Frog pointed at the closest wall. “Go running up and kick off the wall and put your enhanced boot in some Dreth’s face.”
He went to do exactly that and lined up the trajectory he’d need to come off the wall and reach his target. His teammate’s gaze fell on his boots in time to see the gleam of magic disappear.
It was too late to warn Johnny, although he tried, and he could only watch helplessly as the man launched himself at the wall. With the magic gone, the jump didn’t go as planned.
His feet touched as planned and he pushed off, but he didn’t gain the height he needed and plowed head-first into the floor. Frog was already moving, ready to intercept the pirates who grinned at Johnny’s antics even as they prepared to kill him.
He shot one and then a second as the other man pushed to his feet with a groan. “Sorry, dude. The magic literally vanished.”
“Just my luck,” Johnny told him and scowled at the Dreth moving in. “It looks like playtime’s over. Time to kick ass and break heads.”
Across the battlefield, beside the bomb, Stephanie faced the welder. She drove her fist into Krozar’s chest. Under normal circumstances, the blow would have had little impact. Even with the magic, she barely pushed him back a couple of feet. She looked at him as he stepped forward and smirked. “Wow, you’re a really big guy, aren’t you?”
“He is,” a familiar voice said beside her, “and he’s mine.”
Her smirk grew into a smile when Garma stepped into view and raised magic-laden hands.
“Be my guest,” she told him and moved out of his line of fire.
The Meligornian didn’t need to be told twice. He used his hands alternately to release a barrage of fireballs into Krozar’s chest until the Dreth’s armor burst into flames. The magical blaze took hold and spread over him and the fire grew even larger.
Krozar screamed and dropped to the ground, where he rolled frantically and beat at it with his hands in an attempt to extinguish it. Another Meligornian arrived, tsked, and looked at Garma.
“You always do this,” he said. “It’s inhumane.”
With that, the new arrival shot Krozar in the head to end his pain and pathetic screams. Garma smiled. “This is my friend Baizel. Crystal’s over there.”
Crystal looked up from where she’d gutted one pirate and slashed the throat of another. Her eyes tracked the fight around them as she gave the witch a nod.
Stephanie noticed that Crystal’s long silver hair was pulled half up and away from her pale purple eyes. The female Meligornian was dressed traditionally in a lightly armored space suit sans helmet but which was surrounded by the glow of protective magic.
She waved a hand at her two male counterparts. “This is our uncle, and that’s my brother. We saw you fighting on the screen and came to help.”
“She magicked her way out through the locks.” Baizel grinned as Crystal calmly felled a pirate and Garma used magical darts to kill another. “Much better.”
He raised his pistol and shot past Stephanie. She couldn’t help noticing that his eyes were like purple-tinted crystals and his face was full of youth and excitement. She swallowed hard and smiled in return. “We’re glad you could make it.”
Before any of them could respond, a very human cry of pain was immediately followed by a groan. She whirled as Johnny toppled sideways in front of a Dreth.
The warrior laughed and pulled his sword back, but she bolted forward and called on her magic as she went. Before he’d completed his preparatory motion, she had closed the space between them and flipped up and over the pirate, seized his head, and snapped his neck before she landed behind him.
Johnny, bleeding from the leg, struggled to get into a sitting position as she lowered the dead Dreth to the ground. “How did you—”
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I can heal you.”
He shook his head, unable to stand. “No. That will drain all your strength. I’m okay. I’ll crawl over to that little corner over there and shoot everything in range.”
As he spoke, Crystal arrived. She reached down, hauled him to his feet, and draped one of his arms over her shoulders. From the way she moved, it was as if he weighed nothing at all. “I’ll get him to safety.”
Stephanie nodded and surveyed the carnage around her. “Thank you.”
The Meligornian woman grinned and eased Johnny into her arms like he was a child before she used her magic to boost her jump onto one of the balconies above.
Frog jogged over to her and pursed his lips. “I think I’m in love.”
A surge of pain ripped through her side and fear rushed through her chest. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t her own and she whipped around to find Baizel and Garma facing two Dreth pirates.
A third had snuck up behind the older Meligornian and the blast the alien fired flung him to the ground. Baizel tried to reach him but he now had two adversaries to battle. The third aimed a second time and she tried to reach him before he could fire.
Even as the magic kicked in, the pirate walked over to the downed Meligornian and smirked as he pulled the trigger. To her surprise, Garma’s eyes turned to her and he smiled in the split second before the bullet ended his life.
A flash of light filled the parkland. It blinded everyone and caused a momentary lull in the fighting. Garma’s soul and the last of his magic fled outward at his death, and in that flare, Stephanie heard his laughter and saw herself seated at the table in his suite as they ate and talked for hours.
Just as quickly, the light retracted into Garma’s body until the Meligornian exploded into a cloud of shimmering dust. Baizel gave a cry of heartfelt pain and tears streamed down his face.
Above them, on the balcony, Johnny wrapped his arms around Crystal as she shrieked in disbelief and tried to launch herself over the rail. The pirate looked around and began to take aim at Baizel’s back, but only for a second. Fire, condensed into a small ball of glaring white, rocketed into him from across the field. It flared when it impacted his head and vanished in a bright eruption of light.
