Zylas fell, his cast interrupted. Rolling, he shot to his feet again, tail whipping out. Vasilii smiled.
Holy water? No. Silver? Maybe. Was there anything else? In the story of the famous vampire hunters who’d exterminated hundreds of vampires, how had they done it? A sorcerer and a—
Vasilii grabbed Zylas and pulled the demon into his chest like a passionate lover.
—and a heliomage.
Crushing Zylas against him, Vasilii opened his deformed jaw, fangs gleaming. Fear flashed across Zylas’s face. One touch of those fangs and he’d be paralyzed.
I flung myself out of the trees and sprinted toward the fae and demon.
“A shame,” Vasilii whispered, “to waste such a delicacy.”
He brought his mouth down, fangs reaching hungrily for Zylas’s shoulder.
I leaped into them, my arm thrust out as I screamed, “Indura.”
Vasilii’s teeth met my arm with bruising pain—but no piercing agony. His long fangs were caught on my shirt, the fabric patterned with Amalia’s careful hexes.
Yanking my arm free, I clutched Zylas and shouted, “Ori eruptum impello!”
A silvery dome exploded from the small artifact. It struck Vasilii and hurled him backward—but the spell hadn’t had time to fully recharge and the burst of force wasn’t as strong as before. It was still enough to send Vasilii crashing down on his back.
Holding me tight, Zylas sprang away, opening a wider gap. Vasilii rose with uncanny grace, unharmed. Nothing we did could damage him.
Except, maybe, fire.
We needed an inferno and we needed it right this moment—but how? There were no gas cans for me to ignite with an otherwise harmless flame cantrip.
Zylas, can you light him on fire?
As my mind turned inward, I felt the demon again—that dangerous, shadowy presence inside my head. I could feel his urgency, his fear. He didn’t know how to stop this creature. He could heat things up but he didn’t have a spell to burn Vasilii. That was human magic. That was—
My magic.
No time to draw a cantrip large enough to do any damage. My magic wasn’t fast enough. Fast spells were—
My magic, Zylas whispered in my head.
He raised his hand—and I raised mine. His palm pressed to the back of my hand, our fingers aligned. Crimson power streaked up his arm—and hot scarlet magic blazed over my wrist in twisting veins. In my mind was the fire cantrip, the smooth lines of the rune bold and crisp. Simple. So simple compared to the complex tangles of Zylas’s spells.
Crimson light ignited before my eyes. The Arcana cantrip appeared on the ground in glowing lines of demon magic, spanning three long yards—with Vasilii in its center.
An instant for the fae’s black eyes to narrow. An instant for the creature to lunge toward us.
“Igniaris!”
Zylas’s snarl and my cry rang out together, the sounds melding into one—and the giant cantrip erupted into roaring flames. The boiling fire surged skyward, towering thirty feet. Blistering heat blasted my face, then swirling cold engulfed me as Zylas pulled the fire’s energy into his body. His fingers curled down, gripping my hand as the glow of his magic faded from our arms.
The inferno crackled and rippled for twenty long seconds, then the flames shrank and shrank until only burning embers remained, smoldering on the blackened grass. The snow was gone from the clearing, evaporated in seconds.
In the center of the charred circle, a burnt husk lay, unmoving. A fitful wind blew down the mountainside and the corpse crumbled, ash blowing across the ground. Something silver glinted in the debris—my slightly blackened infernus.
All the strength left my limbs and I slumped in Zylas’s arms. “It worked. I can’t believe it worked.”
“Which part?” Zylas asked. “The fire or the vīsh?”
“Both?”
His arms loosened, my only warning. I braced my feet just before he let go, but I wobbled unsteadily. Deciding it was all-around safer, I sank onto the damp earth.
Fire. I hadn’t been sure it would work, but one of the two legendary vampire hunters from my history book had been a heliomage. One of the most destructive Elementaria combinations: air and fire.
I stared at the fae’s crumbling corpse. We’d defeated Vasilii. Not with demon magic or Arcana but with a union of the two. Just as we had somehow cast a demonic spell together while he’d been too weak to move, we had cast an Arcana spell together—merging his ability to instantaneously create a rune with the swift, simple power of my cantrip.
Later, I would freak out over both those occurrences, but not now. My brain was already threatening to implode.
With a rustle of branches, Zylas dropped out of a nearby tree. Heedless of his bleeding wounds, he crouched beside me and held out the grimoire. Fighting back tears, I took it in both hands.
It … well, it had survived. The clasp was torn but the cover was intact. A few pages were on the verge of falling out, and some had partially torn, but overall, not too much damage. Awe slid through me as I carefully flipped page after page of Ancient Greek handwriting in faded ink. So much archaic knowledge, so much forgotten history.
I turned the last page and my heart lurched painfully.
At the back of the book were the torn stubs of a dozen pages. The ripped edges were white—recently torn.
I remembered Nazhivēr snapping the enclosing belt off the book. Remembered the open book in his hands as he sprang skyward.
“He stole pages,” I whispered, horror muting my voice. “He ripped pages out.”
And he’d escaped with them, leaving the rest of the grimoire behind, knowing Vasilii would go after the book. Nazhivēr had taken what he’d wanted most and fled, leaving Vasilii to claim the vandalized grimoire and kill Zylas. Furious tears stung my eyes.
“We will get the pages back,” Zylas said, “when we kill them.”
“Will we?” I mumbled despairingly.
A slow smirk curved his lips. “I cannot let them steal from my grimoire.”
I blinked in confusion—and he plucked the book out of my hands. Then he was on his feet and walking away with a jaunty snap of his tail. I blinked again, then shoved to my feet and rushed after him, unsure if I should laugh, scream, cry—or smack that smartass demon right in his smug face.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I peered over the top of the thick textbook with concentration so fierce my head ached.
On the other side of the coffee table, Zylas was sprawled across the sofa, ankles propped on one end and his head cushioned on the opposite armrest. As I peered intently at him, he reached over his head for the small bowl on the side table, filled with chocolate-dipped grapes rolled in crushed almonds, flaky caramel, and butterscotch chips.
He plucked a grape and held it above his mouth. One eye opened and his dark pupil, nearly invisible in the glowing crimson, turned to me.
I narrowed my eyes to slits, straining my brain as hard as I could.
“That is not how to hear inside my head, drādah.”
Damn it.
His husky laugh rolled through the room—as usual, he had no problem hearing my thoughts—and he dropped the grape in his mouth. His jaw moved as he chewed through the chocolate layer before swallowing.
Sighing, I returned my attention to the textbook. The coffee table was spread with old leather tomes, textbooks, and scattered papers. In the center was the grimoire, open to page sixteen. That was as far as I’d gotten in the last week.