“Witches.” Khent sighed.
Ha. Great minds think alike.She refused to say that out loud, lest he take the “great” comment to heart. “Well?” She said when Khent just stood there. “Get going.”
He looked back at her.
She and her dead humans stared back at him.
He grimaced. “I supposed you’d like me to thin the group?”
“You wantmeto?”
“I’d like to see what you can do. But perhaps this is too great a challenge.” He shrugged. “You are just a human.”
Even knowing he deliberately baited her, she couldn’t stand being thought inferior by Khent of the Night Bloode. The horse’s ass.
“Fine. Stand back, weak one.”
His eyes narrowed.
She’d pay for that later, but she didn’t care, caught up in the swirling miasma of energy around her. Something had powered up these creatures. And something else, of a fae—and dead— nature lingered up in the trees.
Now those she hadn’t sensed in years.
Val stared up at the nearby pines in awe. “Dryads?” She could use a few nature fae in her arsenal.
Without waiting for Khent, she pulled on the power trying to control the fae creatures who lived in trees.
In response, roots burst from the ground of the nearby pines and plunged through her dead bodyguards.
Khent sidestepped another dagger-like root aimed at his neck. Val didn’t bother moving, continuing to steal the bodies of the dead closest to her, swirling her magic to make the slowly shifting mountain of flesh and bone a shield.
She found it beautiful in a grotesque kind of way, that there could be power in the beaten and broken. And she used itwhile she struggled to wrestle control from the one powering the dryads.
She broke one free and immediately tapped into its—no,her—connection with nature. Dryads were only ever female.
Val gasped as the wealth of knowledge from the tree at her back surged into her in welcome. Then she used the hardy wood to her advantage, letting the lure of the earth tempt the dryads to succumb to her control.
One by one, Val stole the dryads while Khent watched the few mages with any power try to zap her, drown her, or set her on fire. While he didnothing.
“Not bad.” Khent nodded.
Onvyr appeared on the far side of the clearing and stabbed with a short black sword, cutting into a dead druid, which did nothing but annoy the dead guy.
“You need to cut off the head,” Val yelled and dodged a deluge of water that got her wet but didn’t drown her. “Khent, what are you waiting for?”
She tired, using so much energy to keep everyone moving. And all that on top of still holding so many dead back at the Beast Brigade HQ. Unlike the vampire and elf, she was a human with human frailties. Although being a necromancer gave her power, it wasn’t unlimited.
A lightning mage struck a little too closely at Khent, lighting a fire under his sexy butt to stop playing, she hoped.
“The heads, Onvyr. Stop fucking around,” Khent growled.
Then hemoved.
Val took a moment to catch her breath, her back against the tree that would let her know if anyone approached, and watched Khent and Onvyr tear through anything that so much as twitched.
Val kept her three dryads close by, not wanting to lose them. But she dropped the many dead magir she’d used to defend herself from magical attacks.
She found it interesting to watch the vampire and the elf, the way they both threaded through danger. Onvyr’s strikes were strong and brutal. Khent used his speed and precision to decapitate and slaughter the enemy. He didn’t waste an attack, using only as much force as required to end the threat.
