While the five remaining witches cried and screamed, Val patted the boulder next to her.
“I need you, Grizz.”
The boulder transformed into the shape of a massive gargoyle, a man in stone shape with stone wings tucked at his back. Her newest pet hadn’t been easy to bring back from Romania.
His weight alone had been a logistical nightmare in shipping costs.
In a low voice, Val ordered, “Kill the rest of the coven, but bring me the lead witch—alive. Try not to damage her.”
“Yes, Val.” The gargoyle nodded, crouched, then shot into the sky in a blink.
He was a real find, intact and powerful, his magical reserves adding to hers. For the fight that was coming, she’d need every bit of it.
Though made of stone, in the air, his magic allowed him to move like lightning. Fast and lethal. He killed three witches in seconds, beheading two and smashing the third.
Then he landed on the ground and advanced on two more. They shot bolts of lightning and cones of fire at him, but nothing penetrated his granite body. The real power of a gargoyle—an aversion to magic.
While in contact with the ground, gargoyles could rarely be beaten, even by berserkers or ogres, the strongest of the magir.
Vampires, though…
She hated that her thoughts continued to return to that powerful vampire she’d fought with a few months ago. Back when all her plans had finally come together to get the vengeance so long in coming.
She and her conspirator, Talon, had manipulated lycans to fight off an evil sorcerer working alongside their enemy. In the process, they’d inadvertently dragged vampires into their business.
A major mistake. Gods and demons could be annoying, sure. But they were easier to deal with than vampires. The blood-suckers came in all kinds of varieties and hated everyone. Other magir, humans, and especially their own kind.
Yet mess with one vampire and the entire Bloode Empire would fight for the pleasure of annihilating you and everything you cared about.
And she’d been stupid enough to battle one.
She shivered, remembering the vampire she’d briefly tangled with. He’d been an honest to goodness reaper. The vampire equivalent of a necromancer. Fortunately, in all the chaos, he hadn’t seen her, only her many crows. She didn’t think.
But she’d sure seen him. Though vampires had been cursed to kill their own kind to keep their power in check, they’d been blessed with astonishing beauty in order to attract prey.
The reaper had been typical for one Of the Bloode. Beautiful, deadly, and alluring. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he’d had dusky skin, smooth and taut, belying his age with the appearance of a man in his late-twenties or early-thirties.
Bad enough she’d had to deal with him in her haste to escape danger, but Talon said the vamp continued to ask around about her at the bazaar downtown.
Vampire interference, at this stage in their plans, would only hurt their cause.
The witch let out an ear-piercing shriek. “Let me go.I’ll curse you for an eternity, gargoyle.” She kept mumbling hexes at Grizz, who didn’t respond except to drag her by the hair to Val.
Once at Val’s feet, the witch glared up at her, unable to stand since Grizz’s large hand covered her head.
Val scowled. “Would you shut up already?” When the witch finally stopped screaming curses that did nothing but piss Val off, Val added, “Now, who told you to look here?” She’d been doing her best to keep a low profile while they stockpiled bodies, weapons, and power.
“I felt you, unclean one.” The witch dug her fingers into her own forearm and painted a new sigil on her cheek as she chanted. Weak as she was, her magic didn’t do much but make Val tingle.
“Enough already.” Val slapped a hand over the witch’s forehead, as physical contact made it easier to absorb another’s essence, especially when she was tired. Val had been working nonstop for months. Exhausted to her bones, she wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week.
Instead, she had to fuck around with witches.
“You should have minded your own business,” Val hissed. She blinked and stared through a veil of power. She knew her eyes turned a deep black, obliterating anything human-seeming.Personally, she thought she looked cool, like the demonically possessed did in the movies.
The witch must have thought so as well, because she regarded Val with horror. “N-No, please. Let me…”
Val opened herself and stood both in the forest and in another plane, at the doorway in-between. A conduit bridging life and death, she pulled from the witch, absorbing her tasty power and letting it wash through her.
