Page 117 of Claim the Light
Damn. There was a time when I would throw myself into danger, but that version of myself has given way to my need to protect the child I’m carrying and to honor the love of a dragon whose heart would be torn out if he lost me.
Fighting any witch who controls dark magic is no easy task. They’re unpredictable and can never be defeated by brute force alone.
I hate admitting it, but I have to come back with reinforcements.
Just as I make the decision to leave, the choice is taken out of my hands.
A shriek sounds from around the corner and the witch flies at me from the shadows, her cloak billowing around her bony form. The scent of rotten fruit envelops me at the same moment that her left hand reaches for me, clutching at my shoulder. Her other hand is clenched tightly around the shaft of an arrow with an ivory tip, which she aims at my heart.
Her attack isn’t the fastest, and I evade it easily, leaping back at the same time as I snatch my glaive from my hair. The weapon takes shape within my hand and I prepare to swing it across her throat and end her.
Dark light blasts from her free hand and hits my weapon arm. My scales thicken across my skin and protect me from her magic, but the impact slows my swing. The witch ducks and sends another blast of magic at me. This time, I deflect it with my glaive, sending the dark energy into the nearby brick wall. It sizzles across the surface, burning like acid, and I’m incredibly grateful for my scales that will protect me if I’m hit.
I’m on the back foot, but I recover my balance, deflecting each of the quick blows she sends in my direction before I push forward again.
I sense her fear as I get closer to her.
Her efforts become more desperate and another explosion of light rockets past me.
I narrowly evade it and prepare to deliver the strike that will kill her, but at that very moment, my womb contracts.
It’s a painful tightening more intense than any Braxton Hicks I’ve experienced before.
Oh… fuck me. Not now!
Without the distraction, I would have easily avoided the would-be dagger she rams at me once more, easily beat my wings and lifted into the air. I’m close enough to have cut her down already. But the sudden pain and the intense tightening makes my torso rigid and freezes me for a split second too long.
She sees her chance, and she takes it.
The arrowhead she’s aiming at me lodges in my left shoulder.
For a moment, I’m relieved, since she rammed it into the fleshy part of my torso and missed my heart, but to my shock, a bolt of what feels like electricity passes through me.
My head spins and my legs give out. Unable to control my body, I thump against the dirty, brick wall and slide down into the filth at the side of the building.
Fuck!
The witch leaped back as soon as she stabbed me, but now she ventures forward. Eyeing me warily as she approaches. Her irises are washed out and nearly completely white, her cheeks are gaunt, and her skin is a sickly gray, all a sign of the dark magic that must be eating away at her.
She cackles as she looms over me. “I’ve stabbed you with an arrowhead fashioned from the tip of a fingerbone of an ancient titan. It was very difficult to come by. Very expensive. I had to make the shaft myself and attach it.”
When I can only stare up at her, she comes a step closer.
“A lesser supernatural would have died already,” she says. “But you will need an extra push to meet your death.”
Pulling a dagger from within her cloak, she waggles it in my face.
“Fancy this,” she says with a giggle. “An old crone like me defeating an angel like you.”
My vision is blurring, but I’m no longer trying to focus on her. At the corner of my eye, there is a tiny spark of light.
Within my hearing there is the softest hum of gossamer wings.
A golden dragonfly glides effortlessly across the air and hovers above the old lady’s head.
Sophia…
I haven’t seen her since she traveled west with Micah five months ago.
