigor as any teenage girl. A huff of derision escaped her before she flicked her wrist and sent a tree branch that was as big and solid as Teddy’s limbs, fired like a bullet from a gun, straight into his side. My bear careened several feet through the air, landing like an oversized sack of potatoes against the trunk of another tree, which wound its roots around the downed bear in a makeshift restraint system.

  “So, again, we find ourselves here. I like this better. We can truly test your mettle against my power. My mirror said you were the most powerful Mage when you’d lived in Andersenville. I couldn’t have that, couldn’t let a fledgeling, what, eleven-year-old live?” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, changing her stride so that she moved sideways to circle me. I matched her steps, never turning my eyes from her, Birdie poised and ready to strike.

  Her weapon was the very earth though. How could I fight that? Would I even see it coming? The others hadn’t.

  “Anyway, I sent Sam, one of my lovers, to rid me of you. He failed, but you were gone, and no one knew where or how. I assumed you’d made it to the forest but would readily die on your own. Looks as though I was wrong. It wasn’t until I received news of the ‘Scarlet Huntress’.” She used air quotes as she sneered Allya’s moniker, continuing her circle.

  “And then the human who tamed the lion… it seemed Grimm Hollow was teeming with new blood and upheaval. Imagine my surprise when news of an Asian-American, raven-haired, fire Mage was revealed to still be the most powerful Mage when I asked my trusty mirror. Naturally, I needed to see for myself… and then remedy the situation.” The evil lurking under her pristine veneer was straight up blazing like a neon sign now. She was a master manipulator, able to submerge such murderous tendencies so thoroughly.

  I really wanted to check that the others, any others, were still okay and kicking, but I refused to look away for even a moment. I couldn’t give Circe that opening to take me down. Again. I’d have to fight. That hadn’t been the point but was an outcome we had prepared for so that I stood a fighting chance

  I wasn’t a fool though. She was toying with me, wanting answers to some unknown, twisted questions she had floating around in that seriously messed up head of hers. But at least it gave the others time and kept her from launching a full-scale attack on me that I wasn’t sure I could escape from. “You were scared of a child. How does that feel?” Not smart to poke the proverbial bear, but I was her quarry. If she focused on me, she didn’t focus on anyone else.

  “Why didn’t you come to your father? Tell him what you thought I’d done? Tell him, the Mage Elder of Andersenville, that your mother was dead?”

  I flinched as her perfectly arched eyebrow raised in condescension, the words finding their mark, a chink forming in my armor. “My father had been lost to me for a long time. I couldn’t come to him with suspicions of you. You’d already warped his mind so that it wound around your manicured pinky.” I bit the words with disgust. It was how she operated.

  I hadn’t been close to my father since he’d taken Circe into his life. He wouldn’t have believed me, wouldn’t have saved me, only put me under the same roof as her. A proverbial fox in the henhouse. So the dwarfs had spirited me away and raised me as their own.

  “Well, that’s true. But then, we could have avoided all of... this.” As if a veil had lifted, I could suddenly hear the sounds of the struggles all around me, the grunts, growls, and yells. The clash of metal and thuds of large items as each fought their own little self-contained battle with some aspect of earth. All leaving Circe free to torment me unhindered. Birdie’s strength and confidence radiated through my hands, and I reaffirmed my position, buoyed my thoughts.

  Circe was going down. I would take her down. Now.

  Quick but careful, I slashed Birdie from overhead, slicing toward the juncture of Circe’s neck and shoulder. Off guard, Circe tripped a step to the rear, bringing her arm up to shield her face. Birdie’s razor edge bit into the skin from knuckle to wrist with frightening ease, leaving bright red blood streaming from the wound.

  I smiled in approval of the wound. It wasn’t only the deliverance of one brutal wound that could kill a person. I was more than happy to watch the life slowly leech from Circe’s body as I delivered a multitude of shallower slashes.

  Without pausing to appreciate my handiwork for more than a moment, I rotated my hands so that I was poised to bring Birdie’s edge back upward, making sure to use my shoulders and hips to really move the blade where and as smoothly as I wanted.

  But Circe called the earth to her, rocks and roots converging to create a mounded barrier. Birdie slid along the shield, splitting the earth as if butter with a hot knife. The magically placed material fell away from the blade’s edge as if physically repelled, leaving Circe exposed and utterly terrified on the other side. My smile returned, a little feral in its intensity as I again stepped forward, a
fox having trapped the hen.

