by Steve McHugh
“Can you buy me time?” Lucie asked.
“To do what?”
“A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice,” she told me as she unbuttoned her jacket and let it fall to the floor, exposing the bandages wrapped around her arms.
“Sure—no idea how long, though.”
I left Lucie alone and walked around the side of the burning building.
“Decided to join the fun?” Helios asked as I walked toward him.
“Sure, let’s try that fire trick again.”
Helios opened his mouth to breath fire once again, but I threw I a bubble of air at his open maw, which caused him to stop suddenly lest he inhale his own flame. He crushed his jaws together; creating a huge amount of pressure that destroyed the magic.
Helios grabbed his hooded coat and tore it free, throwing it onto the ground as two large wings unfurled on his back. They weren’t the brilliant red and yellow they’d been when I’d last seen them outside Magali’s house. Due to the fading sun, their color was now a dull yellow, but they were still impressive.
He beat his wings once, avoiding a jet of flame that shot from my hands. I turned the jet into a whip and threw it up at a hovering Helios, but he avoided it with ease and roared more fire at me, causing me to move back.
“Are we done with this?” Helios asked. “This feeling-out process?”
“Sure,” I said and created a shield of air that covered my entire body. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Helios dove at me, his wings driving him forward with enormous power. I didn’t move until the last moment, when I used a blast of air to throw myself up over Helios, who couldn’t turn around in time to stop me from landing, wrapping a tendril of air around his feet, and giving it a giant pull, which stopped his ability to fly.
Helios crashed to the ground and tumbled into the side of the nearest building. “You’re beginning to try my patience,” he said as he got back to his feet, just in time for me to smash a column of air magic into his face.
He dropped to one knee but then suddenly launched himself toward me, catching me with a punch that sent me flying back through the air until I struck the side of the still-burning building at an awkward angle and felt at least one rib snap in protest.
I dropped to my knees as my breath left me, and pain shot up and down the side of my torso. I used the building to pull myself to my feet but wasn’t quick enough to avoid an incoming Helios, who swept me off the ground and into the air, holding me by my throat as I struggled to break free. Two swift punches to my ribs ended my fight. He found the dagger that Kurt had given me, and tossed it aside.
“I did tell you to leave. I said I’d kill you if I saw you again,” Helios said with no trace of malice or anger, just disappointment.
I tried to plunge a blade of air into his chest, but scales now covered his entire body, an effective armor against such weapons. I didn’t have the strength to drive the blade through them.
“My sister will have to get over you.” With that he threw me at the burning building.
I wrapped a dense shield of air around me, which probably kept me alive, but didn’t soften the impact of a forty-foot fall much more than to stop me from turning into a paste. I crashed into the side of the building with enough force that I didn’t come to a stop until I’d gone through the opposite wall and impacted with the concrete beyond.
“You okay?” Lucie asked as she ran up to me.
I coughed up blood and tried not to think about the pain in my body. I managed a nod, although it was hardly what anyone would have called enthusiastic. I glanced up at Lucie, who had removed the rest of her clothes and was busy unwrapping the bandages that covered her body. For the briefest of moments, I wondered how hard I’d hit my head.
I shook my head and took another look. Lucie wasn’t naked; she wore some sort of skin-tight shorts that stopped mid-thigh and a bra-like top that appeared to be more functional than sexy. The rest of her body that I could see, from her neck to her bare feet, was covered in tattooed runes. Dozens and dozens of them adorned her body. Only her still bandage-wrapped hands and feet remained covered.
“You done staring?” Lucie asked. “Lots of women have these.”
“Not them, the runes. I’ve never seen an enchanter cover so much of their skin in runes before.”
“The runes give me different powers, once activated: strength, speed, thicker skin, increased healing. They have to remain covered, though; they take a lot of energy to keep active. I only use them when I must.”