Pieces of helmet, flesh, and bone exploded outward in a burst of magic and gore, and the pirate dropped to his knees. The blaster clattered from his dead hand and he fell forward to lay deathly still. Smoke rose from his body before it blazed into dancing purple flame.
The other pirates stopped and looked for the source of the attack, surprised to see a young human female limned in a halo of purple fire.
“You scum-sucking bastard!” Her furious shriek drew the attention of the team.
Lars summed up the situation in a single word. “Goddamn!”
“Steph?” Frog began, but she was gone. All that stood before him was the Federation witch, Morgana, and she was too far gone for reason.
The halo of purple flared and four shields surged up around her, deep purple and solid enough to stop anything—including her friends.
Frog tried again. “Uh, Steph? Are you in there?”
It was no good. Even he could feel the tide of gMU she pulled toward her. Worse though, was that he could see what she did with it next. Her hands spun and swung both right and left as she delivered a continuous barrage of magical darts and fireballs.
He was about to try the suicidal and grab her when Lars tackled him from the side, then hastily helped him up again. “We have to get everyone out of here.”
His teammate was horrified. “Not the pirates?”
“Oh, hell, no! They can fry, but this guy... She’d be really upset if we let her fireball him to pieces by mistake.” Lars gestured to where Baizel stared at the hail of destruction around him. He seemed frozen in place.
Before they could reach him, though, Avery and Marcus grabbed the young Meligornian and hauled him down the nearest corridor.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
With the Meligornian cleared from the battle zone, the team tried to get close to Stephanie but each time they did, she pushed them back and, despite the magical fury they faced, the pirates decided to retaliat
e.
For them, the situation hadn’t changed. They still had a mission to accomplish and they had vengeance to wreak on her. The bomb remained securely in place, and none of them knew if it would go off, but they were all reasonably sure the Gramghast hadn’t needed to touch it to detonate it.
Maybe if they fought for a little longer, they could turn the tide and accomplish what they so desperately wanted.
The first attack came from across the room. A blaster bolt missed Lars’s head by inches and drove into the shield. He flung himself down as Stephanie retaliated with several missiles in the direction the shot had come from.
“Sonuva...” He rolled out of her way as she pivoted and noticed the pirates still standing weren’t about to run. Quickly, he spoke into the team’s comms as he returned fire. “Target the pirates, guys. Maybe she’ll come back to us when they’re gone.”
“You wish,” Frog muttered, and Lars was sure his teammate hadn’t meant to speak that over the comms.
Regardless of whether he’d meant it or not, the words reached Stephanie, exactly as the team leader’s words had. Somewhere beneath the fury that was Morgana, she heard and knew she had to regain control. They were right. When the pirates were gone, it had to be Stephanie they found, not her rage.
She knew she was volatile from the sheer amount of energy bursting through her. While she couldn’t stop it coming in, she could control it and the best way to do that was to fight.
With this amount of power, she could do that, and if she needed to bleed some of it off, that’s what she’d do. She would fight like she’d never fought before. Around her, the rest of the team turned their attention to the invaders and worked their way out from her as though she were the center of their world.
Lars reached the edge of the park where the ice cream parlor stood. Momentarily free of Dreth attackers, he leaned on the frame of the shattered shopfront and shook his head as he tried to catch his breath. He scanned the area and had chosen his next target when he heard a small gasp.
It had come from behind him and inside the store. Slowly, he turned and crouched to see a small blonde girl tucked under a display. Her eyes were wide as she watched the battle, and they grew wider when she saw his face.
Tears tracks stained her little cheeks, but her eyes were dry. She squeaked in fright and scuttled away from him, deeper into the shop. “Just what I needed,” he grumbled, straightened quickly, and pushed the door open.
With effort, he changed his expression from hardened soldier to kind adult and moved into the interior, stepping carefully over broken glass from the window.
“Hey, sweetie. You can come out now,” he called. “I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help.”
At first, nothing moved, and he suppressed a sigh. He didn’t have all day. The guys needed him, but Steph would kill him if he didn’t rescue the kid, so he was screwed either way.
“Come on, kiddo. I can’t get you back to your mommy if I can’t find you.”
That seemed to work. She peered out from behind the shop counter and studied him warily. Lars stopped and crouched again to offer her his hand.
“You gonna show me where we can find your mommy?” he asked.
She sniffed and her gaze darted nervously at the sound of the battle outside.
“Find Momma?”
He gave her a reassuring smile.
“Yes. Find Momma. Are you gonna help me?”
She regarded him warily for a few moments longer, then scurried over to him and took his hand. Without asking for permission, he scooped her up and held her close to his chest.
She couldn’t have been more than four or five. She laid her head on his shoulder and sniffled. He patted her back awkwardly before she spoke.
“Help Momma,” she told him and pointed. He followed the direction of her hand and startled. There, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, was the body of a woman. She had the same bouncy blonde hair and blue eyes as the child, although hers stared sightlessly at the ceiling. His heart stuttered in his chest.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. Let’s find your daddy instead.”
“Find doctor?” she persisted, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.