  “It’s absolutely amazing what one can accomplish with the use of a good weapon. Did you know that dwarfs are renowned weaponsmiths? I’d never used Birdie here in actual combat and really wasn’t sure how we would fare. But when I noticed their axes seeming to cut through the magic animating your earthly weapons? Well, I hoped.” Twirling Birdie in a show of prowess and dexterity, I prepared to strike again, a final blow to eliminate a threat. Or, at least, render one unconscious, but she didn’t need to know that part.

  Poised and ready to strike, I took a moment to be more than grateful for those surly bearded men in my life. The reason I was alive and well-trained enough to do so.

  Circe, realizing her predicament, threw out her hand and twisted. With a renewed groan of protest, the ground split directly beneath my feet, and I was falling.

  CHAPTER 30

  M y descent was stopped when my body hit a ledge. Large enough to knock the wind from me and possibly break a rib or two, it was also big enough to hold me captive. Looking up through the new crevasse in the middle of the forest, one of many, it would seem, I pondered exactly how to get myself out of this mess.

  “Should have known better than to think it would be that easy. Jasper, hell, everyone I’d sparred with has handed my ass to me.” I found myself grumbling as I held my stinging ribs and listened to the sound of battles I could no longer see.

  “While I’ll admit you surprised me, little one, I am not so easily cowed,” Circe called down at me, a smirk plain in her voice. I couldn’t see it, or any of her features, as the sun was full in the sky, throwing her visage into shadow and forcing me to shield my eyes with my free hand.

  “Night, night.” She gave me a folded-hand wave with what I imagined to be a dramatic child-like pout. The movement was a signal to the earth to begin closing the ravine it had swallowed me within, and like a trash compactor, the dirt, clay, rock, and roots shuddered and quaked, threatening to eject me from the small platform I’d pulled myself upon. I didn’t have time to carefully sheath Birdie at my belt, so I needed to claw my way up and out with only one truly functioning arm.

  The jump to grab at a handful of gnarled roots tangled in a knot a few feet overhead reminded me just how bruised my ribs now were, the pain causing bursts of light to explode behind my eyelids. Climbing was going to suck, and that wouldn’t guarantee I made it out. It was that much harder to accomplish a rock climb when said rocks were vying to collapse and smoosh you.

  “Wha–” Circe’s words cut off, piquing my interest as I continued fumbling up the crumbly, steep earthen wall. Her silhouette was thrown into relief as something much larger loomed behind her, lifting her off her feet before lumbering forward with a mighty roar. She struggled, kicking and writhing, but the bear was just too strong.

  “Teddy!” Thank the gods the big lug was all right. Last I’d seen him, he was wrapped up, literally, by Circe’s potent earth magic. As if in response to my voice, the bear roared again, this time twisting his torso. Opening the front legs he’d wrapped around Circe, he threw the Mage forcefully away from his body. Right into the pit.

  I watched, stunned, as she screamed, flailing past me like a fledgling bird realizing it didn’t have the feathers to fly and plummeted to the ground. Or, in this case, into it.

  Circe’s plight and subsequent terror seemed to have distracted her from closing up the earth and muddy wall. Maybe while she’d been “dealing” with me, her magic had weakened on the other groups, and they too had recuperated like Nick. I could only hope that was the case as her yell cut off with a thump.

  I took the cringe-worthy sound as evidence that Circe was out of commission and tried to extricate myself once again. As I prepared to push upward with my leg and stretch to another handhold, this one a rock, I startled at the loss of light, surprised by the large mass lying overhead at the mouth of the hole I was lost within.

  A huge, furred paw slid carefully down the wall in front of me. Long, narrow, gleaming nails I knew to be sharp enough to disembowel… Oh gods, could I actually grab that paw? Nick’s pleading chuff tugged at my ears and my heart.

  “C’mon, girl, give the poor bear the benefit of the doubt, yeah? He’s got a better reach than any of us up here do.”

  “Allya? Allya!” Oh, thank heavens. Circe’s crazy earthquake acts hadn’t succeeded in killing off all my friends. Buoyed by the knowledge, I sucked it up and reached high, a few inches past the rock I’d been aiming for previously. Swallowing heavily, I wrapped my left hand around the center claw. Cringing as it retreated, my body slid heavily along the earthen wall while my right hand clenched Birdie so tightly I worried she might never pry loose. I had the presence of mind to keep the arm extended and aimed away from any of my friends and supporters gathering at the mouth of the hole.

