Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,148

concentration, but I was keeping a close eye on Reave now that I had him in sight again.

The dark elf turned toward me, knife raised. Everything in me screamed to cast a protective spell, but the jolt from the broken wand felt like it had fried a few circuits in my brain. I was worried that I’d only do more damage if I tried something before the buzzing passed, or worse, that nothing would happen.

Reave slashed at me with the knife, pushing me backward until I was pressed against a tree. He lunged again and overextended himself when he missed me and embedded the knife in the tree trunk beside my head. With a grunt, I kicked him in the stomach, sending him wheeling. As he tried to regain his balance, he tripped over a half-buried log and fell into the small clearing blanketed with golden light.

I followed after him into the light. The elf easily rolled to his feet and squared off against me. He didn’t look armed, but I wasn’t willing to stake my life on it. His black eyes were narrowed at me and spittle was running down his chin. Fear and anger were making him careless. It was the only reason that I was still alive after a hand-to-hand fight with a dark elf.

“Come on, warlock. Kill me,” he growled. “Or did you not reach that part in your training?”

“Don’t worry. They teach us how to skin a Svartálfar the first day,” I said with a mocking smile.

With a guttural cry, he charged me. My right arm was dead to me and my buzzing brain was like a hive of honey bees. I didn’t have a lot of options. As he drew close, I dropped into a baseball slide so that my foot slammed into his knees. The dark elf screamed in pain as he was thrown off balance. He flew through the air over me and landed on his face in the rocks and dirt several feet away. Reave rolled until his body crashed into another tree. His moans echoed through the silence. If I had hit him right, at least one knee was now hyperextended, leaving it completely useless. It also looked like he’d broken his nose and maybe an arm from that impact.

A part of me wanted to laugh. I’d spent the past few years studying different forms of martial arts, and it turned out to be my six years of playing interspecies softball that saved my life.

Pushing to my feet with my left hand, I remained in the middle of the circle of light, watching Reave’s ragged breathing. With a sigh, I drew in a trickle of energy and was instantly relieved to find that the buzzing steadily dimmed. The magic in my brain had rebalanced itself, so that I felt safe casting spells. Feeling was starting to come back into my right arm, but I didn’t welcome it because pain was replacing the numbness.

Lifting my left hand above my head, I sent a quick summon spell out into the ether before turning my full attention to Reave. I cast a second spell that lifted the elf out of the brush and held him above the ground before me. Blood poured down his face from his swollen nose and an array of scratches. His breathing was rough and shallow while his eyes remained unfocused, lost in the grips of severe pain.

Lightning forked and spiderwebbed across the sky, followed by a loud boom of thunder. The elves I could see jerked and stared at the sky, missing the sudden appearance of Gideon at my side. There was a sharp gasp when they noticed him. They shrank back into the shadows. Only the king remained standing in the open at the mouth of the cave.

“You look like hell.” Gideon’s eyes swept over my torn shirt and dirty jeans. He then looked briefly at Reave and gave a shrug. “Well, better than him at least.”

“Always a pleasure, Gideon,” I said sarcastically, feeling both exhausted and nervous. Step one of my plan was complete: capture Reave. The hard part was coming next: survive a meeting with the council.

“I need you to do me a favor,” I said, pulling my thoughts free of my growing fears. “Call an emergency meeting of the council.” Gideon didn’t move a muscle. I was asking a lot. I was putting his life at risk because he was supposed to be the one policing me. “It’s okay. You’re taking me . .