harmlessly off the ground. But when we clambered to our feet, mage balls at the ready, we saw that the glass fronts of all the surrounding stores were blown out. Cowering humans, most of whom I knew even if they couldn’t recognize me through my glamour, peered up in fright from the Sty, and fury kindled within me.
When the next blast hit, we were ready, and I easily contained it within my shields. I also got a lock on our targets, lurking in an alleyway kitty-corner from where Ryu and I stood.
Beautiful blue eyes met mine from a waxen face, and I strode purposefully forward.
It was about time I dealt with Graeme, once and for all.
Chapter Four
Morrigan had definitely sent her big guns, as well as a few little ones.
Besides the rapist-incubus, Graeme, who wielded a fair bit of mojo, there were two goblins launching themselves across the street at us. They were the little guns, and Ryu and I flicked them aside with a negligible release of magic.
While we dealt with them, however, Graeme sent another massive blast of magic from a set of charms he held. They were like the magical version of grenades – supercharged, probably by Morrigan herself – to be utilized later by whoever carried them.
Since I was a woman, and better at multitasking, even as I dispatched my goblin I circled the charm’s blast with a heavy blanket of damp air. As I did so, I pulled more moisture out of the drenched Maine atmosphere, until the blast was cocooned in water.
[Do as Nell taught you,] came the creature’s voice in my head. Even as it told me what to do, it showed me, and I smiled.
Some of my first lessons from the gnome had been about recycling power. So, when I did things like create a mage light, instead of letting it fizzle out when I was done with it, she taught me to reabsorb the power.
And this charm was really just a massive, fuck-off powerful mage light.
I went deep in my power, grounding myself as I opened my channels to shunt off all that crazy force. Feeling the foreign power whoosh through me, I immediately boomeranged it back at where I knew Graeme was hiding between the fire station and the post office. It came out like a blast of light, clipping the corner of our fire station and blasting away a third goblin that had launched itself from the shadows.
I moved to the right, still streaming that power, until Graeme’s alley no longer hid him. He took off running, screaming something incomprehensible, but I felt an answering pull of air power above me.
Harpies, I thought grimly, knowing that Kaya and Kaori must be near. Ryu shouted, pointing upward. Dark shapes darted above us and then a single, magically charged feather came drifting down – but this one had the punch of a missile from a B-52 bomber.
It landed at our feet, and I shielded it even as we separated, throwing ourselves away as we amped up our own individual protections. It exploded in a riot of magic, blowing out the front of the fire station. Our dazed local firefighters – volunteers mostly –poked their heads around a corner, and I begged the creature for help. Like marionettes with their strings cut, the firefighters slumped to the ground, put to sleep by the creature’s power.
And that’s when I got pissed. It was one thing to attack me, but it was another thing entirely to attack the town of Rockabill. Morrigan was hitting way too close to home.
Graeme was holed up in the front piece of the restaurant a few doors down from the post office. He must have thought it was a good place to hide, but he was wrong.
Because that building – owned by Stuart Grey’s nasty parents – was the one building I didn’t mind destroying.
‘Take the harpies!’ I shouted at Ryu. ‘I’ll take Graeme!’
Ryu gave me a startled look, since he’d not seen the evolution of Jane True into someone who took people on, rather than just taking things from buffets.
He looked even more shocked when I pulled the labrys from wherever it hid, waiting to be called.
I swept it through the air a few times, calling to its power even as I remembered my lessons with Anyan with a pang. It responded eagerly, lighting up with a savage gleam. I grinned, admittedly rather maniacally, at Graeme, and started to walk forward.
Graeme shouted gibberish again, lobbing a few mage