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Chapter Twelve
Morgana tried to fly away. Denise swatted her back to the ground with one of those massive wings. Morgana rolled around, momentarily dazed, and I seized my chance.
I jumped on her. She tried to scramble away, but I climbed up her body with the same urgency I’d used to scale the cliff.
“I take it back,” I said when I had crawled near her ear. “You don’t need therapy. You need killing.”
Morgana started screaming in that unfamiliar language. Instantly, it felt like dozens of invisible nails scratched me. Nothing else happened, though, and from Morgana’s shocked expression, something more should have.
I laughed. “Nice try, but I’ve got friends in low, low places, so I’m temporarily immune to your spells.”
She glared at me. “You will die screaming—”
My arm across her throat cut her off. I folded my other one over it, locking her neck in place between them. Then, I wrapped my legs around her torso and began pulling.
Her eyes widened, first in rage, and then in horrified understanding. She flung herself backward, knocking us against the ground hard enough to elicit an oof! from me, but I didn’t let go. I kept tightening my grip and pulling harder.
“Morgana!” one of the witches screamed, seeing her leader’s predicament. She ran toward her, only to be snatched up before she was halfway there. Several crunching sounds later, there was nothing left of the witch except the parts that Denise spat out.
Morgana’s elbows slammed into my sides. Pain exploded as my ribs shattered. Every new movement caused ragged bits of bone to stab me, and I wasn’t healing. I was too full of silver.
My arm slipped a bit from her neck. Morgana took advantage, rolling us across the ground while ramming her elbows into me again. Soon, I was vomiting blood between gasping screams, yet I didn’t let go. I let her bash me while I readjusted my grip on her neck and kept my legs around her torso.
It’s only pain. Keep pulling! Harder, harder, harder!
Morgana’s head came off with a pop that sent me sprawling backward. Then I sat there, so dazed from agony that it took a few moments before I chucked her head aside. It rolled to a stop near her body, which was now shriveling into the state of true death for vampires. Soon, Morgana looked like a weird headless scarecrow that someone had dressed up in a bloody blue robe.
I lay back, relief briefly buffering my pain. It was over. Morgana was dead.
A roar made me sit up despite how much that hurt. Denise had chased a group of witches over to the cliff’s edge. They had a steep drop behind them and a pissed-off dragon in front of them. They might have deserved either death, but I was eager to get the silver out of me so I could start healing, and I’d need Denise in her regular form for that.
“Enough,” I called out. “Morgana’s dead, so you can stop. Not you, witches,” I added when they froze as if obeying a sternly worded command. “Denise, you can stop.”
She did stop advancing on them, but the witches didn’t move. Huh. Maybe they were literally scared stiff…or not.
I sat up more fully and looked around.
Now none of the witches were moving, even the ones that had been running down the path away from the edge of the cliff.
“The spell,” I groaned.
As promised, it had infected everyone in our immediate vicinity. How ironic that the witches had gotten trapped in a hex of their own making. Still, that hex was supposed to end with Morgana’s death, and the witches were freezing up now, after Morgana was dead.
Only one reason I could think of, and it was the worst possible scenario. Morgana’s death hadn’t ended the curse.
“She comes!” one of the witches suddenly screamed.
I thought she meant Denise, but she was still in her imposing stance in front of the cliff. The witches perched at the cliff’s edge tried to turn around toward the sea and couldn’t. They did manage to crane their necks a little though, so I stood up and followed the direction of their gaze.
The sea boiled. That’s the only way I could describe the froth of white that poured from the tops of the waves. Then those white tips began to spin in a circle, forming a maelstrom that slowly approached the thin strip of remaining beach.
High tide was here. The sea goddess was coming, and Denise and I were still magically marked as her sacrifices. But we weren’t the only ones. Not anymore.
“New plan!” I yelled, striding toward the witches even though every movement caused fresh spurts of agony. “Any witch that can still move better conjure something up to break Morgana’s spell, or we’re all about to be sea goddess chum.”
“Blas…phemy,” the witch nearest to me hissed.
Her broken speech concerned me more than her refusal. It meant the immobility spell had almost completed its work. The witches around her looked in equally bad shape. They must have been the closest to us since we’d arrived. They couldn’t chant out a counterspell even if they wanted to.
I gave a frustrated look around. Someone had to be in better shape! We hadn’t been up in every witch’s face this entire time.
I heard a thump behind me and then gasps. I turned, shocked to see that the witch who’d said “blasphemy” would now never speak again, and it wasn’t because of the spell. No, it was because her head was rolling near my feet while the rest of her body was still frozen upright.
“Who else wants to tell my wife that they won’t help her?” a completely unexpected British voice said.