“Yeah, kiddo,” he agreed softly. “We’ll go find a doctor.”
He left the store and slipped carefully out through the door. Crystal met him before he’d gone three steps toward a corridor. She’d jumped down from the balcony and left Johnny to take pot shots at the pirates on his own.
Now, she smiled sweetly at the child. “Any sign of her parents?”
Lars shook his head, not able to explain it in front of the child. He had a hard enough time holding himself together as it was, and the fight wasn’t over. She took a deep breath and forced a smile as she put her arms out for the girl.
“This is Crystal,” he told the child. “She’s going to look after you for a while and I’m gonna kill the bad guys.”
“Doctor?” the child asked, and her small voice quivered.
“Bad guys first, then doctor,” he told her firmly and hated the lie even as he said it.
“Kay.” The girl didn’t argue any further but let Crystal take her from his arms.
“She’ll be okay,” the Meligornian reassured him as she leapt upward and used her magic to boost them out of the fight and return to Johnny’s balcony.
He sighed heavily and turned his attention to the battlefield. Stephanie stood at the center of a magical maelstrom. The shields remained constant, but energy still arced around her. Fireballs, darts, and a rain of magic blazed through it as Morgana obliterated every Dreth she saw. Her eyes burned black, two pinpricks of darkness in the midst of the gleaming purple storm.
She kicked the front shield down, rolled forward, and stretched her hand toward half a dozen advancing Dreth warriors. They backed away before her and only stopped when the wall blocked any further retreat.
Morgana glared at them and they cowered before her and flinched when she swished her entire body right and left. Her left hand turned in circles to conjure a spiral of rope magic into her palm. Holding one end, she used it like a whip, flicked it up, and snapped it as she brought her hand down.
The whip made a chiming noise as it struck the ground and created sparks of magic. The fiery particles ignited into a low wall of wildfire that flared up in front of her adversaries.
As they cowered from the flames, she drew the blaster strapped to her thigh and began firing. She didn’t stop until they were all dead and then, she looked at Lars.
He was too busy to notice her, however, having been attacked by one of the pirates not caught up in her attack. He landed a punch and followed it with a flying kick that missed the Dreth’s face. The alien retaliated, hammered his fist into the human’s chin, and launched him into a wall. He grunted as he impacted and slid to the ground.
When he didn’t immediately move, Stephanie clenched her teeth and began to stride forward. This time, Lars did notice her. He raised his hand as though signaling her to stop and shook his head. Morgana fought to stay in control, but even she could see the battlefield was almost clear and very few pirates remained.
She stopped and waited as he used the wall to push to his feet before he turned to meet his adversary. He took a fighting stance and raised his fists as though he meant to use them, but as the Dreth approached, he grinned and drew his blaster. “Just kidding, asshole. We’re not doing that again.”
A single shot felled the pirate, and he walked toward Stephanie while he rubbed and popped his cheek. “Are you back yet? Because that definitely hurt.”
He studied her carefully as he approached. Her eyes had returned to their usual blue and her hair now hung normally instead of rising in an invisible wind. The shields remained—only the three protecting her back and sides—and there was no longer a halo of magic surrounding her body.
To his relief, she smiled.
“I think you made up for it with that trick,” she replied. “That was sweet.”
/>
“Thank you,” Lars acknowledged. “Being that much of a smart ass is truly an art.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes and patted him on the shoulder, then pivoted away abruptly to pursue a pirate who tried to open the doors leading out of the atrium. He made it through and disappeared into the corridor beyond with her in hot pursuit. As she raced after him, she passed Frog and Marcus, who faced one of the pirates using swords taken from his dead companions.
Frog swung, missed the Dreth, and overreached. He wasn’t used to using a blade that heavy, and it pulled him off balance and spun him around. Marcus shook his head and bent his knees as the alien lunged at him.
“Dude,” he told Frog, “you gotta bend at the knees. Find your center of gravity. Otherwise, you’ll run around missing and falling all over the damn place.”
Their adversary roared and made a sweeping stroke at his head and Marcus ducked. He came up under it and thrust his blade into the Dreth’s stomach. He was fortunate to find a vulnerable point in the pirate’s armor, but the blade caught, and he couldn’t pull it out again.
The pirate dropped his hands to the trapped blade and stumbled back, a look of shocked disbelief on his face. Frog regained his balance and glared at his teammate. “You know what the real problem is here?” He yanked his blaster out and shot the invader in the head. “Using big-ass knives when this is supposed to be a gunfight.”
While Lars, Brenden, and Avery battled the last of the pirates in the room, the other two looked for Stephanie, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“She went that way,” Frog said when he recalled her running past him as he’d swung to miss the Dreth.
They spun and saw the open door leading out of the atrium. “Shit.”
Neither of them said anything more. They turned and jogged into the corridor.
“She can’t have gone very far, right?”
They soon discovered that, while they’d been fighting, the worm had done its work and the cabins—once securely locked according to the ship’s Emergency Protocols—had unlocked. Because it had been so silent for so long, people had started to come out of their rooms and now wandered the corridors. They stared in shock and awe at the bodies and the battle damage that scarred the walls.
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 42