Or maybe it wasn’t the heat Rosalind had created that was responsible for it.
Mackenzie heard the witch grunt, heard Vail snarl something in the elf tongue.
“Fighting me,” Rosalind muttered. “Didn’t think the buggers would have this kind of magic at their disposal.”
Everything went eerily silent.
And then Rosalind screamed.
“Brace!”
Mackenzie grabbed Syn and dragged her friend down into a huddle on the compacted snow, held on tight to her as a blast of bitterly cold wind slammed into her, battering her with chunks of ice and small rocks. The heat that had been stopping her from freezing into a solid block was gone in an instant, the cold that bit into her fingers worse than before, stiffening them and making them hurt despite her gloves.
Hartt roared something she couldn’t make out over the rush of wind against her.
A bright burst of light nearly blinded her when she lifted her head to look for him and she screamed as the shockwave from the detonation hit her and sent her flying with Syn. She twisted and turned with her friend, slammed into her and tried to keep hold of her as she fought to muster a teleport before they hit anything.
Because she feared the impact would kill them.
Syn beat her to the teleport, and Mackenzie grunted as she popped out of a black hole in the ground and then dropped and slammed into the compacted snow. Pain blazed across her back, had her crying out as she arched upwards.
Not her pain.
Hartt.
She fought to suppress the pain as she scrambled onto her feet. She scoured the battlefield for him and cursed when snow swept across the land, reducing how far she could see.
Heavy footfalls beat the earth and she whipped towards the direction of the vibrations, hoping it was Hartt and not an army of clones about to descend on her and Syn.
A huge shape loomed in the blizzard.
Her heart jammed into her throat and then dropped again as a male muttered.
“Put me down.”
Hartt.
Frey emerged from the snow and dumped him unceremoniously on the ground. “As you wish.”
Mackenzie didn’t miss the way Frey’s glowing blue eyes leaped to Syn and then away again, his glance just long enough to check on her but not long enough to incite her friend. In fact, Syn seemed terribly preoccupied with checking a hole in her black leathers and grumbling about it.
“I should probably pop my armour on,” she muttered, and then cleared her throat, straightened her spine and shot Frey a wicked look as she fluffed her black pixie cut. “You’d totally instantly climax at the sight of me in it though. Don’t think team Vampton would be impressed if you lost your load in the middle of a battle.”
“Vampton?” Mackenzie made her way across the slippery ground to Hartt and helped him onto his feet.
“Vampire and phantom. It sounded better in my head than Phanpire… but now I say that out loud I think I like it more.” Syn hefted her blade and rolled her shoulders. Black leathery wings unfurled from her back, white flecks of snow spotting them as she stretched them and then allowed them to settle. “I’ll go scout the skies, see if I can find who’s causing this blizzard and take them out… before I addle demon-boy’s mind with my beauty.”
Frey scoffed at that but said nothing.
When Syn kicked off, he looked stunned, as if he hadn’t actually thought she was going to fly through a blizzard. In a heartbeat, the huge demon male had spread his own dusky leathery wings and was launching into the air after her.
“You don’t think…” Mackenzie looked at Hartt and then shook her head as she wrinkled her nose. “Nah.”
There was no way that Frey was interested in her friend.
There was definitely no way that Syn would be interested in him. She hated demons of his kind and avoided them as best she could, something she had told Mackenzie was due to a bad history with them—a history her friend flatly refused to tell her.
Although, Syn was being uncharacteristically nice to Frey, teasing him rather than trying to take his head off with her sword.
Hartt pivoted away from her as shadows loomed in the darkness. Clones rushed from the blizzard. She plastered her back to his as she sensed more coming from the other direction and realised they were surrounded. It felt good to work in tandem with him as the clones attacked, as she cut and slashed at some and