Master of Darkness (20 page)

The monster’s head whipped toward her, blue gem shooting sparks as it reared high over her werewolf head, hissing. Miranda reached the mass of coils that held Justice.
Dammit, I’m not close enough to decapitate it . . .

Shifting her target, Miranda swung the athame great-sword with both hands. The magical blade sank into the snake as if she were cutting into a tomato. Apparently, whatever the athame had done had also increased her Direkind strength every bit as much as her magic. Which was saying something; she hadn’t exactly been a wimp to start with.

The giant reptile threw up its head and shrieked at the blade’s bite, an oddly human cry of agony and rage. Whipping its upper body toward her, it reared to strike. It didn’t seem to notice Justice’s massive Dire Wolf form disappearing in a blaze of blue light.

Miranda leaped aside, avoiding the cobra’s strike even as she swung her blade at its head. It jerked back, and she missed. But she didn’t give up, spinning the sword with a showy rotation of her wrists, keeping the snake’s black eyes focused on her below the blue gleam of its gemstone. The thing hissed, huge hood spreading. The gem shone like a star, emitting a reeking blast of Warlock’s magic.

Justice leaped from the beast’s coils as easily as a man shrugging out of a coat that was six sizes too big. Which they were, because he’d Shifted into human form, while she distracted the snake.

Hissing, the cobra jerked its head around as it finally realized he’d vanished. It plunged its open maw downward, aiming for the human Justice trying to get the hell away from it.

He jumped back and swung, burying the axe in the side of its head like a meat cleaver into a watermelon. Its upper third fell to the stones, boneless and limp.

Just like the snake it was, the huge creature began to convulse, its seventy-foot body whipping. Justice barely leaped clear in time to avoid getting crushed by the Beast’s death throes. He hadn’t taken more than a single step before a furry arm wrapped around his waist.

Miranda jerked him right off his feet, tucked him under her arm and kept running, the athame in her free hand.

“Put me down, dammit!” he yelled, all deeply insulted Alpha Male. “I can save my own ass!”

“Oh, shut up!” She spotted a building she thought was far enough away and raced toward it. “You’re quick enough to cart me around like a bag of dog food whenever the urge hits. Sauce for the gander, Fudd.”

Reaching the potential shelter, she put him down with a grateful sigh; he was heavier than he looked.

Justice glowered at her and straightened. “Yeah, well, I also need to get my axe back. It’s still in Captain Cobra’s brain.”

“Oh, hell.” She stuck her head out from behind their shelter. Snakey’s convulsions seemed to be winding down. And Justice was right; there was the axe, one blade gleaming in the morning sunlight, the other deeply buried in the side of the snake’s head. “Well, looks like the devil is cooking up a little Sweet and Sour Reptile right about now.”

“With a side order of horse meat . . .” Justice broke off in mid-word, staring at her. A grin of delight spread over his face. “How the hell did you break Warlock’s spell? Every last chain link is gone! There’s not so much as a whiff of his stink anywhere on you.”

She grinned right back at him. “Poured all my power into the athame and de-powered myself. Since the spell is sustained by my magic . . .”

Justice whistled. “Smart. Risky, but smart. Once you were powerless, the spell couldn’t sustain itself, so it collapsed.”

“Yep. And once it was gone, the athame gave my powers back. And then some.”

His pleasure faded into a frown. “I saw a flash of light, but I’d ducked down into the coils trying to pry my axe free and missed the rest.”

Miranda shrugged. “That was probably when the athame did its thing, whatever the hell that was. Anyway, I seem to have picked up a lot of power.” She lifted the sword, displaying it. “Then the athame turned itself into this . . .”

“
That
is your little dagger?”

“Yeah. Put it to good use, too, making sure Budweiser and his head came to a parting of the ways.”

Justice lost his pleasure in a flash of incredulous anger. “You drained off all your power
while that thing was still alive
?” His voice went very low, very soft. “Locked in a containment spell with a thirteen-foot-tall armored monster who could have stomped you into roadkill?”

