Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Long is the Night

"I'm fine," I pushed at Evander who was trying to unzip my dress, hoping to claw Maeve's magic off me with my dress, and I couldn't budge him.

Evander should know it didn't work like that. But Maeve should have known better, too. She must be a witch with no magical combat training at all, or else she was past the point of strategy. All she had done was hurt me, not truly incapacitate me. And you don't fight to hurt a powerful witch, without seriously wounding them. When you do that? All you're doing is pissing a witch off.

"Get off me!" I screamed at Evander. Despite the godawful burning sensation sinking into my back, despite the vomit clinging to my chin, I climbed to my feet, carelessly swiping at my chin with my forearm, pressing my hands back, just over my shoulders, latching onto Maeve's black fireball of magic blistering my skin.

"Dolor foris, poentia intus!" I growled.

I took Maeve's torturous hex from the outside and drew it in, screaming like a banshee as breathtaking pain like I've never known hit my spine. It didn't paralyze me, however. It lit me with a fury I've never experienced before—not even when the wolves were tearing at Nick's flesh. But I latched onto that image of Nick, torn and rent, and then an imagined scene of Orla dying and Morgan taking her baby. And then my vision of the vampires' faces in the flames, cracking and turning to ash.

Evander, ceasing to exist at the hands of these forty-four fucking wolves and witches.

I wanted every witch and every wolf in this room on their fucking knees.

My defiance dropped down into my body's pain like a lit match dropping into gasoline.

I crossed my arms in front of me and screamed and screamed as I threw my hands outwards.

There were no words in my magic. Just screams and streams of fiery ropes spreading like a web from my rapidly twisting fingers.

Over and over my angry magic streamed and my fingers rapidly knotted it until I had built a flaming net that dragged every witch and every werewolf down to the floor. Not on their knees. On their bellies, trapped beneath my magic, writhing, struggling, unable to break free as my net wrapped their throats and cut off their airways. Unlike Maeve, I wasn't fucking around with a little second-degree magical burn.

I would kill them all right now and be done with this fuckery. They were all caught now, all being choked. I screamed some more and pulled with all my might on the web I had woven, and they all started to flail as they began to suffocate in earnest.

Only Maeve had the strength to defy my magic. She climbed to her feet, tightening the net even further on her two nearest sisters, not caring at all as they flopped into unconsciousness. She got a hand underneath my magic wrapped around her throat and broke it free, throwing my frayed magic to the ground.

"Did you get this power from him, you fucking baby killer!!!! It's not yours, and I swear to the first witches Danu and Caer, I will fucking choke you to death before I let you keep it!" she yelled at me. And then she grabbed one of my threads and began to pull me toward her, and I began to slide because she had caught me off guard.

Baby-killer? She thought I killed the baby?

"I didn't kill the baby, you goddamn crazy bitch! I don't know anything about the baby!!!" I screamed at her, yanking on my net with all my might. And then we were in a tug of war to the death for the power between us.

And that's when Darrow saw his opportunity, and he leaped once, twice, thrice through the holes in my magical net and caught Maeve by the throat, raising her up. He caught her off guard and her magic flailed. All the resistance I had been straining against fell to floor, and I tumbled backward even as my instincts screamed against the image in my mind's eye of Darrow snapping her neck in the next second.