Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,36

her what she was supposed to do. But Alex was already gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

A cry from above made her look up.

Alex had disappeared, but the firebird was still going strong, flying across the sky like an avalanche on wings, screeching its graceful head off. Something was materializing in the air behind it, weaving in and out of visibility, in hot pursuit. Tala took off after both, shaking her arnis sticks out from her knapsack as she did.

The bird let out a cry of pain and landed. It swiveled to meet its pursuers, and Tala was stunned to see that they were bees made of crystallized ice, so clear that she could see through them. In lieu of bulging insect eyes, their faces were as smooth as a glass surface, and their stingers glistened with colorless ichor. They made shrill high-pitched whines instead of buzzes, and they surrounded the firebird quickly, moving in for the kill.

Tala didn’t even hesitate. Her stick flew down and swung at the nearest bee like she was swinging a baseball bat, hitting it with a satisfying thunk. The strange creature shattered on impact, small glitters of ice floating to the ground.

Tala swung again, meeting her marks each time. The firebird had also leaped into action, sending flames straight into the heart of the humming hive. What few of the bees escaped, Tala made short work of with her arnis, until there was nothing else to strike at.

Bereft of enemies, the firebird wriggled its tail feathers and puffed out its chest.

“What the hell was that about?” Tala growled at it. “And where’s Alex?”

The ground underneath them shifted once again from solid to slippery, and Tala promptly lost her balance.

She slid a few feet before struggling to her knees, her hands braced against the icy ground as she clamored for balance. With a loud battle cry, the firebird headed straight into her, slamming into her sides hard enough for her to see stars. She skidded right, just in time for a wave of ice to sail past, missing her completely.

“What…?”

A figure was striding toward them. It wasn’t human. Just like the bees, it was made completely of ice; a statue that had come to life under a skilled sculptor, but not adequate enough for the work to convey any warmth and passion.

It was constructed with a girl’s figure in mind, but the similarities ended there. It had a face—a lovely one in theory. But the beautifully contoured cheekbones sloped down into a cruel mouth twisted into a genteel sneer; the soft tapered hands were clenched like claws, and nothing in its large eyes suggested any impression of humanity.

It raised its hand, and the ground before it surged forward like a sea of waves.

Tala dodged to the left, and the next wave of ice slammed into the spot she’d been standing on, leaving a small mountain of snow in its wake. Without pause, the walking statue flicked its wrist in her direction again.

Desperate, Tala swung her sticks again as the fresh wall of ice rushed to meet her. Something went crack.

Against the wood the ice broke apart, splitting the frozen wave down the middle into two sections that spun away on either side of her. Both segments continued for several more feet before shuddering to a complete standstill. She was left without a scratch. The figure was gone.

“Tala!” Ryker was running toward her, and Tala wanted to yell at him to keep back, but she was trembling too much. He reached her without incident, and she clung to his chest. He was warm, like the cold didn’t affect him at all.

“What’s going on?” he rasped, staring up at the curtain of ice that had come dangerously close to killing her.

The firebird squawked several more times and took off again in the direction of Elsmore High.

“I have to go.” She didn’t want to leave, but Ryker shouldn’t be involved in any of this. She stepped back from his embrace. “I’ll explain everything later, but I have to go. You have to call 911 once the phones start working; make sure the others are all right.”

“Tala!”

But she’d already taken off.

9

In Which Loki Uses a Toothpick and Ken Loses a Fight with a Library

Sneaking into the Sydney Doering residence had been a cakewalk.

The mansion was equipped with the best and most expensive security systems that money could buy, and quite a good number of those were laced with spelltech of the technically-not-yet-legal-to-implement sort that only the very wealthy could