“What the hell was I supposed to do?” Miranda demanded hotly. It occurred to her that she’d normally be shaking in her boots in the face of Justice’s Alpha Male anger. But the spell was history now, and she could give him all the hell he had coming. “Yeah, I knew it was a risk. Unfortunately, a certain giant snake was about to eat the man I love, so I didn’t exactly have time to fuck around.”

“And if you’d failed, you’d have died while I watched. Then the damned snake would have eaten me, just like the scaly bastard told me it was going to do.”

“Well, I
didn’t
fail, we’re still alive, and both assholes are dead.” She stalked toward Budweiser. “Go get your damned axe. There’s something I need to do before we rescue Arthur. I just hope Morgana and Gwen managed to stop those damned werewolves before they took him to Warlock.”

Unfortunately, given the way things were going, she figured they just weren’t that lucky.

She dropped to one knee beside Budweiser’s head and went to work on the gemstone implanted in his forehead. Grimacing in disgust, she popped the gem free. Her father’s magic rolled over her skin, feeling greasy.
If evil were a tactile sensation, this would be it.

Miranda hesitated. This was the kind of thing that could bite her on the ass—or save it. Licking her lips, she conjured a pouch and dropped the gem into it, then threw a quick spell over the pouch to shield the gem’s power.

Wouldn’t do for Daddy to sense she had his little rock. Not at all.

Not that Miranda had any damned idea what she was going to do with the stone.
I’ll blow that bridge when I come to it.
“Hey, Justice?” she called. “Got your Ginsu back yet?” She turned to find him levering the blade free, one foot braced on the snake’s head. “Well, that’s certainly one way to do it.”

* * *

They created a
gate to take them to wherever Gwen was, emerging to the sound of women screaming. Screaming in agony, in terror, in rage. Screaming spells, screaming curses, screaming orders. Yet those cries were barely audible over the thundering booms of spell blasts.

Every protective instinct in Justice’s psyche went on quivering alert. Then he got a good look at what was going on, and wanted to scream himself.

The witches of Avalon fought an enormous blue dragon, forty feet of wings and scales and lethal teeth roaring and blasting away at them. They circled it, each woman’s protective shield igniting in bursts of light in response to its blasts, flicking off only long enough to let her fire back.

“Is that
Kel
?” Miranda shouted over the insane racket. “Can’t be.” Kel was one of the Knights of the Round Table, though he was a shape-shifting dragon rather than a vampire. Before that, he’d been trapped in Gawain’s sword for centuries, the victim of a Dragonkind uncle’s magical plot. Kel and Sir Gawain had formed a partnership as tight as brothers; he would never turn on his fellow warriors. And he sure as hell wouldn’t attack Gawain’s wife, Lark, or his own mate, the Sidhe princess Nineva.

Yet there the two women were, side by side, blasting away at the blue beast every time they saw an opening. And the creature blasted right back.

No wonder. Just beyond the prowling dragon, Kel lay unconscious, along with the other Knights of the Round Table: Gawain, Lancelot, Tristan, Galahad, Percival, Marrok, Kay, Cador, Lamorak, and Baldulf.

As well as Logan, who was not a Round Table Knight, but Arthur and Guinevere’s son. Warlock had probably taken him to replace Sir Bors, who had been murdered by his first Beast, Dice.

Twelve men lay on the ground in a great circle, arranged a yard apart like the spokes of a wheel, their feet pointing outward toward the circle’s rim.

Arthur lay in the circle’s center, Excalibur floating just above his chest, its point aimed down at his heart. Like his men, he was naked.

Each knight’s sword floated over its owner’s heart, bound in a glowing web of magic.

And the spider at the web’s center was Warlock.

The werewolf stood by Arthur’s still form, lips moving in a chant Justice couldn’t hear over the thunder of combat.

“Bill, that’s a death magic spell.” Miranda gripped her athame so hard, her knuckles were white and bloodless. “When he finishes, it will—”

“—Drive those swords into their hearts and feed their collective life force to Warlock.” Justice broke off to swallow the lump of raw fury that threatened to choke him at the thought.

“Along with the lives of Gwen and the other Truebonded wives. A little twofer for the bastard.” Miranda glared at her father through the containment shield that protected him and his victims. “We’ve got to stop him.”