She unwrapped the bandages on her hands, showing more runes on wrists and fingers, before tearing off the bandages on her feet to reveal the same. Apart from her face and her covered breasts, there wasn’t any part of her that wasn’t tattooed.
“You sure you’re ready?” she asked.
“Pain,” I said. “Body is healing. I’ll be fine.”
Lucie placed her left hand on her right arm and shivered slightly before doing the opposite with her right hand. Then, no matter that I wasn’t with her, she walked around the building.
“Ah, I don’t believe this is the sort of thing a woman should be wearing in public,” Helios said, his tone mocking. “Maybe that’s the sort of thing you should wear once you find a nice husband to settle down with.” He began to laugh
Helios’s laugher was cut off by the sound of flesh striking flesh, once and then a second time, before there was a loud thud as someone struck the building that I’d just impacted with. A second later Lucie emerged out of the hole. “You helping, or what?”
I stood and walked through the ruined building as Lucie rubbed her cheek. “He’s got a good left hook,” she told me with a smile.
She sprinted out of the building back toward Helios, who dodged out of her way and right into a jet of fire that leaped from my hands. He shielded himself with one of his wings, and Lucie caught him in the jaw with a punch that sent Helios tumbling to the ground.
Helios scrambled away, lifting up off the ground and not stopping until he was thirty or forty feet above us, which is when he unleashed another roar of flame, which slammed into the ground between Lucie and me, separating us. Some of the fire splashed onto my jacket sleeve, immediately burning through the fabric and forcing me to tear off both it and my shirt in frantic haste before the fire could touch my skin.
I flung missiles of hardened air at Helios, who dodged them with ease, but it gave me time to get back to the warehouse, where I found Lucie unhooking the chain that would allow her to pull open the shutter for the main loading dock.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She appeared to notice me for the first time. “Why are you topless?”
“Fire hot,” I said, my words oozing sarcasm. “Why are you giving him an easier way to hit us?”
“You’re going to throw me at him.”
The words took a moment to sink in. “What?”
“Use your air magic to throw me. At him. Can you do that?”
“It’s not a question of ‘can’; it’s more a question of sanity.” Part of the ceiling above my head clattered to the floor beside me and sizzled.
“He’s going to get in here eventually. We might as well take the fight to him in the air.”
“He won’t come in here—not enough room to fly—but he will have an easier time of hitting us from outside.”
“Even more reason to help me move this chain.”
I cleaved through the steel chain with a blade of fire, and the shutter flew up a second later. I wrapped my air magic around Lucie, pouring more and more power into it in the hope that it would carry her far enough and with enough speed.
I wrenched the magic back, creating tension, and the second I saw Helios hovering, I released it. Lucie was thrown upward toward Helios at incredible velocity, and for a second I wondered if I’d miscalculated. But once I saw that smug grin on Helios’s face melting away, I knew I’d gotten it right. He tried to move out of the way, but Lucie had taken the remains of the ch
ain with her, and wrapping it around her wrist she lashed out with it like a whip, wrapping it around Helios’s arm, using her own momentum to travel behind Helios and land on his back.
I watched with a mixture of awe and fear as she held on, raining punch after punch down on the back of his head while he tried in vain to claw at her with his deadly talons. I couldn’t do anything to help her—any blast of magic had an equal chance of hitting her, instead of him, as they spun and twisted in the air.
Helios screamed in rage as Lucie wrapped the chain around his neck and pulled back with all her force, but he grabbed the chain and yanked it forward, forcing Lucie to let go before she flew over his head. She grabbed hold of one of his wings, and for the briefest of moments everything appeared to be silent . . . until the quiet was ruptured by the sound of Helios’s wing being snapped, followed by his screams of agony, which echoed around the complex.
The next thing I knew, both of them were tumbling toward the ground at high speed. I sprinted from the warehouse and created a cushion of air in the hope that it might save Lucie’s life, but they both impacted with the ground so hard that my magic vanished in an instant.
