“Unless this is one of those rare occasions my talents get it wrong.”
He returned his gaze to the road. “Let’s hope not. I’m really not in the mood to die today.”
The silver car was now throwing up a cloud of dust as Mia edged onto the shoulder in readiness to stop.
It was in that cloud that the outline of a second vehicle became visible. It was close to the tail of Mia’s car.
Too close.
“Oh fuck,” Monty said. “The bitch is going to ram her.”
“Yes, she damn well is.”
I scrambled out of the truck and hurled a ball of sheer energy at the dusty, semi-transparent vehicle … just as it plowed into the back of Mia’s, sending it sliding sideways over the embankment and down into the water-filled trench.
My bolt hit and punched the second car high into the air. It tipped over end-to-end several times then crashed heavily onto its roof and spun slowly down the road, well past us.
“Monty, see to Mia,” I yelled and ran back to the other car.
Though there was no immediate sense of evil emanating from the upside-down car, I nevertheless wrapped a cage spell around my fingertips. While I had nothing on hand that could in any way kill a spirit as strong as the hone-onna, Ashworth and Eli were only a phone call away. All I had to do was keep her contained.
The second car had come to halt sideways across the road. There was no movement inside, and for a moment, I wondered if she’d escaped us.
Then the back window shattered, and a spell that was little more than a mess of twisting threads of black foulness speared out and arrowed straight at me.
I didn’t need the charm at my neck burning to life to know that mass intended me no good. I slid to a halt, threw up my hands, and quickly wove a shielding spell—one that was interlaced with inner wild magic. The pulsing screen of silver and gold flared out in front of me, and the dark threads reacted instantly, sweeping to the left in an obvious attempt to get around the shield and attack from behind. I shifted with it, keeping the shield between us as I studied the threads, looking for a weak spot in the hone-onna’s magic.
There wasn’t one.
The bitch was strong.
An ominous prickle went down my neck.
The bitch was also behind me.
Chapter Eleven
I dropped low and lashed out with one booted foot. Heard a sharp crack and saw the pale glimmer of a bone shard flying. The hone-onna screamed—a sound that was fury and pain combined—and then fled, her steps light but weirdly arrhythmic. I twisted around. Her form was shifting, changing, disappearing.
I thrust to my feet to go after her, then yelped as something lashed my cheek, leaving it stinging and burning. I swore, spun around, and saw a dark thread snapping back toward me. I thrust the shield between us and caught the end of the whip before it could strike my cheek a second time. The damn thing hit the shield so hard it forced me back a step before I caught my balance and resisted. Rather than withdrawing, the end of the whip crawled across the shield’s network of gold and silver threads, a deadly worm of power seeking a weakness to exploit. It wouldn’t find any, but I nevertheless pushed a fraction more energy into the shield and incinerated the fucker. Then I flung the whole damn shield toward the rotating mass of foreboding black and wrapped it around the dark threads, utterly encompassing them in a shining orb of silver and gold. As the two magics fought for dominance, I turned and charged after the hone-onna. She was no longer visible, but the taint of her darkness rode the air, a scent I could follow as easily as a wolf could prey.
I was very aware it might be a trap—or, at the very least, a means of separating me from Monty and Mia—but it wasn’t like I had many other options. If I didn’t take this chance and try to snare her, she’d continue to have the upper hand and more people would die.
I leapt across the water-filled ditch that ran along the side of the road and raced through the plowed field. My steps were fast and sure—fueled by adrenaline or perhaps even the wild magic that was changing my body—but the distance between us remained static.
I rather suspected that was deliberate on her part.
The cage spell remained around my left hand, but a sudden burst of caution had me weaving a repelling spell around my right.
If the first failed, I sure as hell would need the second.
I leapt over a rock, landed awkwardly on the soggy soil, and threw out my arms to catch my balance. My fingers brushed against something that was gossamer soft and sticky. For an instant I thought it was a spider’s web floating by on the breeze, but it was too late in the season for spiders to be ballooning.
Another web brushed by; I caught the tail of it in my fingertips, and my psychometry flared to life, whispering all manner of dark secrets.
These webs weren’t natural.
They were born of magic.
Dark magic.
Her magic.
And once again they’d been designed to trap and hold rather than kill.
But why? Granted, it might be easier to test your skills against the strongest witch in the area if said witch was your captive, but that hardly made for good competition. But that wasn’t her intention here. Death was.
Just not my death.
Which wasn’t to say that if either the dark mess of magic or these gossamer webs had succeeded in grabbing me, she’d have released me, but for the moment, she simply wanted me out of the way so she could go after her assigned target.
Mia.
I swore, spun around, and ran like hell back across the field. As my feet flew, I dragged out my phone and called Monty. He didn’t immediately answer, and I cursed him a dozen different ways before he eventually did.
“Sorry, it was a bit involved getting Mia out of the car. Where are you?”
“In the other field. The hone-onna is looping around and coming back for Mia, and she’ll kill you if you get in her way.”
“Well, I sure as fuck won’t get out of her way.”
“I know, and I’m not asking you to, just—”
The rest of the sentence was lost to a scream. A woman’s scream. Mia’s.
“Monty?” I yelled. “What the hell is going on?”
He didn’t reply, but his magic surged, a fierce wave that burned my skin. It wasn’t a spell I knew, and it felt darker than anything he’d ever crafted before. It was a spell meant to destroy rather than protect and something he’d use only as a last resort.
I swore and reached for more speed, but I was never going to get there in time, and I knew it. I flung out a hand and called to the wild magic, praying like hell that the luminous thread I’d noticed earlier had remained close.
It had.
As it wrapped around my wrist, other threads came in, filling the air with their presence and their power. Their force energized me, making me feel I could run as fast as any wolf. Making me feel like I could fly.
Another scream.
Another surge of magic. Monty’s again, but weaker than before.
All but flying over the ground wasn’t going to cut it. If I didn’t do something right now, what I’d foreseen would come true.
I conjured a picture of Monty and Mia in my mind and then imagined a net of pure power around them, protecting them as my shield had protected me. I directed the image at the moonbeams that spun around me and then unleashed them.