She jolted forward, but Justice grabbed her arm, dragging her to a stop.

“We’ve got to figure out how to kill that fucking dragon first—
and
get through the shielding spell around Warlock’s circle.” A witch’s spell blast hit the hemispherical shield, lighting it up with a blast of rolling energy.

“Yeah. But what the hell do we do about it?” Frustration edged her voice. “And how are we going to kill that fucking lizard?”

“To start with, we think a minute before we go off half-cocked.”

The dragon took to the air, circling around the shield to blast fire down at the witches. Luckily, they erected their own shield wall in time—interlocking magical barriers stronger than any separate spell.

“
Another
Beast. How many
are
there?” Miranda said, watching the thing with narrowed eyes. “Look, he has the same gem in his head Budweiser and the Cobra had.” Sure enough, a blue crystal burned on the monster’s forehead, making him look as though he had three eyes.

Justice watched the creature a moment—and saw it make a gesture he recognized. “No, it’s Super Chicken. See how he tilted his head just now?”

“But his magic—he’s one hell of a lot stronger than he was the last time we fought him. How did . . . ?”

“That yearling dragon.” Justice curled a lip. “Warlock used its life force to juice him up. And he’s drawing more power off Kel.” The energy around the dragon shifter was much brighter than that surrounding the other knights. Which was probably why Kell was unconscious; unlike the vampires, dragons didn’t have to sleep during the day. “I wonder how the hell Warlock trapped him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Miranda told him grimly, glowing eyes narrow. “One way or the other, I’m killing Daddy today. He’s got to die.”

“On that, we are in complete agreement!” Morgana Le Fay shouted from behind them.

Luckily, Justice had scented the witch’s approach, so he didn’t take her head out of sheer reflex. He still gave serious thought to telling her not to sneak up on a werewolf.

The witch’s eyes burned hot and gold with magic. Not to mention sheer, feral desperation. Morgana’s armor was her signature blood red, decorated with ornate swirls of metallic gold: spells of protection and strength. She’d scraped her mass of black hair back, emphasizing the stern, cold purity of her features.

“That damned dragon is beating us.” As Morgana spoke, blood began to pour from her nose; God knew what her blood pressure was, but she was obviously courting a stroke from sheer magical effort. “Grace is down. We’ve stabilized her, but I’m not sure she’ll make it. A fireball . . . She reinforced my shields when she should have been shielding herself. Dammit, I told her . . .” Morgana’s voice cracked, and she clamped her lips closed.

Justice blinked. He’d had the impression Morgana’s granddaughter hated her guts—and he hadn’t thought Morgana gave a rat’s ass about the girl one way or another. Apparently he’d been wrong on both counts.

“Lancelot . . .” Miranda broke off, shooting Justice a glance. He knew what she was thinking. Grace and Lance were Truebonded. If the young witch died, Lance was lost even if they prevented Warlock from carrying out the spell.

Guinevere wove across the battlefield to join them, followed by her daughter-in-law, Giada. Like Morgana, both women wore armor emblazoned with the Pendragon—Arthur’s Dragon’s Head. The younger blonde’s face was marred by a second-degree burn, a thick blister running across one cheek.

Gwen’s lips moved, but a thunderous blast drowned her out. She jerked one hand in a sweeping, impatient gesture, and the howling screams and booms abruptly muted, as if someone had hit the volume control on the war.

“Listen, boy, that bastard has my husband and my son,” she growled, a note to her normally sweet voice he’d never heard before. Suddenly Justice could believe she’d been a queen rather than the soccer mom she usually pretended she was. “We need the Wolf. You have the power to put the dragon down, but only if you stop holding back. Quit trying to be human and kill that Beast. Kill him fast, or we’re all dead. Along with every man we love.”

Justice fought the instinct to obey her no matter what she wanted him to do. She’d been giving orders to Alpha Males a hell of a long time; no surprise that she knew how to do it. He also knew he had to warn her. “If I let my Wolf go, he could kill more witches than the dragon.”

“He
is
you, you fool,” Morgana snapped. “Stop being so fucking blind.”

“And I’d rather
you
kill me than let that thing feed Arthur to Warlock,” Gwen snarled.

