Horsemen's War (The Rebellion Chronicles #3) - Steve McHugh Page 0,132

believe no one ever did that before,” I said with a shrug, picking up another sword from the ground.

I closed the gap between us, driving my one-handed sword toward Arthur’s face. He snapped the spear up, knocking the sword tip aside, and brought the spear down on the back of my hand. I couldn’t move in time to stop him from cutting through it.

I let out a yell of pain but moved back. The silver in the blade burned, and it wouldn’t heal as well as it might have otherwise, but it wasn’t a killing cut. I was beginning to wonder exactly what I needed to do to kill Arthur, who looked no worse for wear.

We’d reached the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, and I walked up them backward, keeping an advancing Arthur in my sights. His KOA were in the distance, moving closer with every moment. There were still hundreds of them. How was I meant to stop them all and stop Arthur? I needed to find a way to neutralize his ability to use blood magic so quickly and to stop him from using his magic, which was as potent as my own. And now he had a weapon that made him even stronger. The runes were cut, which meant he couldn’t stop my magic, but that didn’t make much of a difference. Where was a sorcerer’s band when I needed it?

“You can’t do this forever,” Arthur said. “Whether you have your magic or not, while I hold this spear, I’m more powerful than you can possibly imagine. We might have been tied without it, but with it, you will die at my hands.”

I’d reached the top of the steps and was happier to be on the same level again. I still had no plan. All the talk about power and being Death—sure, it was designed to make me go fight, but in reality, once you’d thrown everything you had at someone and they were still there, it didn’t really matter what you could and couldn’t do. You couldn’t beat them.

I took a deep breath and created a sphere of lightning in my hand, spinning it faster and faster as I poured more and more magic into it. Shadows leaped out of the ground, joining the sphere, as Arthur continued to stalk toward me.

“You think that will beat me?” he asked.

I kept quiet, concentrating on the sphere, making it grow until it was a meter in diameter. I sprinted toward Arthur, who looked surprised that I’d chosen to attack. He readied his spear and jabbed it toward me, trying to catch me off balance, but I knocked the blade of the spear aside with my sword, which opened up Arthur’s side. He tried to step to the side, but shadows leaped out of the ground, forcing him to step back. A shield of blood magic appeared between us, and I detonated the sphere, sank into the shadows, and appeared directly behind Arthur, instantly creating a second sphere and pouring everything I had into it.

Arthur turned to me the second I plunged the sphere into his side.

The crater I created took out most of the promenade in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The blast was big enough that Arthur’s top half was now raw and looked painful as he dislodged himself from the stone he’d impacted with. His jacket and shirt were gone, his trousers now a tattered mess. He held the spear in one hand, but the shaft had broken in half, the second half lying on the ground at his feet.

I slumped to my knees as pieces of stone continued to fall all around the stairs.

“That it?” Arthur asked, looking unsteady on his feet.

I’d used the amount of magic that had killed War back in Asgard. And Arthur just stood there. Goddamn him.

“That it?” Arthur asked again, his body already repairing itself at an alarming rate.

I let out a long breath and raised a shield of air beside me as my magic felt something close by. The bullet struck the shield, followed by a second and a third, taking my attention off Arthur. He punched me in the jaw, knocking me to the ground, as his blood magic tendrils began to wrap around my body.

“I took your friend’s eye,” Arthur said as I tried not to scream from the pain. “Maybe I’ll take your tongue first.”

I tried to sink into the shadows, but Arthur dragged me away, his fire magic burning the shadows and causing me more