Raphael blew out a stream of fire to get her attention.
"Yes, your darkness. Are we disturbing your nap again?"
"Shoot your kitty familiar the other direction. The grass is dry over here and lightning is flammable."
"You’re too lazy to move. There’s hardly any grass in the desert. Don’t worry, I’ll keep the fox demon far from your scaly hide."
“Raphael wants me to summon Rai the other direction,” Elizabeth informed George and Daemon, walking around the circle.
“Try again, slowly,” Daemon said.
“Gather your magic into your hand, like you’re going to throw it, then let the magic trickle into your weapon,” George instructed her.
Slowly, trickle. Don’t blow anything up, in other words.
She swung the dagger in a small circle out in front of her, concentrating on the feel of the cool metal handle in her grip and the way the sharp blade cut through the air.
Closing her eyes, she severed her mind off from the others, doing her best to shut down whatever connection Raphael had to her as well.
Lightning sparked in her blood, feeding on the rich magic from Dragos and the Wastes, a vivid reminder of how stunted her power had been, surviving between the human realm and the edge.
The magic she fed into the dagger felt like it could stream forever at the trickling pace George had demanded, without ever running dry.
“Very good,” Daemon praised her. She opened her eyes to see the dagger glowing white hot. “Call your familiar’s name and strike out with your dagger when you’re ready,” he said.
“Rai!” she called out like she was executing a kata, shouting and slashing out with the dagger.
It cut through the wind almost soundlessly, until lightning flew from the end.
The bolt hit the ground with a thunderous explosion, about a quarter mile away, throwing up rock and dust like a bomb had gone off.
“A trickle,” George reminded her.
“That was barely a spark of lightning. I think the dagger amplified it or something,” she muttered back to him.
“That’s not how it works,” Daemon informed her. “Now focus,” he ordered.
“I was concentrating. I tried really hard,” she whined.
Although she hadn’t expected to get it right the first try, they could cut her some slack.
Daemon grabbed her forehead from behind, directing her head to point her gaze towards the spot that she had tried to blow up with her lightning.
The dust was still clearing, but it was obvious that something powerful was hiding in the settling cloud of debris.
“I did it,” she exclaimed, awed.
Foxed to Meet You
Rai’s first step out of the dust made the ground tremble.
Elizabeth was pretty sure Raphael wasn’t napping anymore, but she still turned briefly to give him a quick look.
She was reassured when she saw him standing at attention.
Now, she had to keep her promise and prevent Rai from attacking Raphael’s scaly hide.
"Worry about keeping yourself protected, lightning-witch. I can always fly out of reach."
Lightning-witch must be an upgrade from little air-witch.
She tried to focus on her familiar, ignoring Raphael’s reassurances.
Her demon fox could fly, too.
Rai let out a roar as she got a good look at her surroundings. She didn’t charge forward, managing to keep an eye on both Raphael and the rest of them by the circle.
It seemed like Rai was just expressing her vocal enjoyment of being let out.
Elizabeth had no idea if familiars felt caged or leashed to their respective elementals—when inside of their bodies—but it seemed possible.
Maybe it was like letting a genie out of its lamp.
Elizabeth had to hope she had control over her very powerful demon.
“What should I do?” she whispered.
“Let’s start with what you should not do,” George suggested, much louder. “First thing, don’t do anything that makes you look weak, like whispering.”
“Don’t run,” Daemon added.
“Don’t scream,” George offered for his turn.
"Don’t try to pet it,” Raphael added.
Raphael obviously had noticed her stroking his sides when she had first gotten on him for the flight over here.
“Okay, I think we’ve covered the ‘don’t do,’ so what about the secret to controlling her?” Elizabeth asked, louder this time.
“The list of ‘don’t do it’ is much longer, but for expediency sake, we’ll skip to things to try doing,” George said.
Rai took another step forward, red eyes zeroing in on George.
“You need to realize that your familiar isn’t fully sentient. This is an extension of your magical soul, materialized, and it is mostly formed with power and instinct. Only a highly charged familiar can express more individual thought, and that won’t last long,” Daemon told her.
A powerful, instinctual beast made from elemental magic.
Her mouth dried up as Rai’s red eyes met hers. If Rai was riding instinct, Elizabeth would say hunger was the forefront instinct for her fox demon.
Perhaps it had to do with just how starved Elizabeth had left her magic over the years.
The famine was over, but Rai had been called to a feast the very first time that she’d been materialized in the field they’d been attacked.
Now, Elizabeth didn’t have any zombie-vampire snacks handy.
"She certainly looks intimidating, but she has to do more than stare your enemies down if you want to fight with your kitty,” Raphael commented.
It got her familiar’s attention, even though he hadn’t spoken out loud—still in dragon form.
Elizabeth and Rai were one, connected despite her familiar being materialized as a separate being.
The thunder of Rai’s forward march toward the dragon was nothing like the prowl of a cat, despite Raphael’s insistence on calling her fox demon a kitty.
Elizabeth wasn’t worried about Raphael being able to defend an attack, partly because he was so damn big that even Rai would have difficulty choking him down, but also because he projected too much calm.
