Page 85 of Wolves’ Witch

“She’s casting a spell.” Cordelia may not be able to attack the Langeais wolves directly, but she had a whole repertoire of dark spells to call on. Her grimoire was proof of that. “We have to stop her!”

“Stay here. Both of you.” Gaharet pointed to the twins. “Protect Isobella. She may be the only person that can save us from this witch. You too, Remi.”

Gaharet drew his sword and spurred his horse out onto the meadow. Lothair, D’Artagnon, Aimon, and Lothair’s guards all followed, thundering down upon the lone woman standing unprotected in the grass. She didn’t have Didier, Douglas or the chevaliers from House Allard to do her dirty work. This might be their one chance to rid themselves of Cordelia.

They were wrong. She was wrong.

Cordelia wasn’t alone. She was never alone. Not when she had her magic. From the mud, things rose. Hideous, misshapen things oozing sticky, gloopy mud, defying the drenching rain that should have washed them back into the earth. The warriors didn’t falter. They bore down on them, slicing and stabbing at them. But the things weren’t human, animal or even living. They were mud, and they didn’t die, or bleed or fall. They reformed, reaching for the riders as Gaharet, Lothair and the men tried to clear a path to Cordelia.

A horse screamed as the mud creatures mired its legs in their slimy clutches. It struggled to free itself, its stomping hooves splashing mud in all directions, but to no avail. The creatures surged up its legs, reaching for its rider and pulled him from the saddle into their sludgy depths. It swallowed him whole. The mud slid back into the ground, and the rider was gone, the horse galloping away across the meadow, stirrups flapping against its flanks. The chevalier gone as if he had never existed. Not the mud creature. It rose again, reaching for another rider.

Isobella clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling her horror. They were all going to die. She’d sent them out there to their deaths, believing Cordelia couldn’t touch them. She didn’t have to.

Edmond drew his sword. “I am not going to stand by and watch her destroy our pack.”

“Edmond, no!” Aubert’s words were a sharp crack of sound through the unrelenting rain. “Gaharet’s right. Isobella is the key. She can save us.”

Me? Isobella swiveled from Edmond to Aubert. I’m no match for Cordelia.

Aubert moved his horse closer to hers and took her hand. Rain sluiced over his face and dripped from his beard, but his focus never wavered. “You have used your magic before. In the forest. In Langeais village. Use it now.”

But this is Cordelia. What use was Isobella’s green magic against a dark and powerful blood witch? Isobella encouraged plants to grow and flowers to bloom. Banished weeds that refused to stay gone.

Isobella stilled. Banished weeds that refuse to stay gone.

What if…? She stared out across the meadow at Cordelia and her mud creatures. If Cordelia were gone, her spell would go with her. The mud creatures should disappear, sliding back into the earth they’d come from. And while Isobella didn’t think she had the power or the magic to best Cordelia, what if she could banish her? Force her from the past and confine her to the future, to the twenty-first century. Where the Langeais wolves and the coven had united. Where there were powerful blood witches—an entire coven of witches—like Annabelle.

The mud creatures pulled another keep guard from his horse. It was worth a try. It might be the only chance they had.

Isobella shoved Edmond’s surcoat at him and slipped to the ground. She pulled off her boots as both Edmond and Aubert dismounted, and Edmond led the horses out of the way. Mud squelched up between her toes. Good. She would need as much connection to the earth, to the elements as she could get. She would also need the power of her blood. Werewolf blood. Cordelia was no dandelion or creeping Charlie. She was more of a thistle on steroids. “I need a blade.”

Aubert handed her one, hilt first. She took it and sliced open her palm. She steadied herself, fixed the spell in her mind, with a few additions specific to what she needed. It was a spell she’d used many times at the nursery, but it had never been more important she get it right than now.

Then Isobella plunged her hand, bleeding palm and all, into the mud. She didn’t look out onto the battlefield. She focused within. On the words, on the intent.

“Banish thee from soil and sight,

So curse’s bounty needs not fight.”

Aubert crowded her. “Something is happening. It is working.”

She glanced up. Cordelia’s mud creatures stood frozen.

Sightless, as one, they turned toward her. Then they were on the move again, sloshing and bubbling like some primordial swamp, until they were together and they somehow congealed into one huge mucky gelatinous pile of stinking rotten mud.

She gaped at it. “You call that working?”

Shit. It was moving in her direction. The thing was big enough to swallow a damn bus, and it was growing bigger by the minute.

Edmond abandoned the horses and rushed to her side, his sword drawn. “It is working. She is focused on you. You are the threat now.”

Isobella closed her eyes. She could do this. She had to do this, or they were all dead, consumed by a mud monster.

“Take this scourge, Cordelia King

Remove her bite, her grip, her sting.”

The rasp of Aubert drawing his sword, and a horrible sloshing, belching noise snapped her eyes open. It was halfway between them and Cordelia now. The Langeais wolves and Lothair and his remaining guards harrowed its sides, darting in and out, slashing at it. Mud sloughed off it, but it did not slow. Behind it, Gaharet, his sword raised, rode straight for Cordelia. He got within two horse lengths of her before an invisible force threw him backward off his horse. He landed heavily but was back on his feet in an instant, scrabbling for his sword in the mud.