Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
He strained, wanting to fly faster. Wanting to slam into the enemy with everything he had. But he held himself back. They had a spectacle to provide first. The battle would come next.
Tandor Holling flew at the front of the Gimerel guardians. Huh. He wouldn’t have been Tristan’s first pick for the lead enforcer position. He could be ruthless, but he got frazzled much too easily.
Tristan would spin his head around today.
Nelson stood stoically, his hands spread along the stone banister. Tristan could just make out his expression: annoyance. It took him a moment to understand why.
Garhettes crowded the square, stood along the sidewalks, and populated the lanes. They looked at the skies, ignoring their guardians and focusing on who was coming. All ages were present, from those just barely old enough to be on their own to females well advanced in their years. Some wore slinky dresses with made-up faces, customary for finding mates, but others wore pants, long sleeves, and sturdy boots, standing in a way that said they wanted to fight. They didn’t have weapons, though. They wanted to be taken, and then they wanted to be armed. They were looking for jobs, not mates.
A rush of pride filled Tristan unexpectedly. All the garhettes from Kingsley’s had gone home, back to their lives. It seemed they’d liked the taste of battle, and then they’d told their friends. They were a battle species, after all. They’d been held back because they didn’t have wings. But the battle at Kingsley’s had proven wings weren’t necessary to kick some ass, and now the garhettes wanted an opportunity that Gimerel wasn’t providing.
Jessie absolutely would. Gargoyles weren’t like shifters: if the raiding cairn could take their opponent’s people, they did so gleefully. He’d rob this cairn blind of personnel.
The guardians above the cairn spread out, ready for impact. Tristan drove right at their heart as thunder rolled around them and fire streaked through the sky.
Jessie’s power throbbed once, twice, and then her spell tore loose from her outstretched hands. A great wind rose up from near the slope, tossing the clothes and hair of the garhettes before gaining force and slamming into the guardians above. The elemental magic shoved them hard and high, scattering their patterns and tossing some into the turbulent updrafts above. Fire took over, billowing and blasting them, sending them careening into the sides of the mountains or down toward the distant ground.
Her strength and power were incredible. Eye-opening. The garhettes’ mouths dropped open, and Nelson took steps away from the stone banister.
Tristan put on a burst of speed.
More spells ripped loose, more explosions aimed at the air next to the guardians so Jessie wouldn’t do any real damage. They’d get a thrill, a shock, and they might think she’d missed at first, but soon, it would be obvious she was clearing them out of her way. She didn’t need to fight with tooth and claw. The damage she could do from a distance was plenty to win this battle.
Nearly to the cairn, and the guardians were all over the place. Not one had been able to hold their position.
Garhettes looked up at her, dazed and smiling. More than a few put their hands up like children, wanting to be taken with her.
Jessie wiggled, and Tristan flung her toward the gentle slope and the cairn. She caught herself and flew until she was on level with Nelson, twenty feet separating them in the air. Her roar sent a thrill through Tristan’s heart, and then she fired off spells, slapping Nelson with magic.
He spun to find cover, trying to duck into the fortress, only to hit a magical wall. A tumult of spells peppered him, shoving him this way and that. He screamed, terror ringing in his voice. Pain.
Magic wafted from Jessie to the town, barely reaching Tristan. Humor, it felt like. Mocking, maybe. Basically, she was letting the cairn know she was toying with Nelson.
That alone would be enough to thoroughly embarrass the cairn leader, which was the point of this raid—make a mockery of him. Jessie and her people wouldn’t steal anything. They wouldn’t destroy a production cairn. Why would they? Gimerel didn’t have anything of value to offer her and Alpha Steele.
No, Jessie would fight her way into his fortress just because she could. And she’d leave a treasure fit for a gargoyle queen, all while her guardians and shifters took Gimerel to task. Her team was superior, as was her leadership, and she’d prove it.
Let Nelson try to spin that.
Austin’s crew paused in their advance, waiting for Tristan’s signal—all except for Sebastian and Nessa, who had already reached the edge of the slope and were sneaking closer to Jessie. Both had taken an invisibility potion and would furnish Jessie with power so she could get the size and strength needed for her spell. The weird mage had learned a few things from Kingsley’s battle, too, and they were trying it out here.