Witch's Wrath (Blood And Magick #3)(47)
But I still felt like I could beat Tamara.
Something was different, something inside of me. It was as if a warm light had lit within my chest, a light I hadn’t noticed until now. While I didn’t know what the light was, or what it meant, I knew it could give me power if I asked for it, just as I knew I could jump if I motivated my legs to do so.
Tamara entered the circle the witches had made, and I entered as well, standing across from her.
Nicole, who had volunteered to mediate, stepped between us. “There are only three rules,” she said, “You must use only clean magick—no curses or lasting hexes, you must duel only using your primary style of magick, and you must also swear not to kill each other. Otherwise, your lives shall be forfeit.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Tamara bowed her head. “Agreed.”
Nicole stepped back into the crowd and held her hands out for a witch on either side of her to hold. Soon, each of the witches surrounding us were holding hands, and with their heads bowed in silent prayer, they created a bubble of magick around us that shone and shimmered like a semi-invisible force field, creating a clear partition between the combatants and the observers that would allow no one outside to intervene, and no magick used inside to spill out.
I flexed my right hand, clenching and releasing the fist.
“You give yourself away,” she said. “Now I know you’re right handed.”
“If you think that’ll make me easy to beat, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“You forget, I’ve seen you fight. Or, rather, I’ve seen you defend yourself. You’ve got a strong shield, but you can’t use it forever. Eventually, I’ll get the better of you. So, I’m giving you a chance to back out now with your dignity intact.”
“No,” I said, “I knew from the moment we met you and I would have to fight. Truthfully, I’ve been looking forward to it.”
“Good,” she said, and before I knew it, she had stretched her right hand toward me and sent a shower of lightning hurtling in my direction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tamara was fast—much faster than I had anticipated. But I was ready for her, and I swung my right hand across the air and struck the tip of the lightning bolt, sending her magick crashing into the bubble surrounding us. A shower of sparks fell from the point of impact. Some of the witches flinched, others wowed.
“Good,” she said, “You have a strong form—no doubt Remy’s training paid off.”
“Remy didn’t teach me any of this,” I said, and I pushed my left hand out toward her, forcing a wave of telekinetic magick to rapidly move in her direction. The attack was impossible for her to block or dodge, but only succeeded in unsteadying her footing, which she recovered from quickly. To anyone else it may have knocked them off their feet, but not to her.
Tamara smirked, and suddenly a phantom hand came racing toward me, aimed directly at my neck. But I could see it as it crossed the distance between us, so I reached out with both of my hands and grabbed it as it came, stopping it inches away from my neck. It was a struggle to keep it away from me, as if the hand belonged to some powerful giant with rippling muscles. I knew, though, that this was more psychological warfare than it was physical.
The hand wasn’t real—it was in my mind.
So, I fought fire with fire.
I released the hand, letting it grab my throat and constrict my breathing. But before the lack of oxygen could impair my thinking, I launched my own mental assault, conjuring a demon-like creature to come bursting out of a cloud of smoke, and commanding it to be-line directly toward Tamara.
The demon beat its leathery wings, arching its powerful shoulders, and roared at Tamara as it ran, its large feet pounding on the floor. And Even though the hulking, black creature was a mental construct, Tamara still had to defend herself against it because, like the phantom hand wrapped around my neck right now, the demon was more than capable of hurting her.
The hand released my neck, and I sucked in a deep breath of air, watching as the horned, winged demon barreled down on Tamara, swinging its fist at her face. She put a shield up, much like my own but not quite, and the demon struck it with a loud thump that seemed to shake the very room. It struck the shield again, and again, each time sending a shower of light arching in all directions.
While it had her attention, I collected as much raw magick as I could into my right hand, and hurled it at her in the form of a rippling bolt of violet lightning. The light hit the demon first, which burst into the same cloud of smoke it had manifest from, and then struck Tamara squarely in the chest, lifting her up off the floor and causing her to strike the edge of the bubble, and then fall to the floor.
Tamara struggled to rise, propping herself up with one hand and clutching her chest with the other.
“Do you concede?” I asked.
She looked up at me from the floor. “I take one hit and you ask me to concede?” she said, “You’ve clearly never fought in a real duel before; you’ve just always relied on your dirty magick.”
I braced myself for whatever she was going to throw at me next; lightning, telekinesis, maybe another mental assault. But it was none of those things. Tamara pressed her left index finger against her throat and dry-heaved once. When she opened her mouth, a black cloud began to spill out of her like ink in water, only it wasn’t ink—it was insects.