time to catch a second Vulture’s claws. Tall, probably male, likely Rafa?. His mask was studded with jagged spikes and he retracted his claws and lashed out at her again so quickly that when she jumped away she jolted into Malachiasz’s back. Her magic swept out around her with her movement and it brushed against him. She shuddered involuntarily. The power roiling underneath his skin ached like a poison, a blackness that spread in his veins and coursed out into his aura. She didn’t want to be this close to him but if she was going to get out of this alive she was going to need a monster who knew how to fight monsters.
Nadya gathered her divine magic around herself like a shield, throwing it back over Malachiasz as Rozá and Rafa? struck at the same time. The magic only barely held against them.
Malachiasz tilted his head back. Nadya felt him shift his footing and then suddenly he was leaning against her. She stumbled as a spray of blood precluded her spell shattering in front of her.
Malachiasz had looked dizzy when they were outside the church. Blood mages could only press so far before their resources needed to be replenished. But then he straightened and moved away from her and Nadya frantically murmured words in holy speech as Rafa?’s claws came perilously close to tearing open her chest. A sphere of light formed at the tip of her voryen and she flicked her wrist down, shooting it off into the Vulture in front of her, slamming him back into the wall.
Rozá vaulted past Malachiasz to get to Nadya. For a tense heartbeat, Nadya thought he had let her, but he was moving toward the Vulture that had a defenseless Anna backed into a corner, her sword just out of reach.
Nadya tugged her second voryen from her belt, fusing Krsnik’s heated magic into the metal. She spat out symbols of smoke and pulled threads from Marzenya’s death magic into her other blade.
“This is what the Kalyazi have rested their hope upon?” Rozá said when she was steps away. “This is pathetic.”
“You talk too much,” Nadya snapped. She pulled the essence of Bozetjeh’s power and cut the distance between her and the Vulture, slamming her flame-tinged voryen into her shoulder.
The blade passed through as if the girl was made of blood and nothing more. Rozá’s clawed hands snapped toward Nadya’s torso, but she slipped out of her grasp, fluid with Bozetjeh’s power. She slammed the other blade—coated in the essence of the goddess of death and magic—into the Vulture’s stomach.
Rozá choked, pain fluttering over her visible features. Her eyes closed and she pulled herself off Nadya’s blade. She took a step back, pressing her hand to her abdomen. There was blood pouring from the bottom of her mask.
There was movement at Nadya’s side and she turned, but Malachiasz was already there. A spray of blood arced between his hands, shifting into blades, slamming into Rafa?. He grabbed the Vulture by the front of his shirt, driving the nails of his other hand into the opening of his facial mask.
The magic in her head was growing more insistent, aching to destroy. She was already pulling on so many threads. It was far more than she had ever used before and she didn’t know how much her body could take, how much divine abuse she could channel before it ruined her.
But the Vultures were shaking off her attacks as if she was nothing but a mild irritant. Rashid grasped at Rozá’s moment of distraction and attacked; she slammed him into the wall where he crumpled like a discarded doll.
Nadya heard Anna’s sword clatter to the ground, the sound too loud yet distant, as if it came from miles away.
They’re here for me. Rozá’s claws sunk into Malachiasz’s chest. They’re here for him, too. One of the smaller Vultures slashed open Parijahan’s side.
Malachiasz freed himself from Rozá’s grasp and staggered back. His inhuman, onyx eyes locked with Nadya’s and she experienced a moment of clarity. A passage of a singular thought between her and this nightmare of a boy she did not know and did not trust.
She ran. He followed.
The monsters gave chase.
Just before they passed the threshold of the sanctuary, Nadya turned, calling on Marzenya and Veceslav both. One to ensure destruction, the other for protection for those she did not wish harmed.
Then she brought half of the sanctuary down on the Vultures.
Malachiasz tripped over his own feet, just barely missing being caught