House Of Gods 9 - Samantha Snow Page 0,41
get there quickly. He came to a stop in the clearing outside of the hollowed tree when he saw Button on the ground. He grabbed the bear and stuffed it into his shirt, then ran inside the tree, calling for Tara. When he saw no one was there, he took off running again.
Within a few moments, he saw Rolf on the path in front of him, dragging Tara by her wrists as her feet struggled to keep up and stay beneath her to match his feverish pace. Tannin pulled the magic from the air around him and mingled it with his own. Without even slowing his run, he moved his hands around a ball of palpable energy between his palms as if it were clay. His jaw clenched, and his muscles tightened as rage lit up his eyes, and he hurled the magic toward Rolf, aiming for the back of his head.
When Tannin’s blow struck him, it knocked Rolf forward onto the ground, and he lost his grip on Tara. Tara turned, and her eyes lit up when she saw Tannin running toward her.
“You’re here!” she cried as he reached her and fell to his knees beside her.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her before looking her over to make sure that she was okay. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Tannin, you came for me.”
“Of course, I did.” He smiled at her and kissed her again. “Come on, let’s get you out of—”
Before he could finish his sentence, his body lurched forward against her, and when she lifted his head, blood seeped from his mouth. Tara looked up and saw Rolf standing on the path a few feet away from them. His hands were still glowing from the magic that he had shot into Tannin’s back.
“No!” she screamed at him. “Stop it! Stop!”
Tannin lifted himself up and wiped the blood from his mouth. “Stay down,” he told her.
Tara watched in fear as he stood to face Rolf and placed his body between her and her brother. Cai and Astra came running as soon as they heard the struggle.
“Stay back,” Tannin said to both of them as he put his arm out in warning. “He will take your magic and kill you. I’m the only one who can put him down.”
Rolf laughed. “You wish.”
Cai pulled Astra back into the trees to protect her and watched from behind the safety of the woods. Tara knew Tannin was right, but she wanted them to help him. She didn’t want him to fight her brother alone. He had all the power of Alfheim’s people at his command, and she wasn’t sure that even Tannin was strong enough to defeat or even survive magic of that magnitude.
“You consider yourself the hero, I see.” Rolf grinned at Tannin, and Tara thought he looked more like a demon than Tannin could ever look. “Funny, I’ve never seen a hero with horns before.”
“You’re a misguided piece of shit,” Tannin growled at him. “You wouldn’t know a hero if his hand was the one to kill you, which I fully intend to do.”
“You can try. I have the magic stolen from thousands of light elves. What do you have besides the meager power Freya bestowed on you as a prophetic child?”
“I have enough power to kill you.” Tannin had had enough of talking; he wanted Rolf dead and gone.
As the two men hurled their weaponized magic at each other with dizzying speed, Tara watched while she sat at the side of the path, gasping every time Rolf got a hit in on Tannin and hoping every hit Tannin inflicted onto her brother would be the last one needed to silence him. Both men were powerful, more powerful than anything Cai had ever seen. Even his dark sorcery couldn’t compare to what he saw now.
Tannin was naturally gifted his magic, both by his birthright prophecy and by his ancestral bloodline. And Rolf had stolen his, but enough of it to make him a formidable opponent to match even Tannin’s power. The men battered each other with shots of magic that knocked against their bodies and would have killed most of the other immortals upon impact, and both men were wearing down.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Tannin snarled at him as he continued to push his body and his magic past the breaking point in order to take down Rolf.
“And now it seems you have lost it,”