The first Gray reached him a second before Seamus’s blade sheared it in half. Needle-sharp claws dug into the flesh of Phelan’s shoulders as the creature spasmed and died, spraying freezing mist into the air.
Seamus grabbed Phelan by the arm and hauled him upright.
“Idiot.”
Phelan croaked a laugh and twisted, leaning against his cousin. The current Taliesin swung his staff like a scythe, a verdant blade of magic slashing through the ranks of Grays, buying them precious seconds.
“I can’t feel my leg,” Phelan said. Truth be known, his back was starting to seize up, muscles tightening as if his blood had been replaced with ice. “Don’t let them touch you.”
“Déithe agus arrachtaigh,” Seamus swore as he hauled Phelan toward the holly bushes and the faint shimmering border between their settlement and the outside world. “You could have said something about that.”
The ground shook with the pounding of hoofbeats against the earth.
No, not just the Hunt. Phelan sucked in a rasping breath, casting his senses away from the fight—hardly wise, but entirely necessary. The area’s lines were twisting, writhing, the magic shifting wildly. The ground was shaking beneath them, not just from the horses.
Déithe agus arrachtaigh and goddamn.
Thordin plunged through the wards, slipping past Seamus and Phelan to cover their escape, ax flashing silver in the dim. Phelan could barely breathe. “Fall back,” he rasped to Thordin as he came back to himself, blinking quickly as Seamus dragged him onward across the last few yards through the snow. “It’s worse than we know. Fall back.”
Thom crossed the lines to help Phelan, expression grim and his grip on the hilt of his blade white-knuckled. “There must be hundreds,” he said.
“It’s worse than that,” Phelan rasped. “The lines are shifting again. They’re shifting again and I don’t know what that means except that it’s bad.
“It’s very, very bad.”
ugh! dang cliff hangar again. I’m going crazy!!
Now what cometh?