Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

didn’t stop with one. She threw orb after orb until she’d cleared a twenty-foot circle around her.
    It was time to go for broke. I looked at Ethan, who nodded. With swords in our hands, we stepped out of the trees and prepared to do battle.
    “Mallory Carmichael!” I called out. “Stop this right now!”
    She rolled her eyes with the arrogance of a self-absorbed, sadistic teenager. “Walk away, Merit, or bring me the Maleficium and we can all leave together like one big happy family. I know you don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
    She was right, but it wasn’t as if giving her the book would actually save lives. She’d already thrown aside a dozen gnomes like they were nothing more than scattered leaves.
    On the other hand, if she wanted me to bring the Maleficium to her, maybe she wasn’t entirely sure where it was. We could work with that. I stalled, giving the gnomes time to regroup a bit.
    “We’ve talked about this before,” I said. “Releasing evil isn’t going to fix you. You’ve put supernaturals and humans in danger, wreaked havoc across Chicago, and you’re AWOL from the Order. Give this up so we can all go back to our lives.”
    “You know I can’t do that,” she said, and that’s when I could see it—the regret in her eyes. She knew what she was doing was wrong, but she was doing it anyway. Doing it despite the damage she’d caused and would keep causing.
    “This book won’t help anything,” I pleaded with her. “It will only make things worse.”
    “Really? It helped you. You got Ethan back.”
    She was simultaneously right and wrong. “I’m glad he’s back, but you didn’t do that for me, and you didn’t do it for him. You used him to get what you want—and you used me to get his ashes out of the House. If he thought destroying the city was the cost of bringing him back, even he wouldn’t have paid that price.”
    “Don’t be dramatic.”
    “I shouldn’t be dramatic? I’m not the one who landed in Nebraska to steal something that doesn’t belong to her.”
    “Do you have any idea what I’m going through? What I’m feeling right now? It hurts, Merit! Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. The only thing that will make it better is balancing the magic in the world.”
    I could see the pain etched into her face. And as she faced her pain, Ethan screamed out and fell to his knees, clutching his head.
    They were connected. Tied together, somehow, as a result of her magic, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My heart skipped a beat, watching him there in pain and knowing I was helpless to intervene. But I could be brave and face her down, and so I stepped forward.
    “This ends now, Mallory.” I stepped forward, katana at the ready. “You’ll get the Maleficium over my dead body.”
    She looked back at Ethan, and I thought for a second I’d finally gotten through to her, that she was actually considering the consequences and implications of her actions.
    But I was doubly wrong. She hadn’t been looking at Ethan . . . she’d been looking at Keith, the gnome of the horrendous plaid pants.
    She rolled together another ball of magic, then pitched it at him. He screamed out as the shock of magic hit, but then froze for a moment.
    As we all watched in horror, we realized Mallory hadn’t meant to kill or even stun him.
    She meant to change him.
    Keith began to stretch and expand. His shoulders widened, and his arms grew into tree limbs. His torso tripled, and his legs lengthened until his head rose over us to horrific proportions, from a smiling two-foot-tall gnome to a twenty-foot-tall lumbering beast. He looked down at me and grinned menacingly through domino-sized teeth, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile.
    Mal hadn’t just made him larger; she’d made him meaner.
    “Oh, that is just wrong,” I muttered.
    I swallowed down fear, took a defensive stance, and held up my sword, preparing for battle.
    Keith stumbled toward me, hands extended as if he meant to swipe me up off the ground. The gnomes might have been spritely in their original size, but stretched and expanded like Silly Putty, he lumbered about. Of course, he was throwing a lot more weight around.
    I felt miserable about striking back at him; it wasn’t his fault Mallory had turned him into a monster. So I tried other tactics. It didn’t take much effort to run around and avoid him. Although I’m sure the sight was comical—sword-bearing vampire being chased around a cornfield by a