Magic Claims by Ilona Andrews

Curran stood up. He raised the heart up, showing it to everyone, walked over to me, and dropped it at my feet.

Umm. What was I supposed to do with it?

His eyes were pure gold, still mad with bloodlust.

I stabbed the heart with Sarrat. It seemed like the thing to do.

Curran turned away from me and roared.

Every shapeshifter knelt as one. Heather’s archers, the Blades, Darin, Conlan, and I were the only ones standing on the entire field. On the tower, the Pale Queen stood frozen.

Curran had taken the Pack. It was his. The fight was over. We had won.

The magic permeating the field vanished, sucked toward the tower in an instant.

Magic crackled like lightning above the Pale Queen. The few remaining hunters who had survived Heather’s arrows ran from her. Some of them leaped off the tower and slid down its side, crashing into the grass.

The dark smoke boiled and expanded in slow motion, rolling over the tower, out and down. It caught the shapeshifters kneeling by the wall. Their gold collars flashed. Their heads exploded.

She was out of magic. Her best fighter and her priest-mages were dead. She was sacrificing her own people for a last boost of power. There were at least forty of them still alive on the field, most too injured to fight or run. She would kill them all, the elderly, the children, everyone with a collar. All of them would die.

“No, Sharratum, no!” Jushur screamed.

The magic shot out of me almost on its own. The very last of my reserves. All I could give. It rolled from me, pitifully weak. The world went gray. I fell but didn’t land.

There was a noise. It came from far away, as if I were deep underwater and someone was screaming for me on the shore. I floated in the desaturated mist, disconnected and scared. So scared.

I wanted to hug Conlan again. I wanted to kiss Curran and see him grin at me.

I still had too many things to do. I wouldn’t let it end here. No, not happening. I needed to get back to my family.

A faint tint of green began to spread along the edges of the colorless mist. The land. It was exhausted, its magic depleted and drained by the Pale Queen, and still, it was reaching out to me as it reached out to everyone.

I stretched my hand. A thin green shoot wove its way through the mist toward me.

Just a little more. A little bit.

The green touched my fingertips.

Reality rushed at me in a swirl of color and warmth, the sounds too loud, and I heard Conlan screaming into my ear, “Mom! Don’t die, don’t die!”

I made my lips move. “It’s fine,” I lied. “You’re fine. Everyone is fine.”

Conlan sobbed.

“Where is your father?”

“I’m here,” Curran said. “I’ve got you.”

Oh. He was holding me. That’s why it felt so nice.

“Love you,” I told him.

“Don’t do that again,” he snarled.

“Is everyone dead?”

He shifted me in his arms so I could see the fortress.

I had claimed a chunk of land, about a hundred yards wide and maybe three hundred yards long. All of our people were safe. A handful of Ice Age shapeshifters stood and sprawled inside my claim, bewildered but alive. Their collars lay at their feet. A couple of hunters, somehow on their feet, staggered toward me. Everyone else, all of her people, the hunters and the shapeshifters, were dead. The grass outside my territory was littered with headless corpses.

In front of us on top of the tower, an enormous phantom gripped the tower with five-foot-long bony fingers armed with huge claws. Her face belonged to the Pale Queen, but her mouth was full of fangs. A crown of bony horns and antlers rode on her head. Dark smoke swirled around her like a robe.

I had seen the smaller version of it before. That was the phantom the priest-mage had threatened me with in front of Penderton.

That was it? You killed all of your people for this? To turn yourself real big?

“Will she be okay?” Curran asked.

“Yes,” Jushur said. “She survived through no fault of her own. She will need food and rest.”

I need that bitch to die. Did she transform or was she projecting this phantom?

“I will get you that rest, baby. Wait for me.”

Okay, I’ll just wait right here.

A shape dashed across the rampart toward the giant phantom, a sword in his hand.

“Isaac,” I said.

“Where?” Curran squinted and saw him. “What the hell.”

The ranger leaped and scrambled up the phantom’s arm.

“She’s solid,” Jushur said.

Isaac reached the phantom’s shoulder, climbed up, and jumped. His body flew through the air, his back arched, both hands on his sword, and he plunged the blade into the phantom’s cheek. His dead weight hit it, and the sword ripped through the magic flesh, carving a gash in her face all the way to her lower jaw. Smoke and blood poured out of the wound.

The Pale Queen screamed and batted him aside like a fly. Isaac hurtled through the air out of view.

“She’s solid and she bleeds.” Curran lowered me to the ground. “Wait with Kate. Guard her.”

“Always,” Jushur told him.

“Conlan, protect your mother.”

“Yes, Alpha,” Conlan managed.

“I’ll be right back, baby.”

“Come back alive,” I told him.

“I promise.”