She meant it. But she didn’t
know
. She’d never seen his monster hunt Miranda like a fox chasing a field mouse.

Miranda caught his shoulder. “Do it,” she said quietly. “They’re right. And you won’t lose control. You’re better than that.” She leaned in and kissed him hard, her mouth fierce and hot with promise. Giving him a reason to survive.

Miranda stepped back. “Go.”

TWENTY

Justice nodded wordlessly
and backed away from Miranda and the witches, trying to give himself plenty of room to Shift without stepping on anyone. The women turned away and went back to blasting Warlock’s shield, trying to pound their way through.

Only Miranda was left, watching him with calm certainty, as if she knew he wouldn’t fail. Tightening his grip on the axe, Justice looked down into the swirling magic of its gem. Letting its magic flow into him,
through
him.

The Wolf exploded from its cage deep in his inner darkness, all hunger and animal rage, craving blood. Justice clamped down tight, controlling its savagery with all his strength of will even as the power of his Shift transformed him.

No matter what the witches said, he damned well wasn’t going to just let go. He didn’t dare.

When his transformation finally completed, Justice shook himself and stretched, trying to adjust to his own sheer size. Glancing at the dragon, he realized the monster looked much smaller than it had just seconds earlier.

He could feel Miranda watching him, not even a hint of fear in her mind. Some echo of their failed Spirit Link must linger after all. They’d have to try again after this was over.

If we live long enough.
He banished the doubt. They weren’t going to lose, and they damned well weren’t going to die. He wouldn’t allow it.

Justice’s instincts screamed a warning, and he bounded twenty feet straight up. The dragon exploded past just below his feet, and he fell on it, landing on its thick scaled shoulders to sink his teeth into the base of its neck. Roaring, the dragon rolled, trying to crush him beneath its vast weight.

Nice try, asshole.
Justice leaped clear and darted in again, trying for its throat. All he got was a fireball in the face. He barely shielded in time, recoiling as it threw him off with a convulsive heave.

The dragon rolled to its feet, snarling viciously, tail lashing. Justice began to circle it, watching for any weakness.

* * *

Miranda’s every instinct
screamed at her to follow the two huge beasts, in case Justice needed help. Too bad she couldn’t afford that luxury. Warlock could not be allowed to complete that damned spell. If he pulled it off, Justice would be just one of the thousands he’d kill. Miranda refused to have that on her conscience.

She moved in close to the shield, approaching from Warlock’s rear. Delicately, carefully—hoping none of the witches would blast her by mistake—she began to analyze the magical patterns in the hemispherical shield.

It wasn’t one she recognized. No surprise. Her father might be an overconfident misogynist but he wasn’t stupid. But a pattern in the spell did remind her of something . . .

Miranda reached into the pouch around her waist and pulled out Budweiser’s gem. The minute it was in her hand, she sensed the containment field thin slightly.

Of course
Warlock’s shielding spell would be designed to let his Beasts through. That meant . . .

She concentrated, drawing on the gem’s energy, trying to make her own magic mimic the same pattern, the better to fool the shield. Making contact with her father’s magic was like plunging lip-deep in raw sewage, but she ignored her instinctive reaction and began to chant, reaching out for the field with her free hand. Only to hesitate.

If she got this wrong, the spell would fry her so fast, she’d never know what hit her.

Miranda drew the gem’s magic tight around her and stepped into the field . . . and passed through like a ghost. For a moment she just stood on the other side, her knees shaking.

Warlock was still chanting, and she listened absently, her heart pounding in her chest with a kettledrum thump as she recovered.
God, I can’t believe that actually worked.

Then she realized what her father was saying, and her heart rammed right into her throat.
Fuck, he’s almost finished! If I’d been thirty seconds later . . .

Get the fuck out before I kill you
,
Warlock snarled in her mind. He didn’t stop chanting, didn’t even look around. She knew he didn’t dare. The spell was too close to fruition.

When he finished the next sentence, Arthur and his Knights would die, along with all their ladies. Warlock and his wolves would kill every living thing in Avalon.
I don’t have time to panic
, she told herself savagely, throwing Budweiser’s stone aside.
I have to stop him now, or he won’t
be
stopped
.