Even the shaking of the ground as Rai got closer didn’t get him to take even one step back.
“Don’t worry over me,” Raphael told her.
How could she not?
He wasn’t her enemy. He might even be a friend.
Elizabeth wanted to protect him.
“You’re here to practice fighting, not play with friends,” Raphael said.
He was being grouchy.
She turned her head slightly, addressing her two mates.
“Last time Rai attacked the vampires on her own, so—uh, how do I get her do it again? Except, maybe, with less annihilation. We need Raphael to fly us home.”
Daemon laughed. “Good to see your priorities are straight. She’d make an excellent strategist, George.”
George didn’t laugh.
“Her familiar is bigger than Dragomir,” he commented, taking the threat Rai posed more seriously.
“Not bigger than me,” Raphael proudly declared in all of their heads.
“Stop messing around!” she ordered, getting more nervous as Rai neared Raphael.
“If he doesn’t do anything to threaten her, she won’t harm him,” Daemon said.
“I thought the whole point was for me to learn to harm, or not harm, using my familiar. You’re making it seem like she gets to decide everything,” Elizabeth groused. “Victoria directed her familiar to attack George. I saw her give the tiger commands.”
“She fed her tiger magic, not commands. You can suggest to your familiar, tempt their instincts into following your wishes, but to order your soul to do something against its will is impossible without sacrificing it,” George told her.
He made it sound so much more complicated than she’d expected—not a matter of power and strength, but instead, the will of her sou
l?
She had never looked at magic as more than the sum of electrical signals that she sent to another’s mind or redirecting the current in the wind.
George was talking about the spiritual aspects of magic.
“I’m not ready for this,” she admitted, chickening out.
Rai’s head snapped over to look at her.
“Ask Rai to sit,” Daemon suggested, ignoring Elizabeth’s panic.
“I really think we should call Rai back and talk about this first, so I have a better understanding and—”
“Sit, now!” George snapped at her, the natural command in his voice almost sending her to a seat on the ground.
Rai ignored him, but George wasn’t ordering the fox demon.
He was telling Elizabeth to straighten her spine and prove her mettle. She felt very much like a cadet under his critical supervision.
It was exactly what she needed, snapping her uncertainty better than any gentle pat on the back.
She closed her eyes and tried to enter her familiar’s mind.
The concept was a bit fuzzy, Daemon having said her familiar was a creature of power and instinct—but her lightning connected almost eerily fast, showing her the world as Rai saw it.
Everything was in shades of power from Rai’s perspective. The demon familiar’s fiery eyes gave a red glow to everything.
No wonder the zombie-vampires couldn’t escape Rai, it was like having infrared vision tuned to magic.
Faint shimmering of magic emanated from the green grass, growing in determined spouts on the rocky foothills of Dragos, spilling onto the Wastes.
Rocks glowed dimly with dormant energy, dark power waiting to be utilized.
There was a large, fiery ball of power as bright as the sun coming from Raphael.
It reminded Elizabeth of how infinitely greater the dragon energy had looked when she had dipped inside their minds for the first time at the banishment caves.
A humungous fire that Elizabeth could never extinguish, but had merely put to sleep.
Daemon and George were powerful as well, but their lights were dimmer, walled off inside them, while Raphael’s magic was over him like a second skin.
Rai could actually see Raphael’s familiar.
Elizabeth blinked, although it wasn’t her own eyes that were glimpsing the energy-form.
The ball of energy twisted and stretched out, forming the outlines of Raphael’s dragon as Rai focused.
She needed Rai to sit in order to demonstrate their thoughts connected.
Elizabeth thought of sitting pretty, so she could be admired.
She complimented Rai on her paw tuffs and long neck as the familiar complied.
“Good. Send Rai closer to Raphael. I have a theory about his torq that I want to test,” George said.
George’s voice seemed muffled, kind of like when she tried to use her lightning magic through her shield.
Red colour deepened over the dragon as Rai looked at Raphael, feeling a pull that kept her attention.
Rai wanted to explore the sky, but Raphael’s dragon was content to simply stand there for her inspection.
Rai stood and pranced over to the dragon.
She tried yipping at him, dancing close enough to snap her jaws playfully at the dragon’s long, scaly tail to encourage him to take flight.
The dragon swatted her with his tail, sending a stream of fire over Rai’s head.
Rai leaped up and licked his flame, tasting the power.
Stupid dragon was afraid his fire would hurt her, but Rai was an elemental. Magic alone couldn’t harm her, no matter its strength.
Sending her own flame with twisted lighting to singe the ground at the dragon’s feet, Rai yipped again in amusement.
The torq heated on Elizabeth’s neck, pulling her out of Rai’s mind.
The fox felt it, too. Rai bounded forward, one pounce away from leaping onto to Raphael’s dragon to play rougher.
"Your kitty is untrained,” Raphael complained.
"Can I help it if you look like a big ball of yarn for her to bat around?" Elizabeth sassed him.
“I’m going to throw a few rocks at Raphael. Think about protecting him.” George whispered into her ear, not risking breaking her mental connections and focus with adding his own telepathy.
