Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,79

Malcolm used air magic to fling back any wolves that got near. Like me, he couldn’t use his power with any kind of finesse, but finesse wasn’t required—just blasts of air to send attacking wolves flying, where Lucy and Ronan waited to cut them in half.

I flicked my right hand to summon my cold-fire whip. Instead of a six-foot coil of concentrated and deadly earth magic, however, the whip was pulled apart by the ambient magic around us. It split into thin strands that flared like lightning bolts. I gritted my teeth and fought the wild magic around me for control of my whip, my best weapon against the attack.

Or was it?

Dark magic surged inside me. Unlike my earth magic, which didn’t work like it should here, the sorcerer magic I’d absorbed from Miraç seemed unaffected by the ambient power of the Broken World. I feared using this magic. My instincts told me once it started to take hold of me, I might not be able to control its effects.

A black and gray wolf came at me from the side while Malcolm was busy trying to keep another at bay and Daisy fought two other wolves. No time to debate; I’d have to deal with the consequences later. I stopped fighting the dark magic and let it rise.

My vision turned red. The noise of the fighting faded as my senses sharpened and focused. Void-black magic edged with red glyphs spiraled around my arms and from my fingertips, forming dual whips made not of earth magic, but sorcerer power. The force of the magic seared the air.

Malcolm said something, but I didn’t hear him. I spun, lashing with my whips, and cut the approaching black-and-gray wolf in half in mid-leap. Shifter magic, tinged with the same madness I’d sensed in Isaiah, pulsed up my whip and into my body as the wolf’s power transferred to me. The rush was like four espressos straight to my bloodstream. I sucked in a breath as the energy infused my own.

Flush with magic I could command even in this place, I waded into the battle with whips blazing. Ronan and Lucy fought back to back, their swords moving almost too fast to see. The air stank of shifter blood and death.

One by one, our attackers died. One got past my whips and came so close to biting me that one of his teeth sliced my sleeve.

Lucy brought her sword down and the wolf’s head hit the ground next to my boot. She was scratched and bloody, but I didn’t see any bite wounds.

The last wolf to die was the alpha. Half again bigger than the second-largest wolf in the pack, his power and size were unmistakable even from a distance. Daisy threw him to the ground and ripped out his throat. She raised her head and howled, drowning out the sound of his death throes. Finally, the alpha lay still. It was over.

I stood in the middle of the scattered bodies, breathless and covered in shifter blood. My whips snapped and sparked at my sides like broken power lines. Daisy stood to my right, Malcolm on my left.

Lucy and Ronan turned to me, swords in hand. Daisy licked blood off her muzzle and showed them her teeth. Malcolm’s tension prickled on my skin.

“Are we going to have a problem?” I asked. My eyes were warm, indicating they were glowing.

“That depends.” Lucy studied me. “That magic you’ve got…it’s not from here. Neither are you. And don’t tell me you’re from a couple hours north of here. You three are from somewhere a lot farther away than that.”

Though they were wary, neither she nor Ronan seemed all that surprised that Daisy, Malcolm, and I weren’t natives of this world. Then again, their world’s fractured boundaries meant people, beings, and creatures came and went all the time, so that revelation would be less strange than in my own world.

“What if we were from somewhere else?” I asked. “Does that make us enemies?”

Lucy tilted her head. “Some people I know would say yes, but I’ve always been of the opinion that where you come from matters less than what you do once you’re here.”

“We’re in the same business, for what it’s worth. I’m trying to stop someone from killing a lot of people.” I drew my whips back into my body and let the dark magic settle back into my bones. “Since Daisy insisted we come with you, there may be a connection between the person I’m after and