“Blame me later,” Cadmus snarled as he sent a ton of Tanselm’s earth crashing over more wraiths streaming through a dimensional portal in the sky. Streams of red and putrid, glowing yellow surrounded the large black haze. Like a disease, Sin Garu’s Netharat had surprised us all with a sudden appearance in waves that looked to have no end in sight.
“Why are they here, now?” Aerolus asked as he stood with the three of us, his hands waving, stirring up winds that swept the enemy back toward the gate through which they’d entered. “Why would Sin Garu’s legion attack here tonight? Just a coincidence we happened to be visiting Cadmus, or something more?”
We continued to fight, most of our fellow sorcerers working to protect the Light Bringers without magic in the valley. Yet for all our efforts, the Netharat appeared to be gaining. Suddenly, the enemy slowed and then ceased their attack. I opened my senses, wishing I had the same ties to Tanselm Cadmus seemed to have.
“Cadmus?”
“I don’t know why they’re leaving.” My brother frowned at the mass exodus. “Tanselm senses nothing amiss but our current battle, no sign of Sin Garu at all.”
“We’re here to help,” Jonas shouted as he and dozens of ally Djinn appeared in the valley alongside the Netharat and their enemy brethren. They fought like demons, slaughtering their enemy kin while my brothers and I continued to battle. During a lull, I realized most of the enemy Djinn had fallen. A few ice wraiths and several Nocumat dotted Tanselm’s fields, but that was all.
I stared at the “good” Djinn in fascination, still in awe of people with more energy than flesh. Jonas and the others looked like spirits, their white, pulsating bodies masses of energy that looked manlike, surrounded by black flames of pure Darkness. Even from my vantage atop the hill a good distance away, I felt the pull of Dark tugging at my inner Light.
Jonas disappeared and reappeared a few paces from my brothers, still burning in truth — his natural state. “We have them on the run. Do you want survivors? Or would you rather we sent the lot of them back through the gateway?” The light where his mouth should have been curled in a grin.
Inwardly, I flinched, a little spooked by the Darkling — not that I’d ever admit it aloud.
“Push them back,” Marcus said.
I disagreed. “Kill them all.”
“Let them go. We have enough dead,” Aerolus stated calmly and muttered a spell under his breath. His affai appeared. A petite Aellei with hair so white it gleamed, Alandra looked so pure, she could have been an angel…with the eyes of a devil.
The tricky beauty stirred my instinct to protect even as I understood how incredibly powerful she was in her own right. I glanced from her to Aerolus, watching them smile at each other, full of love, and knew she matched my brother, a man with a subtle sense of humor and depth of power only a true creature of magic could withstand.
“Purie, control your kin, would you?” Aerolus nodded at the Nocumat breaking through the Dark bands of energy Jonas’ Djinn threw at them.
“For you, anything.” She blew him a kiss and laughed then gripped the charm around her neck and vanished, only to appear beside a few languishing Nocumat.
“I thought you took that charm away.”
Before he could answer, the enemy distracted us again.
I shot another blast of fire at a dozen trying to creep over the leeward side of the hill toward Alandra and listened to their screeches with pleasure.
“Yeah,” Cadmus said. “With that charm, she can disappear whenever you piss her off, which is probably about seventy-five percent of the time.” He shoved more dirt at escaping wraiths. “Wish I had a charm to take away from Ellie. Unfortunately, she now understands how to harness the Dark within her and can teleport all over the place.”
I wondered what it must be like to be married to a Darkling, though Ellie was in fact part human, like my wife. Thoughts of Samantha made me smile. She’d be pissed as hell when she learned what she’d missed tonight. Thankfully, Arim’s ploy to keep her and Tessa with our mother remained a success. Though I had a feeling Samantha grew tired of remaining inside the kingdom, her presence was working wonders on Mother, who lately seemed better than ever.
“Darius, get your head in the game and fry some Netharat,” Marcus yelled as a sudden blast of blue flame sent the four of us, and Jonas, scattering.
Regaining my feet, I caught sight of four unusual looking ice wraiths and realized they were a new hybrid of some kind. More spindly and taller than the typical wraiths we normally dealt with, these four had a bluish tint to their skin.
Oddly, they didn’t appear to have any teeth.
“Fuck.” Jonas threw himself in front of Cadmus. He absorbed a ball of blue flame with ease and shot bands of energy into the nearest creature. It shrieked and struck back, fully engaged with Jonas when a rush of Djinn appeared out of nowhere.
“Friend of foe?” Marcus asked.
Jonas glanced over, still entangled with the blue-skinned wraith. “Friend,” he and Aerolus — who apparently had some magical way to tell the difference — shouted.
Personally, I liked the idea of shooting first and asking questions later, because I still wasn’t sure about the changes Tanselm had recently undergone. I continued my assault on the enemy with my brothers, even as my mind wandered elsewhere, compartmentalizing the battle.
Marriage to a human, even my cherished Samantha, had been nowhere on the agenda when my brothers and I had been forced to Earth over a year ago. I’d wanted nothing more than to return to Tanselm to defend our people. That and hunt down the evil that had killed Father and the other Storm Lords — my uncles, aunts, and cousins — leaving the four of us the last Storm Lords in existence.
On Earth, Marcus and I had found the brides Arim and our mother had hoped we’d find, strong women with enough magic to control our elemental power. Aerolus and Cadmus, my two troublemaking siblings, just had to marry equally provocative females. Not that I didn’t appreciate both women, but Alandra was an Aellei, and that race was a royal pain in the ass. Ellie was a gem, but her father ruled the Sarqua Djinn. He was an arrogant dick at the best of times. I didn’t understand how Cadmus could stand the guy. Knowing my brother, Cadmus probably got a kick out of irritating Ethim just by being his son by marriage.
A loud shriek caught my attention. With my brothers, we concentrated our efforts on the Nocumat now surrounding Alandra.