His effort was appreciated. Elizabeth probably could have managed it if George using telepathy as well, but speaking helped ground her.
It was a slippery slope once she entered Rai’s mind, easy to lose herself to the familiar’s animal instinct.
The first rock was so small that Elizabeth didn’t even see it hit. The next one was only a bit larger, but George aimed for Raphael’s snout, and it got a response, although perhaps not the one he’d expected.
Dragon flame was hotter than anything a vampire had thrown at her. Raphael’s blue was almost electric, powerful arcs of superheated flame shooting mere inches above George’s head.
She forced herself to relax and not worry about protecting George. Flame made him harder.
On the other hand, she was going to have to shield if Raphael kept messing around—since George was standing right behind her.
“Any time now,” George spat out as he threw a much larger rock. It was more like a small boulder.
“Protect Raphael!” she hollered at Rai. The fox peered over at her.
Raphael spun and swatted at the rock with his tail, batting it away.
"You don’t need to say it out loud, sweetheart. Think it, feel the need to protect. Keep yourself open to your familiar, so she can feed from your magic. Remember, Rai is a part of you and your wills are bound together,” Daemon told her.
Raphael seemed to have caught on that George was purposely trying to rouse a response from Rai.
He focused more on ducking instead of retaliating himself.
George escalated throwing even bigger rocks and sending multiple volleys from all directions that tested Raphael’s speed.
"Protect him."
Rai roared and the ground trembled. George swore a Marenian curse behind her that toasted her ears.
A wall of fire from Rai—that Raphael had no chance of ducking—swallowed his huge dragon body whole.
Elizabeth’s connection to Raphael suddenly cut off, the silence deadening to her lightning, like cutting off sensory feedback.
“You were supposed to protect him!” she screamed to Rai, clenching her hands at her sides, helpless as she watched the impenetrable wall of fire crackle. “Daemon, please,” she sobbed out.
George threw a chunk of the ground, the size of a bus, at Rai to smother the familiar, and hopefully, its fire. The earth hit with a bang and then crumbled.
Elizabeth unclenched her hands and ran towards the still burning inferno her magic had created.
Daemon shouted after her, changing to telepathy as she flew across the ground using air.
"Use your sword to call Rai back. Pull on your magic feeding Rai and make her return,” Daemon instructed.
Instinct forced Elizabeth to ignore Daemon’s advice for the moment.
The closer she got to the flames, the more she felt sure that Raphael was okay.
The torq around her neck felt warm, almost alive, a connection she instinctively knew would go cold if he died and the magic was completely cut off.
She might not be able to use her lightning to reach Raphael—due to Rai’s fire blocking it—but the Torq had a deeper connection that could only be severed with death. At least, she hoped her instincts were right.
Turning to ash in Maeren wasn’t reversible, as in the human realm.
Rai’s red eyes caught her as she approached. Elizabeth slowed down, so they could examine each other the last few steps that Elizabeth took towards the fire.
Although Elizabeth couldn’t see through the wall of magic, she could appreciate that it seemed to circle around.
"I think Rai circled Raphael for protection. I’m going to try to break the circle myself. Wait for me.”
She sent her thoughts to both of her mates, only a few seconds behind her.
They stopped their approach, but she could tell it was an effort and against their experienced judgement.
It showed a lot of trust in her.
Putting her hand in Rai’s fire took more effort than she ever wanted anyone else to know.
She blocked her thoughts from the others, even cutting off Rai, in order to be sure none of them would pick up on her fear.
George’s practice with shielding hadn’t eased her abhorrence of fire even one degree. She’d been burned so deep that the scars were permanent, but she wouldn’t let them restrict her.
It was her magic and she could claim it back.
Even repeating it out loud—like a mantra—as she thrust her hand into the fire barrier, it still came as a surprise when the magic licked her in welcome.
She had never been able to use fire magic herself—probably never would, even if she could, due to her fear—but it felt amazing to touch magic that was almost hers.
The power in fire was different than lightning. It was more liquid than the jagged bolts, a little slower to climb around her arms, but spreading further and covering every little inch of her skin.
It wrapped her in warmth, snaking down her body as she took another step into the circle, then another, that brought her face an inch from the dancing flames.
Taking a deep breath, she entered through the wall of flame of the circle’s barrier and was engulfed in fire.
"Did you tell your kitty to trap me?" Raphael asked.
He didn’t really look any worse for being in the centre of an inferno.
It must be like the eye of a storm, wild outside and calm in the middle, where he was being protected.
Although she no longer believed Rai intended to harm Raphael, Rai’s aggressive form of protection could certainly be interpreted as trapping Raphael.
"Couldn’t you just fly out?" Elizabeth asked.
"I’d rather not singe my wingtips. It leaves soot on my knuckles for days."
She walked over to Raphael, stroking one of his magnificent wings, held close to his body.
He took a big breath that expanded his chest in and out, the torq seeming to almost hum as she reached higher and stroked his neck.
"Thank you for helping me practice with Rai. I’ll try to bring down the circle now. I asked Rai to protect you, not trap,” Elizabeth explained.
Witch Darkness Follows (Maeren Series Book 3) Page 42