  Just as my wrist scraped along the outer ledge, chest and arm painfully smashed and road-rashed from the lift, an explosion of rocks and debris flew up from deeper inside the crevasse. Reflexively, everyone turned away or hit the deck, and I was no exception. I gasped, and my fingers spasmed with the shock, my weight pulling me to slide down the claw several inches to the point I barely hung on.

  Fear gripped me as I watched Teddy’s free paw swipe toward our precarious joining, a reflex, worry over me falling and thinking he was helping. A coiled knot of dread sat heavy in my stomach as those razor-sharp claws came ever closer. Closing my eyes and pressing my face into my extended arm so I wouldn’t have to watch, I waited for the pain.

  Suddenly, the singular claw I’d been clinging to disappeared, vanishing completely from my grip. My eyes popped open in surprise and then fear. I watched the burst of golden light transform Nick from bear to his human form. Warm, thick digits meeting my exposed flesh, gripping my forearm.

  “I’ve got you. Hold on,” Nick’s graveled voice assured when my startled eyes met his where they bored into me from the ledge. “Don’t let go, Firebird.”

  The sound of the dwarfs’ nickname from Nick’s lips brought an involuntary smile to my own. I couldn’t help it. “I like how that sounds coming from you.”

  “Maybe I’ll have to make a habit of it then.”

  “Guys, I’m thinking we get everyone back topside, make sure the whole Grimm tribe is good to go, and then have like a massive dinner. I’m starving,” Allya said in typical, bubble-busting fashion.

  “All right, pull me up.” I was ready for this all to be done. Food didn’t sound bad either, but with all of the dwarfs out here in the woods, playing a game of entrapment, we wouldn’t be going to the diner.

  “And please, would all the Shifters find a way to hide their… personal areas?” Jasper said smoothly, patting at his clothes as if that alone would make him seem tidier. Nick worked to pull me back up and out of the pit as life returned to the forest.

  “Happy to oblige. It’s the least I could do in the current situation, I suppose,” Gloria said blithely from Jasper’s side. Elsie huffed a small laugh as she, too, pulled up to stand with the growing hoard while Gloria went about some kind of spell that created clothing. I’d heard she could do that but hadn’t seen it. Pretty cool party trick if you asked me.

  A wild scream barreled up from below, bringing with it another volley of debris. Looked like the Evil Queen wasn’t dead yet. Goodie. As everyone ducked again and hid their bodies from the rocks and chunks of earth spewing up, I felt a tendril wrap around my feet and yank. It wasn’t like in the movies where, as if in slow motion, the victim’s hand slips and slides away from the rescuer, leaving them to watch on in horror as the victim fell away, screaming, into darkness.

  It was much too fast for all of that. One moment, I was being hoisted to safety, and the next, I was falling backward into the darkness before my friends and family knew anything was amiss. There wasn’t even time to scream before I hit the dirt with enough force to knock me senseless, Birdie falling from my grip.

  My head spun. My ribs ached as I tried to drag in a breath. My body didn�
�t work right. I couldn’t orient myself. I felt like I was going to be sick as I flipped onto my belly, coughing and spluttering, lungs attempting to take in air. The world spun around me in the barely lit depths, making the sensation even worse.

  “Now, where were we?” Circe taunted, though the hitch in her words voiced that she was at least in some kind of pain from her own fall. The high-pitched sound of metal skipping across earth declared she’d kicked my blade away.

  “Bianca!” I couldn’t tell who, exactly, had yelled, but it was several people who were all now at least fifteen feet above me. No wonder I felt like a ton of bricks. It’d be a miracle if I hadn’t broken something. I couldn’t be sure because, well, everything hurt like hell, but it didn’t matter. Not now. Only one thing mattered: survival.

  If she defeated me, she would only turn on my friends. It was now my job to keep them safe. Like Allya had mentioned that day in the woods, knowing that you had people you would do anything to protect slid one heck of steel rod along your spine.

  If only I could create fire from nothing, then maybe I’d stand a chance. But alas, that was not to be. Circe, tired of watching me flop around, put a boot to my stomach, forcing me to expel my hard-won air. “You really love kicking me while I’m down, don’t you?” I coughed, the words causing me to dry heave.

  “I’m nothing if not opportunistic,” she retorted with a pained grunt, sliding a second kick into my belly, hissing with the impact that flipped me onto my back near the sheer wall of the pit. She wasn’t a hundred percent right then either.

  A sudden burst of light exploded above me, and I had to shield my eyes, but then, so did Circe, who limped backward a step. I spied Birdie just out of reach and knew I needed to make my move to retrieve her.