Crown of Moonlight (Court of Midnight and Deception #2) - K.M. Shea Page 0,97
I said.
“You’re wasting your time,” Fell said. “You can’t beat that thing.”
“Then what do you suggest we do?” I snarled.
Fell shrugged. “The only thing you can do. Dump it in the human world.”
“Are you insane?” I shouted. “I’m not doing that! It will kill people! It could smash its way through half of Magiford before the Curia Cloisters could contain it.”
I pointed to the monster, which was clacking its teeth.
We’d popped out by the massive lake in the middle of my territory—a good distance away from the monster—but even this far away I could smell its putrid, rotting scent.
The monster whipped its tail in a wide arc, smashing into the magical barrier, which sputtered and flashed.
My stomach dropped, and fear made my ears ring.
If we don’t do something, it will take out the wards.
“You’ll have to choose, Leila. Sacrifice your realm, or set it loose on the humans for the Curia Cloisters to deal with,” Fell sneered.
I turned Eclipse toward the monster. “I hate you,” I told Fell. I then squeezed my heels into Eclipse’s sides, and she was off like a bolt of lightning.
I wanted to whistle a call to the others, but there was no way I was letting go of Eclipse’s neck, so I just screamed at the top of my lungs all the way to the monster.
I probably sounded like I was officially losing it, but I didn’t care. I had bigger problems to behead.
Eclipse was the fastest of my night mares. Effortlessly, she took the lead even as the rest of the night mares charged behind us.
We closed in on the monster—its putrid scent was thick enough to make me gag.
This close, I could hear the way its body unnaturally clicked whenever it moved and better see the shadowy magic that tied it together and made the monster jolt along.
This is either proof Fell is the one who has been trying to kill me, or proof that it’s someone else entirely.
When Eclipse braced her legs and skidded to a stop, I licked my lips, tucked my fingers in my mouth, and whistled.
Glooms and shades burst out of the shadows, their eyes glowing and their snarls ripping through the air as they joined us.
“Surround it!” I shouted. “We need to drive it away from the barrier!”
The night mares trumpeted, the shades howled, and the glooms screamed.
My prism warmed in my hand, as did my old charm bracelet artifact—which I’d taken to wearing under my long sleeves.
I can do this.
Using the prism, I forged the biggest ward I could make, stretching it far across the ground between the monster and the realm’s barriers. When I felt it had enough power I activated it, sprouting a shield, and then pulled it toward me.
I was hoping to drag the monster away from the realm barrier. It was a good plan, until my ward actually touched the monster.
Pain popped in my skull, and I shouted as it radiated down my arms and legs. I thought it was because the monster smashed its tail into my spell or something, but when I peeled an eye open I saw the monster had lumbered around and faced the barrier, its jaw hanging open.
It was inhaling the ward, making the magic evaporate.
I shoved more magic into the spell, but I couldn’t keep up. The monster sucked the magic down with too much greed, and the barrier grew smaller and smaller.
The pain continued, hot and electric. My spine arched, and the pain sloshed around in my brain until I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I let the sputtering ward go, sobbing with relief when the pain left.
Before I could draw myself upright, an arrow—blazing with magic—soared past me, striking the monster in its empty eye socket.
Rather than exploding, or reacting in some way with magic, the arrow disappeared into the shadows of the empty eye socket, and nothing happened.
Somewhere off to the side, Rigel swore.
He caught up pretty fast. “It’s eating magic, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Eating or burning it somehow,” Rigel confirmed. “It doesn’t seem to grow stronger from it.”
Thinking of the way I’d destroyed a couple of shadow monsters I forged a ward underneath the monster and activated it.
The ward sprouted into a barrier, and instantly evaporated when it touched the monster, leaving me with an intense wave of pain that made me stagger a few steps.
It seemed like my old tricks weren’t going to work on this monstrosity.
“How do we kill it?” I asked. “Would overwhelming it with magic work?”