I ran over as Helios was struggling back to his feet, their crash having left a small crater in the concrete, and knocked him away with a column of air that sent him spiraling into a nearby wall. It wouldn’t stop him forever, but hopefully it would be long enough.
Lucie made a soft moaning noise as she moved toward me; she was covered in cuts that drenched her in blood. She managed to get to her knees, then pitched forward, although not before I saw the five puncture wounds just above her waist on the right side. Thick blood poured from the holes, and her blood stained my arms and chest as I lifted her up and carried her back into the warehouse, stopping only to pick up Helios’s discarded jacket on the way. Mine was a charred mess and of zero use to anyone.
I laid her down near the rear of the building and checked for a pulse, which was slow but steady.
“Is he dead?” she asked, almost making me jump; she’d been limp since I’d picked her up, and I’d assumed she was unconscious.
“I doubt it. Stay here. You’ll be fine.”
“I know.” She moved slightly and winced with pain.
I tore a strip off the jacket, using it to wrap around Lucie’s abdomen. “You need to press hard here,” I explained.
She pressed one hand against the makeshift bandage before I laid the rest of the jacket over her. “I’ll be back soon.”
I walked out of the warehouse, watching Helios as he leaned against a wall. He smiled, which infuriated me more than him trying to breathe fire on me.
Blood magic allows me to use not only my blood, but also the blood of others to power me. In this instance, that meant Lucie’s blood. My blood magic flared to life, the black glyphs running along my palm and arms, and immediately mixing with the air magic I threw at Helios. The power was incredible, certainly more than I’d ever managed to feel from using the blood of an enchanter before. It coursed through me. It was as if Lucie’s blood contained an almost endless supply of power. Lucie was no mere enchanter; there was obviously more to her than she first appeared to possess.
Helios tried to dodge the blast, but with one broken wing he wasn’t fast enough and had to settle for using his working wing as a shield. But even then he was thrown back into the building behind him.
I walked toward him while using my air magic to pin him in place. The nightmare inside me made its presence known for the first time. I felt a need to use more and more magic, to push myself further. I ignored it, hoping it would stay quiet while I ensured that Helios felt the full brunt of my fury, and after a second it fell silent.
I increased the pressure of the air magic as I walked toward Helios, causing him to cry out in pain. I took another step forward, and he roared fire directly at me, causing me to drop the air magic to use it to protect myself. It was all Helios needed, and pain shot through my arm, swiftly followed by the burning sensation of silver. I turned to see a small blade protruding from my shoulder. I grabbed hold of it, but the entire shaft was just one giant blade, and it sliced into my fingers and palm.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Helios quipped while he walked toward me, carrying more blades in his hand. “You didn’t think I’d come unprepared, did you? I know your power, Nathan. I know what you can and can’t do. And you can’t pull that blade out without causing even more pain to yourself.”
He threw the second blade and it struck my thigh. I dropped to my knees. “Lucky you,” I said with a grimace.
I started using my air magic, forcing myself to ignore the pain as I wrapped hardened air around the dagger in my shoulder in an effort to pull it free, but Helios made a tut-tutting noise. “Now, don’t do that. I can see you using your magic. Just stay there like a good boy. Maybe Selene won’t have to mourn you after all.”
As he walked off, I used my blood magic to push the blades out of my body. It was incredibly painful and caused me to shout out, but by the time Helios had realized what I was doing, the blades had already clattered to the ground.
I turned as he sprinted back toward me, his mouth agape, ready for another blast of flame, but I threw air at his face, which he had to move to avoid, putting him right in the path of my blade of air. It caught him under the rib cage, between the scales that protected his body, and he sagged forward as I twisted the blade before extinguishing it.
He crashed to his knees, blood pouring from the wound. “Selene will never forgive you,” he almost hissed.
