Page 51 of Heartflame

“Can’t say the feeling’s mutual,” I snarled, feeling more of my dragon form pushing through. My half-shift was becoming more pronounced, my muscles bulging as scales covered more of my skin. “Who the hell are you?”

She laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Someone who shouldn’t exist. Yet here I am.”

More magic erupted from her hands, and this time I was ready. I charged forward, letting my dragon senses guide me as I closed the distance between us. I could feel Wild’s magic flaring nearby, sense Quill running toward the teleportation circle. But the woman was fast, impossibly fast, and her magic was strong enough to make my scales burn where it struck.

“Run!” Elder Briar Hall shouted again, and I could hear the desperation in his voice now. “Aeron! We need to go!”

I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw that he was right. Undead were everywhere, overrunning campus and security far quicker than seemed possible. Even more were pouring through the trees. And in the distance, I could see figures moving with purpose, actual people, not corpses. The Purity Front, probably, coming to finish what their undead army had started now that the wards were down.

The woman’s magic wrapped around my arm, burning like ice and fire combined. I roared in pain, pulling away from her grasp. I needed to get to Quill. I needed to get him out of here.

Before I knew it, Wild was at my side, his magic cutting through the air to sever her hold on me. I fell back in the grass, my arms smoldering where her magic had touched me. A laugh split the air and I looked up.

Why was she laughing?

“Again, Wild, you get in the way,” she chuckled. “Haven’t you learned your place yet?”

Elder Briar Hall’s eyes went wide, his entire body shifting. “It… It can’t be.”

“Surprised?” I could hear the grin in her voice. “Thought you’d seen the last of me, didn’t you?”

He just shook his head. “M-Mother?”

Chapter 21

Quill

“But… But you’re dead,” I heard Wild say. “The cube absorbed you. There was no way out…”

The woman just laughed, cold and heartless. “I told you that you would never be rid of me, Wilderain.” She lifted her hands again, magic crackling around her. “And I never break my promises.”

I watched the magic explode outward in a wave of sickly green that made my skin crawl. Wild threw up a barrier of his own magic, but I could see him straining against the force of it. Whatever this woman was, whatever she’d been to him, she was powerful. Terrifyingly so.

Magic wrapped around the barrier, the force of it knocking Aeron back a few feet.

“Aeron!” I cried, running toward him before I could even think.

I grabbed Aeron’s arm, hauling him to his feet as another wave of magic tore through the space where he’d been standing just seconds before. The ground itself seemed to ripple from the impact, and I could feel the heat of it singing my hair.

“Go!” Wild screamed, his voice cracking. He was terrified. And that scared me more than anything else that had happened tonight. “Get to the circle! Now!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I pulled Aeron with me, my legs pumping as hard as they could carry us across the devastated campus. Behind us, I could hear the woman, Wild’s mother, apparently, which was absolutely insane, laughing as she continued her assault. The sound of magic crashing against Wild’s barriers was like thunder, each impact sending tremors through the ground.

“I can’t leave him,” Aeron growled, trying to pull back toward the fight. “I can’t leave a member of the Elder Council behind!”

“You have to!” I shouted back, using every ounce of strength I had to keep him moving forward. “If we don’t make it to that circle, we’re both dead, and then all of this will have been for nothing!”

That seemed to get through to him. Aeron’s jaw clenched, but he kept moving, his long strides eating up the distance toward where Wild had indicated the teleportation circle would be. I could see it now, a faint shimmer of magic near the academy gates, its teleportation circle runes glowing softly in the darkness.

We were almost there. Maybe thirty feet away. Twenty.

Then that woman’s magic found us again.

It came like a whip, wrapping around my ankle and yanking me backward with enough force to knock the wind from my lungs. I hit the ground hard, my hands scraping against grass and dirt as I was dragged away from Aeron.

“Red!” he roared, spinning around immediately. His eyes had gone fully reptilian, his pupils slitted and gleaming with rage.

“Keep going!” I screamed, trying to claw my way forward even as the magic pulled me back. “Aeron, please! Just go!”