Marked by Death (Necromancer #1) - Kaje Harper Page 0,30
down Crosby’s arms and churned across the ground to the edge of Silas’s dome.
“No? Well, I am.” Silas tilted his head.
“I knew it! Filthy pervert, smiling at men, turning their thoughts against them― Shut up!” Oddly that didn’t seem to be aimed at Silas, but at the crow, or maybe the demon. “It’s my turn.”
“Did your thoughts go somewhere you didn’t want them to?” Silas asked. “I turned you down, remember? You tried for me, with your smooth hands and your hot breath and I shoved you away.”
“Thought you were too good for me.” Crosby came a step closer, arms uncrossed to raise his hands, his fingers working. “I could’ve strangled you back then. Had what I wanted and denounced you. You were nothing.” He jerked his chin at the crow. “Shut up!”
“I bet you’ve thought about it, all these years,” Silas said silkily. “Thought about all the women who said yes, and the man who said no. What would it have been like, if you’d kept those hands around my neck? What could you have had? Did it make you hot, remembering?”
Crosby lashed out with a bolt of lightning so thick it left a fat streak of purple afterimage across Darien’s vision. “I’ll have you now!”
“Not like this.” Silas had rocked with the blow, but his dome held. “Keep this up and either you run out of strength and I get you, or my dome fails and you turn me to cinders in a flash. And then you’ll never know what it’s like to force me to my knees.”
A frown crossed Crosby’s perfect features, sallow in the green and violet light. He raised his hands and a shield of white formed between them. The crow on his shoulder croaked, “You have the fools trapped. Keep striking.” But Crosby ignored it to cross the last yards of ground and push his shield against the green of Silas’s dome.
“Ah. Now that might do it.” Silas gestured and the dome thickened against that shield, while thinning behind him. “Who’s stronger, do you think? The man with the ageless face, or the maverick who said no, all those years ago?” The strain was obvious in his voice, as Crosby forced the dome’s perimeter inward, but he kept talking. “You think you can take me down? Destroy my defenses? Grab my hair and force me to kneel at your feet?”
Crosby grunted, pushing hard, toes digging into the dirt. The crow wobbled on his shoulder, wings half-spread, and cawed, “Don’t be a fool. Listen to your betters.” But Crosby’s face was turning red, his teeth clenched. He didn’t back off his drive with the shield.
More and more of Silas’s energy was sucked around the dome, to balance the press against it. The part nearest Darien thinned, wisped into the faintest haze of green. Darien got his feet under him, set to launch. How will I know when? What if I break the dome, hitting it? Crosby’s shield smashing in onto Silas would be a disaster.
The dome shivered as Silas staggered back a step. Its light faded, except where it stayed braced against Crosby’s. And Grim took one small step back, till his hind paw breached where the back wall had been. His tail quirked, beckoning.
Darien sprinted, the golden ball outstretched between his hands. He wasn’t sure how to hand it over, what to say. His body felt so numb all he could do was focus on his feet hitting the ground.
The Crosby demon screeched, a sound climbing to the stratosphere, but its light was held in the folds of Silas’s dome as Darien crashed past the boundary and into Silas. He didn’t have time to hand Silas the ball, as the glowing orb and his green-tinged hands passed into Silas’s back, through shirt and skin like knives through butter, planting the ball of energy deep inside Silas’s chest.
Darien was thrown back hard, landing ass-first in the dirt. His hands tingled with pin-pricks like electric shocks, and he shook them, staring at his fingers to be sure he still had everything. A feathered mass smashed into his jaw and he ducked, narrowly avoiding a beak slice across his cheekbone. He got a face full of fur as Grim leaped, intercepting the crow and taking it to the ground.
A bright flash pulled his attention up. Silas and Crosby were still grappling. Crosby held the white shield in front of him with both hands, but Silas’s magic was wrapped around it now. The acid green was thick and