I paused for a nanosecond—not even long enough for a humming bird’s wings to beat once, but that split second was all he needed as he pushed himself up toward me, pinning my arms behind me in an astonishing display of speed for someone with his injuries. He used his good wing to encircle me and keep me still. I ignored the searing pain of my injured ribs being crushed, and head-butted him on his nose, again and again with a crunch, but he still refused to release me.
I inhaled, heating the air up inside my lungs and then breathed it directly into his reptilian eyes. The contact made Helios roar in pain. He released me, and I fell to the ground, my ribs screaming at me to stop making things worse. Helios began pawing at his eyes, rubbing them with the heel of his palm in a desperate attempt to stop the burning.
I scrambled away as Helios started flailing around, trying to keep himself from being attacked again, although my entire focus was now on learning how to breathe again. After a few seconds, my magic began to heal me, and I was soon getting back to my feet, but Helios had stopped moving and was looking right at me, despite his injured eyes.
“I can smell you,” he said and grinned horribly, showing bloody teeth and lips. “I’m going to feast on your heart, you little fucker.” He ran right at me, swiping at my chest with his deadly talons. I avoided them in enough time to miss being torn in half, but not enough to avoid the talons from still ripping at my flesh.
He was faster and stronger than me, but he was also really, really angry and not thinking straight. I dodged more blows, using a blast of air to push him off balance with each punch, until I’d backed up against the wall, dropping to my knees to avoid a blow that tore through the brick like it wasn’t even there.
I shot up from the ground, with my fist wrapped in air, and caught Helios under the jaw with a punch that would have killed a human. His head snapped back, and he staggered away, but he kicked out at me, catching me in the chest and driving me through the wall.
I fell to the floor inside the building, covered in dust and bits of brick and wood, pushing part of a table off me and trying to take a moment to ready myself for continuing the fight. Helios dove through the building, almost landing on me in the process. He grabbed me by the throat, and I threw a punch, but he blocked it easily, caught my hand, and before I could do anything, he’d crushed the bones in my fingers like they were kindling. This time it was my own screams of pain that filled my ears. There was no use in blocking out the agony, s
o I took a deep breath and drove one thin blade of air into his eye. Helios cried out and threw me aside with enough force to send me flying back through the wall to the outside. I hit the ground at an awkward angle, with only my magic stopping me from breaking an arm or worse.
I was crippled and exhausted, with a creeping sense of the nightmare’s darkness settling inside me as the dusk turned into night outside. I needed to finish this fight, and quickly. I stood and discovered that Helios’s claws had also raked my stomach, producing a steady stream of blood, which I used to draw a rune on the back of my ruined hand, with only moderate pain. Using my broken hand to draw on my good one, however, was such an incandescent agony that I had to force myself to finish. Finally, I used my blood magic to charge the spell and waited for Helios to reappear, which he did a moment later, destroying the remains of the wall and narrowly missing a large section of roof that crashed down, almost landing on him.
He roared in rage at me. I calmed myself, raised both hands, and said, “Effete.” Energy left me in one huge, agonizing rush, and I crashed to my knees. I’d marked Helios before he’d thrown me back through the wall, and while the spell managed to drop him to his knees, he was powerful enough to ensure that it didn’t completely take him out of the fight. He was soon moving back toward me, albeit at a slow stagger.
I forced myself back to my feet. The curse had taken everything I had left, and I knew it, but I was not about to die kneeling. Helios was going to win. I was furious with myself as he moved slowly toward me, blood streaming from one ruined eye. The one I’d burned would heal; the other, the one I’d stabbed, probably not so much.
I doubted he had much left either, and I motioned for him to hurry up. I didn’t have long before the effect of the curse would start on me, and I wanted to get this done.
He was six or seven steps away from me when the blast of ice smashed into him, taking him off his feet and propelling him up against the burned-out office. Helios roared in defiance as the stream of ice just kept coming, covering him from his feet up to his neck. The combination of our fight and the time of day had left him with nothing to fight back with, and he soon fell silent.