Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

drew and fired again, with preternatural quickness. Mart dodged left, right, left, his sword held passively by his side. They thought they had him pinned. Not bloody likely.
    The Stone advanced, surprisingly light on his feet. Behind him the female mage began to work something complicated, waving her arms through the air.
    The Swordmaster charged the Reaper woman.
    She leaned back, her arms flung out like the wings of a bird about to take flight. Mart made no move to assist her.
    Ten feet from her the Swordmaster drew his blade in a flash. Should’ve waited . . .
    The woman’s bottom jaw unhinged and dropped down. Magic lashed my senses, hard and searing hot. The woman strained and vomited a dark cloud into the swordsman’s face. The cloud swarmed and clamped on to the swordsman. He staggered, his charge aborted in midstep. A faint buzz echoed through the Pit.
    “Bees?” I guessed.
    “Wasps,” Derek said.
    The swordsman screamed and spun in place.
    Mart charged across the sand, a trail of arrows pinning his shadow to the sand, and thrust straight into the Stone’s gut. The man folded.
    The swarm plaguing the swordsman split in half. The new swarm snapped to the archer like a black lasso. He ran.
    As the Stone crumbled, the female mage jerked her arms. A cone of fire struck from her fingers, twisting like a horizontal tornado. Mart leapt into the air. She swung the cone up, but not fast enough. He landed on her, hammering a hard kick into the side of her neck. The impact knocked her off her feet, but not before I saw her head snap to the side.
    “Broken neck,” Andrea said.
    The swarm caught the archer. He veered left and ran straight into Mart’s sword. Mart cut him down with two short, precise strokes and walked over to the swordsman, who was still bellowing like a stuck pig. The Reaper watched him flail for a long moment, as if puzzled, then ended it in a single cut. The swarm vanished. The swordsman’s head rolled on the sand.
    The crowd roared in delight.
    The shapeshifters next to me didn’t make a sound.
     
     
    “HERE IS HOW IT WORKS,” JIM SAID SOFTLY, WHILE the cleaners loaded the bodies onto stretchers and raked the sand for stray body parts. “There are four fights in all. First, the qualifying bout, then second tier, third tier, and the championship fight. Only the championship fight has the entire team. The rest give us a choice. We can field one to four people for each fight. If we field four and lose all, we are automatically disqualified as ‘unable to continue.’ ”
    He paused to let it sink in. Apparently he’d been busy acquiring the information: he actually had a clipboard with notes written on a legal pad, as if he were coaching a baseball team.
    “Despite this rule, most teams field four. Fielding three is risky.” He looked down the steps at Curran.
    Curran shrugged. “It’s your game.”
    So Jim retained Stratego. That was big of His Majesty.
    “We break into two teams,” Jim said. “Three and four.”
    So far, so good.
    “This will minimize our risk of being eliminated and will permit us to rest between the fights.”
    Made total sense.
    “Raphael, Andrea, Derek, and I will be in group one, and Curran, Kate, and Dali in group two.”
    Full break. “You want me to fight with him? On the same team?”
    “Yes.”
    Suddenly I had an urgent need to run away screaming. “Why?”
    “Derek, Raphael, and I have similar fighting styles. We move across the field. Andrea is a mobile range fighter. She can shoot and move at the same time. Dali can’t,” Jim said.
    “I do shodo magic,” Dali said. “I curse through calligraphy. I have to write the curse out on a piece of paper and I can’t move while I do it. One smudge, and I might kill the lot of us.”
    Oh good.
    “But don’t worry.” Dali waved her arms. “It’s so precise, it usually doesn’t work at all.”
    Better and better.
    “Raphael and I aren’t good defensive fighters,” Jim said. “And Derek isn’t up to speed yet. I have to put Dali behind Curran, because he’s the strongest defense we have. He’ll need a strong offense and you’re the best offensive fighter I have.”
    Somehow that didn’t sound like a compliment.
    “Also the three of us have undergone similar training,” Jim said. “We know what to expect from each other and we work well as a team.”
    He didn’t think I could function in a team. Fair enough.
    “Group two will take the qualifying bout and the third tier. The