Tossing him aside, I go for the second smallest male and do the same thing. This one doesn’t struggle. Smart guy.
The three remaining males don’t seem to give a shit that I’m using one of their own as a barrier. They throw kicks and punches, and I manage to block most of them with my guy, but they also do some fancy fucking twirls and leaps and hit me where I’m not expecting. One of them even does some fucking pirouette or some shit before nailing me with a hit that rocks my fucking spine.
“Alright, enough of that,” I grit out, and then I spin like I’m the goddamn Wheel of Fortune, holding my shield under both armpits. His legs lift up from the gravitational pull, and I hit all three of the males surrounding me right in the nuts.
They stop short and lurch over, cupping their packages, their pained grunts lifting to my ears like music I could rock out to. I toss my shield at them, knocking all four shifters down to the ground, just in time to look over and check on Jetta.
But my female is a fucking force of her own.
She’s beat to shit. She’s bruised and bloody and swollen. But with that rage back in her eyes and the steel in her spine? The three females she’s fighting don’t stand a fucking chance. One is already lying at her feet, not moving. She takes down another one with a hammer kick that sends the chick flying off stage.
She’s about to start on the remaining female when the trouper does a bitch move and pulls Jetta’s hair, wrenching her neck to the side. I go to help, but I get tackled from behind by two of the males, and then we’re wrestling, scrapping, rolling around on the stage and landing as many close-contact hits as we can.
When they try to pin me down, I grasp one of them with my hands behind his head and give him a knee to the face. He falls back with a spurt of blood and a curse. The other one lands two punches to my face and one to my kidney before I’m able to wrench both legs up between us and kick him off, sending him bowling into the others on the floor.
I sit up, ready to jump back in, but Jetta has already finished the last female, and she’s making short work of the others who are trying to gain their second wind and take her down.
She moves with vicious grace.
A single blow to the temple of a male already on his knees sends him crashing all the way to the floor. Another who tries to trip her gets a throat jab. Another gets a kick to the back of his knees. Over and over and over again, she ensures every single one is incapacitated, until the stage around her is littered with their white-clad bodies, and we’re the last ones standing.
“Jericho, get Freddie!”
I don’t need her to tell me twice. I rush up to the beam and try to take a running jump at it, but it’s too high up for me to grab hold of. I stand off to the side of the fucking magical lightning hole, or whatever the fuck that shit is, and hold my arms up to the kid. “Come on, Freddie!”
He peers over the side, his breathing erratic from sobbing so hard. His thumb is stuck in his mouth as he sucks on it, but he has a death grip on the rope.
“I’ll fall!” he calls down, shaking his head.
“Move down a little to the center of the beam away from the lightning magic, okay? Then jump. I’ll catch you, I promise.”
“You’ll really catch me?” he asks dubiously.
“I’ve been taking ninja lessons from Jetta, remember?”
That settles it. Freddie releases the ropes and starts crawling across the beam. But before he clears the vortex, he slips.
Shit.
With my heart in my fucking throat, I jump up in the air to catch him, and thank fuck I snag him around the middle with my arm. I twist my whole body and tuck my legs up, every inch of me straining to get away from the magic. I get so fucking close to the crackling lightning that I’m pretty sure it just singed off the hair on my fucking balls.
I throw my body sideways away from it, tucking Freddie against my chest, and we go crashing to the ground instead of being incinerated.