Warlock’s voice rose to a shout as he completed the chant. All thirteen swords began to drop.

Miranda threw up both hands and blasted a wave of force across the containment spell, sending every one of the weapons spinning aside.

The blades clattered harmlessly to the cobblestones as the energy of the death spell drained away.

“You
bitch
!” Warlock roared, his voice thunderous in the stillness of the containment field. “You’ll die for that!”

Miranda laughed. “So? You’d have killed me anyway, you sadistic fuck. You’ve been trying to kill me for months.”

He whirled on her, seeming to swell in his rage, radiating such lethal power Miranda’s instincts screamed for her to fall on her face and cower.

“You think your little stunt has saved you? Idiot! Once you’re dead—in about a minute and a half—I’ll just begin again. And this time there will be no interruptions.”

He stalked toward her, moving so slowly, so deliberately that every step communicated his confidence. “Arthur and his damned knights will die, and all the Magekind with them. Their deaths will give me the power to put humanity where it belongs: on its knees.” He laughed. “Hell, half of them are there already. Why shouldn’t I rule instead of some human dictator?”

“You know, when you laugh like that, you sound like the villain in a Bond movie,” Miranda drawled. “One of the really stupid Roger Moore ones from the seventies. Except their dialogue was better.”
Yeah, piss him off. Make him stop thinking.

Growling, his eyes bright with fury, Warlock jerked his axe from the harness across his back and charged. She knew from the arrogant confidence in his eyes that he expected her to take to her heels in panic. Then he’d slice her apart with no effort at all.

He didn’t know she’d broken his fear spell—or that she’d been drilling with the knights and Justice on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, Warlock was still far stronger than she was, not to mention a foot taller, with a much longer reach. Too, he’d been fighting for centuries. Miranda had no idea how long she could hold him off.

But just beyond the containment field, Justice battled the dragon. If she could only hold Warlock off long enough, maybe she’d come up with a way to drop the field. Then she and Justice could kill him together.

If she didn’t, they were all screwed.

As Warlock reached her, Miranda whirled as though to run. He laughed, a contemptuous bark.

Miranda spun, whirling the athame at his head with every ounce of speed she could manage. Warlock barely swung his axe up to block in time.

The clash of the two blades rattled her teeth, but she managed a sneering grin anyway. “I broke your spell
, Daddy
. I won’t be running from you anymore. And why
did
you cast that spell, anyway?”

His orange eyes narrowed and seemed to burst into flame. “Oh, slut, you’re going to regret mocking me.” He moved after her in a slow, relentless stalk, lips pulled back to reveal gleaming teeth.

“Me? Regret mocking a man so fearful, he’d cripple a four-year-old?” She smiled, slow and poisonous. “Just imagine what Merlin would say.”

He didn’t roar this time. He just whirled, swinging his axe in a scything circle. She knew better than to attempt a parry—not against a swing that hard. Instead, she ducked.

The wind of the blade’s passage flipped up a lock of her hair. An instant later, the hairs floated past her eyes, neatly severed.

Miranda swallowed.

* * *

Blood rolled down
Justice’s head from one torn ear, and the claw marks on his chest and back stung fiercely, as did the bites on his right foreleg and left rear haunch. But he’d done just as much damage to the dragon in their battle, getting through its shield as often as it had his.

As he stalked the big monster, he glanced past its winged shoulder. And froze.

Miranda was inside the containment field—
fighting Warlock
.

Fuck. Oh, fuck. I have to end this now. I’ve got to get to her before the bastard kills her.

There was no more time to fight his animal instincts, no more time to screw around being cautious. Caution would get Miranda killed.

So Justice let go. Released his tight, careful hold on the Wolf and the clamoring need to kill the dragon that had hurt him.

With a belling howl of rage, the Wolf leaped, slamming into the dragon so hard, the impact bowled the bigger creature right off its feet. The wolf swarmed up the dragon’s body and latched onto its throat just below the jaw. The dragon wrapped its clawed forelegs around his torso and ripped, trying to slash him open. The Wolf barely even felt the pain.

All he wanted was to kill the Beast and save Miranda.

