Magic Rises

yards.
    “Kate!” Hugh barked.
    Ten. A moment too soon, and they would crush me. A moment too late and my life would be over.
    Seven.
    Five.
    The breath from their mouths spilled over me.
    Now. I dropped to my knees and slashed across their forelegs with both swords in a single cut.
    Before they tumbled forward, the severed muscles and tendons failing under their weight, I pulled the swords to me and stood up. The two beasts passed on both side of me and crashed behind my back, crippled.
    “Damn, that was beautiful!” Hugh shouted, pulling his blade from a shaggy body.
    An ochokochi lunged at him, too fast for the sword strike. Hugh swung his left arm. The back of his fist hammered the creature’s skull. The ochokochi swayed and fell.
    I had to avoid being punched by him at all costs.
    There were no beasts within striking range. The wave of ochokochi had broken against us.
    The remaining ochokochi fanned out, trying to flank me. I backed away until my spine touched Hugh’s. I had no idea how, but I had known with one hundred percent certainty that his back would be there to brace me.
    “Getting tired?” Hugh asked.
    “I can do this all day.”
    The lead ochokochi bellowed. If they came at us all at once, we’d have a hell of a time protecting the horses.
    Another roaring cry. The ochokochi turned as one and streamed in a rust-colored current to the right, through the bushes and trees away from us.
    I exhaled.
    “Looks like we dodged a bullet.” Hugh grinned.
    I surveyed the clearing and the heaps of brown fur dotting it. “Do ochokochi count for the hunt?”
    “No.”
    “Damn it. There goes my chance for glory.”
    “You’re out of luck,” he said.
    I slumped forward, catching my breath, straightened, and pulled a cloth from my pocket. I had to clean my swords.
    * * *
    After the fight Hugh made no effort to talk. The sharing hour had passed, apparently, and we concentrated on getting the clearing back into shape.
    At three o’clock Hugh pulled a horn out of his saddlebag and made a noise that would have made the dead sit up in their graves. Fifteen minutes later teams of shapeshifter hunters began trickling in. Curran and company were second on the scene after the Volkodavi. The brush rustled and the colossal gray lion pushed through it. The leonine lips stretched in a distinctly human grin. If lions could look smug, Curran did.
    I raised my eyebrows. Carcasses of dead deer, tur, and goats were piled on Curran’s back. He shook, tossing them to the ground, the gray mane flying in the wind, and looked at me. And then at the pile of shaggy red bodies behind me. Hugh and I had dragged them all into a big heap on the edge of the clearing to make space and keep the horses from freaking out.
    The lion shrank, and a man straightened in his place. “What the hell is this?”
    “Hi, honey.” I waved at him from my perch on a rock and kept polishing Slayer with a little cloth.
    Curran spun to Hugh. His voice was a snarl. “Did you do this?”
    “I can only claim responsibility for half of the kills. The rest belong to your wife . . . fiancée?” Hugh turned to me. “You’re not married, right? What is the term?”
    Oh, you bastard.
    “Consort.” Barabas rose behind Curran. “The term is ‘Consort.’”
    “How quaint.” Hugh winked at Curran. “No marriage, no division of property, and no strings attached. Well played, Lennart. Well played.”
    Curran’s eyes went gold. “Stay out of my business.”
    Hugh smiled. “Heaven forbid. Although you should know that if the hunt had a prize for the most elegant kill, she would’ve won it.” He turned away.
    Curran looked at me. He’d never asked me to marry him. It didn’t come up. This fact hadn’t bothered me until Hugh rubbed our faces in it. Come to think of it, it still didn’t bother me.
    I slid Slayer into the sheath on my back. “How did the hunt go?”
    “Fine,” he said.
    “Anybody hurt?”
    “No.”
    A lean gray wolf padded over and stopped next to Curran. Its body stretched and contorted, and Lorelei stood next to Curran. Nude again. Imagine that.
    “It was a most glorious hunt,” she said. “Curran is amazing. I’ve never seen such power. It was . . .”
    “I’m sure it was.” I waited for him to tell her to move. He didn’t. She was standing so close, their hands practically brushed. Neither of them wore clothes, and he didn’t tell her to move. He didn’t step away. A cold steady anger rose inside me and