and tossing it to the ground, and then stomping around to try to catch the gnome who’d gotten the lucky shot.
The battlefield silenced for a moment, and Todd’s eyes went cold. He looked up at me.
“He is gone,” Todd said. “Perhaps if we knocked him out, magic could be worked?”
I didn’t waste time arguing. I ran toward the middle of the field, where Keith was throwing clumps of dirt—and probably some chunks that weren’t actually dirt—at the gnomes around him.
“Keith!” I called out, facing him with sword extended.
He looked back, then stomped toward me.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, and when he swung down a meaty hand to knock me off my feet, I slashed out with the katana.
I caught the back of his hand. Blood splashed the ground, and Keith yelped in pain, a horrible sound that probably woke the few remaining farmers who hadn’t already been awakened by the giant garden gnome tromping around their neighbor’s land.
I paused for a moment at the sight of blood, afraid I’d be overtaken by the need to drink. But there was nothing remotely palatable about the smell of it. It smelled of dirt—not dirty, but damp and mineral. Not an altogether bad scent, but nothing I wanted to drink.
Not that Keith would have given me the opportunity to do so. Monstrous teeth bared, he wrenched in the other direction. I hit the ground to avoid the swing of his palm, but I wasn’t far enough to avoid the swing of his fingers. They hit me like tree logs, tossing me ten feet across the field. I landed facedown with a bounce that echoed through my body and radiated pain through my limbs.
There was no time to rest. The earth shook as Keith moved closer. I winced at the stabbing pain in my ribs—another rib broken, I guessed—and slowly got to my feet.
A bundle of gnomes came again to my defense, but they were soon out of weapons. Keith tossed them away like irritating gnats, then turned his gaze on me again.
He bounded toward me. Ignoring the pain in my side, I two-handed my katana and drove it into his foot. He howled with pain. When he bent over to clutch at his injury, I pulled my sword away and ran through his legs.
Before he could get his bearings, and before I had time to think better of it, I jumped onto his back and scrambled upward. My weight distracted him from the pain, and he stretched and twisted back and forth, trying to throw me off.
It was like the world’s strangest amusement ride…but all good things must come to an end.
My broken rib hardening my heart against the violence, I climbed to his shoulders, adjusted my sword, and thrust the butt-end of the sword handle into the pressure point behind his ear. Hard.
Keith froze, then began to fall toward the earth. I jumped away to safety, rolling across the ground while he hit the earth like a fallen tree.
The night was silent for a moment.
I brushed hair from my face and stood up again, looking around until I found Mallory. She stood nearby, her expression suddenly horrified, her gaze on the giant gnome on the ground. He was out cold.
I wiped the mud from my katana on my pants and walked toward her, stopping ten feet away.
“Any more minions you want to create, or are you ready to face me on your own?”
When she didn’t answer, I moved closer.
“It’s me and you,” I said, only inches away. “Are you ready for that? Are you willing to kill me to get what you want?” I rotated the sword in my hand, hoping I might intimidate her at least enough to let her guard down.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“That’s funny, because I’m afraid of you. I’m afraid of who you’ve become and who you’re going to be if you finish this the way you want to. I’m afraid you’ll never come back from it.”
“I’m not afraid,” she repeated, but there was clearly fear in her eyes. As much as she wanted the Maleficium—as much as she believed she needed it—she was scared.
Good. Maybe the Order had managed to talk a little sense into her in those few hours before her escape.
Thinking I was making progress, I kept pushing. “Look at what you’ve done. You’ve hurt people, Mallory, for a spell you think is going to make your life better. But if that was true, wouldn’t the sorcerers have done it by now?”