For the first time, Justice felt his animal half’s true emotions. He’d been so busy fighting the Wolf before, so busy struggling to control him, he’d been blind to the truth.

The Wolf wanted to save Miranda every bit as much as Justice did, because the Wolf loved her as much as he did.

Miranda had been right all along. The Wolf had chased her because she’d hurt him, but he never would have hurt her. Hell, he’d been trying to
prove
himself to her as any male animal would. Prove he was worthy to become her mate by defeating her, then releasing her unharmed.

But because he was so damned much bigger than she was, neither Miranda nor Justice had realized that at the time. She’d freaked and hid in her rabbit hole, while Justice had . . .

Roaring in pain, the dragon grabbed the Wolf in clawed forepaws and flung itself into the sky, its great wings beating hard as it carried him higher, then higher still. The bastard obviously assumed Justice wouldn’t rip out his throat if it meant falling to his own death.

Except Justice was no longer in control, and the Wolf didn’t give a damn. The huge creature braced his legs against the Beast’s chest and jerked his fanged grip on the dragon’s throat, ripping it wide. Blood sheeted across his face, blinding him as the Beast shrieked in mortal agony. Its huge wings stopped beating.

And they fell.

The dragon’s limp forelegs dropped away, and the Wolf tumbled, free-falling toward the ground that was much too far away. In a flash, Justice realized that even the Wolf wouldn’t survive a fall from this height.

So he opened a gate in midair and dropped right through it.

The other end of the gate opened barely fifteen feet above the ground, and a comfortable distance from the impact crater the dragon was about to make. Thanks to his magic, Justice had only fallen about thirty feet. Which was definitely preferable to his enemy’s five hundred yard plunge.

He rolled to his feet ready to cast a shield around the surrounding witches. Only they were already long gone, having gated clear themselves as they realized what was happening.

So when the dragon hit the ground with a bloody crash that shook the earth, no one else died in the impact. Even Miranda and Warlock were protected by the wizard’s containment shield.

Justice shook off the dirt thrown up by the monster’s landing and loped back toward the shield, wondering how the hell he was supposed to get in to save Miranda. He was vaguely surprised the Beast hadn’t Shifted as it had when Miranda had come so close to killing Super Chicken before. Ripping out its throat must have deprived its brain of needed oxygen just a little too long. That, or it had panicked and never thought to transform at all.

“Justice.”
The voice echoed in his mind, startling him enough to bring him to a skidding stop.

Miranda?
But no; the mind that brushed his own was someone completely different.

Maeve.

That’s right, the Sidhe goddess had told them she could speak to the minds of animals, though she could barely read humans at all. At least, unless she’d touched you long enough to cast a communication spell on you, as she had with Miranda.

“I thought you’d never free that damned Wolf long enough for me to reach your consciousness,”
Maeve said, sounding peeved
.
“Tell Morgana to let me through the city wards. I have a plan.”

He spotted Gwen and Morgana heading toward him, bloody faces grim. Justice moved to meet them, taking care where he put his big paws. Wouldn’t do to step on a witch.
I hope Miranda can hold off that bastard until we can stage a rescue
.

* * *

Her father was
a fucking sadist.

Miranda had known that before, of course; it had been appallingly obvious for a long time. But she’d never really felt the brutal truth of it until she’d watched him stalk her, smiling slightly, vicious pleasure in his eyes as she scrambled away. Every little bit, he’d spring at her, swinging that axe in a lethal arc that just barely gave her time to duck or retreat.

She was so damned exhausted, she could barely keep moving. Blood ran down her arms and legs from countless cuts, though fortunately none of them had cut through her armor deeply enough to cripple.

Weary fury surged through Miranda. He could have killed her long before now. Hell, she’d thought she was finished when the dragon slammed into the ground. Warlock had gone into a ranting frenzy at the death of his precious Vance.

Vance. Super Chicken’s real name had been Andrew Vance. Warlock hadn’t given a damn that she and Justice had killed his other Beasts, but Vance’s loss pissed him off. Evidently the prick was supposed to be Warlock’s trusted lieutenant during his conquest of humanity. Warlock raged at her that the former marine was supposed to be his second in command in the new order.