The Witch: Book Two of The Sorceress Saga Taliesin Govannon (best free ereader .txt) 📖

skin burn. I felt myself surrendering to her passion…

                “Annabelle!”

                Okay, either her voice has just changed radically…

                “Annabelle!” the voice said again, and I opened my eyes.

                Raina leaned in over me, the late afternoon sun streaming into the window behind her.

                “Wha?” I said groggily. “Where’s Angelique?”

                “She’s already on route.” Raina replied impatiently. “Get up!”

                “On route to what?” I said, sitting up.  “Raina, what’s going on?”

                “Beasties in the woods!” Raina answered excitedly. She couldn’t hide her grin as she tossed my crumpled sweats from the floor at me. “Let’s go show them the bad ass bitches who live here!”

                “Hell yeah!” I said, standing to dress.

                I had forgotten all about the dream.

                                                                                                *                *                *

                Raina and I ran through the woods, to the place where the cameras had told us that the main fight was taking place. The air was cold, and a light snow was falling.

                A tree cracking in front of us told me that we’d arrived, and I watched as Vincent ripped a branch from the massive oak and hurled it above him. It connected with its target, and a creature that looked like the massive bat I’d tangled with landed with a thud on the forest floor.

                “Giant bats?” I called to him casually.

                “Yeah, and tough ones!” he managed to get out before the beast attacked him again and he wrestled it through the underbrush, away from us.

                “Giant bats.” I said to Raina, and she smiled.

                A dark shape appeared above us, swooping down.

                “You want this one?” she asked, gesturing to the massive hairy bat quickly approaching our position.

                “Please,” I replied, smiling, “after you.”

                Raina grinned and sent a bolt of magickal energy shooting skyward. It hit its target, and the bat crashed in the forest to our left.

                “Kickass." Raina grinned, and took off to continue the fight.

                The sound of snapping branches drew my attention upwards, and one glance at the rapidly descending shape told me that it was my turn. I touched the earth within me, and then sent a cluster of bone shards flying at my attacker. They found their mark, shredding the membrane of its wings. It crashed onto the ground in front of me, struggling to rise again in an eternal attack.

                Not so fast! I thought, and connected quickly with the fire within me. I sent a jet of flame directly at the creature, and it shrieked as it was consumed. It collapsed in a pile of bones and ashes on the trail.

                Okay, I noted inwardly, bone shards good, fire better against these things.

                I took off down the path, jumping over the smoldering remains to search for other monsters I could slay.

                I looked to my left as I ran only to see one of Raina’s bolts wing a bat and send it spiraling towards Vincent, who was wearing the severed head of a bat as a helmet as he fought yet another one. I sent a trail of fire at the careening creature, incinerating it and watching the ashes rain down on the battle as well.

                “Thanks!” Raina called from the distance.

                “No problem!” I called back, and turned my attention to the battle raging around me.

                I came across Trevor and Evelyn, each with a glowing lasso that they were using to tear one bat’s wings off of it.

                An idea came to my mind, and it intrigued me.                I wonder if it would work… I thought.

                “Oh, what the hell.” I shrugged, and focused.

                Reach within me and focus on the water that makes up seventy percent of my body… now reach out to the world around me to draw upon the cold, and…

                I cut the air with the sides of my hands in a slicing motion, and round blades of ice flew from my hands. They sliced through the beast’s wings and left the body to fall, wriggling, on the snowy forest floor.

                Trevor and Evelyn, the tension on their ropes gone, tumbled backward on their behinds. "Bloody hell… " Trevor cursed as he got back up, drawing a sword as he walked to the wounded monster. “Warn a fella next time, okay love?” He said, glancing at me. He didn’t wait for an answer before proceeding to saw the dying creature’s head off.

                “Sorry.” I called before diving back into the fight.

                I tore through our attackers, slicing and burning, only occasionally running into Raina as she took down her fair share. I burned yet another flying abomination to a crisp before looking around the clearing that I found myself in.

                Across from me stood all of my friends who had been in the fight. Vincent reclined on the ground, bat skull still on his head, coolly. smoking what smelled to be potent shade. Angelique was smiling nearby, listening to Trevor complain about ‘winding up on his arse’, while Evelyn helped Hatsu straighten Katsu’s clothing from the battle mess that it had become.

                I was about to say something when Raina crashed out of the woods behind me.  She looked around, then at the people assembled across from us, and then to me.

                “What, did we miss the show?” she asked me.

                “I have a feeling that we were the show.” I replied dryly.

                “Yes,” Angelique said as she glided over to us, “and it was a wonderful show!”

                “We didn’t plan it that way,” Vincent said, grinning, “but you guys kept killing all of the monsters, hardly leaving us any.”

                “And are you complaining?” I said, sauntering over to him with a smile on my face.

                “Oh no, no.” he replied, hands raised. “It was fun watching my girlfriend kick all kinds of ass.”

                “You got your licks in.” I said, looking at the bloody skull he wore.  “And can you take that thing off and shower? It’s kinda gross.”

                “With the savage way you attacked me after coffee,” he said, pulling me