The skin on Derek’s face wrinkled. Oh crap.

I threw the apple on the stone floor of the courtyard. It shattered, spilling my blood, primed with magic.

A muscle on Derek’s shoulders flexed. His body trembled, straining.

I punched a stream of power into the blood. It snapped into a hair-thin line, glowing with red, and circled the house. A wall of red shot up. Derek crashed into it at full speed and bounced off. The ward tolled like a giant gong.

His human body tore, and the terrifying silver beast spilled out. His eyes were on fire. “Open it!”

“Not your fight.” I turned.

The Firestorm splayed across the sky. It would be on us in half a minute.

The blood ward boomed behind me.

I glanced over my shoulder. Derek ripped into the wall of magic. He wouldn’t break through. It took an insane amount of power to pierce a blood ward.

I pulled a golden sphere out of my bag and hurled it into the air. Of the six in my sanctuary, I had taken this one because Grandfather had made it especially for a fight like this. The complex metal filigree unfolded like a flower, sliding and moving into a new shape. A hollow metal wolf the size of a pony landed in front of me, its skin an intricate metal lace held together by ancient spells. Like all of Roland’s weapons, beautiful and deadly.

The wolf snapped its fangs, and its eyes ignited with a red glow. I dropped my bag and my cloak. The canteen on my belt was filled with vampire blood. Just enough for a single set of armor.

Making the armor would drain me. Once I put it on, it would protect me from heat until its magic was exhausted. My immunity to fire bought me some protection already, and I had to endure until the heat became too great. I had to save the armor until the end.

I grabbed a handful of arrows from my quiver and stabbed them into my thigh. The pain anchored me. The world turned crystal clear. My blood coated the arrowheads. I shoved them back into the quiver and turned to look at Derek one last time.

He looked demonic, all claws and fur, a monster corded with bulging muscle tearing into the wall of magic. Nothing human remained in him.

I put my hand against the ward. Goodbye.

Claws gouged the other side of the spell, leaving no tears. The ward held.

I spun around and jumped on the metal wolf’s back. The magic would power it for twenty minutes. It would have to be enough.

The wolf charged in a dizzying sprint. Wind tore at my face. The cloud in front of me condensed and flashed with flames. The dense curtain of smoke churned faster. Dozens of red glowing fires ignited within the storm and streaked down. Fireballs rained on the plain, exploding left and right, shooting flames and dirt into the air.

The wolf zigzagged like a mad rabbit. Come on, show yourselves.

A fireball hit too close on my left. Heat bathed me. We tore through it, sprinting deeper, to the center of the storm.

I finally saw the pattern within the cloud, three churning maelstroms, three priests each generating smoke and fire in a dark spiral. An equilateral triangle, with a ma’avir in each corner. Individually they would be problematic; together, locked into a battle formation, they became unstoppable.

I guided the wolf into a turn and leaned back until my spine hit the metal. The left spiral spun directly above me. I nocked an arrow and fired. The arrow shrieked through the air and vanished into the cloud. A fireball answered. The wolf shied right, twisting like a cat in the air, and it took all of my skill to stay on its back.

Missed. Shit.

Fire pelted the ground around me, explosions so loud, I thought I would go deaf. I leaned forward, hugging the wolf’s neck, and we streaked through, scorched by flames, showered with dirt, moving forward on instinct and hope.

Keep moving, keep moving. To stop was to die.

We dodged another fireball, and suddenly there was an opening to the left, all three spirals clearly visible on the side. I leaned to the right and fired, sending a burst of magic with it, the same way my ancestors had done thousands of years ago when horse archers of the Koorghans ruled the steppe.

The arrow screeched, its red arrowhead glowing, an ember against the black storm. It pierced the center of the whirlwind. A ghostly scream rang out. The spiral collapsed, revealing a ragged circle of clear sky and the ma’avir at its center, my arrow in his chest.

The priest arched his back. Fire spilled out of the wound. The arrow shaft ignited and burned to ash in an instant, but the arrowhead was still inside him, eating at his body, sapping his power.

Soot blinded me. I fired again on pure instinct. The second arrow bit into the ma’avir’s side. I saw it strike home out of the corner of my eye, as the wolf and I raced out of the cloud of ash. Behind us fireballs drummed the ground, as if a giant was chasing me and pounding the ground with his feet.

The firestorm tore in half, the injured ma’avir convulsing.

A torrent of flames slashed into his side from the left. A second torrent hit him from the right. The other priests had anchored him.

The burning cloud melted away. The plain was ash around us. The three priests hung high above, connected by ropes of fire.

I fired an arrow at the priest on the left. It shrieked through the air and burned to nothing five feet from the ma’avir. Crap.

Moloch’s priests twisted themselves in identical strange poses. Three pillars of fire burst from their feet, smashing into the ground with a deafening thud.

I steered the wolf into a wide circle and fired again, at the other priest. Once again the arrow melted into ash.