Free Biting Cold by Chloe Neill Page B

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, froma 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 twenty-foot-tall garden gnome—I hoped I might be able to wear him out before he could do any real damage.
    Todd was a little more optimistic.
    “Keith, stop this!” Todd ran in front of him, arms waving. “Snap out of it, man. This girl is on your side. You don’t want to hurt her.”
    I instantly forgave Todd for the kick on the shin. But if there was any bit of Keith that remembered Todd or anything else of life before Mallory, I couldn’t see it. His eyes—oversized and shaded by his giant white cap—were empty. Not just dazed, but completely void of emotion or recollection or any intellect at all.
    Poor Keith.
    And goddamn Mallory.
    Even if we brought her back from the brink, I’m not sure I could ever forget, or forgive, what she was willing to do to get whatshe wanted. But that problem assumed we would survive to bring her back, so first things first…
    Keith swiped at Todd, knocking him off his feet. I held my breath, but he sat up a moment later and signaled the gnomes. They launched another attack, this time on one of their own.
    While I helped Todd stand again, the gnomes peppered Keith with rocks and their few remaining arrows, but Keith was big enough to ignore the few pricks that made it through. He howled out when an arrow caught him in the shin, yanking it out and tossing it to the ground, and then stomping around to try to catch the gnome who’d gotten the lucky shot.
    The battlefield silenced for a moment, and Todd’s eyes went cold. He looked up at me.
    “He is gone,” Todd said. “Perhaps if we knocked him out, magic could be worked?”
    I didn’t waste time arguing. I ran toward the middle of the field, where Keith was throwing clumps of dirt—and probably some chunks that weren’t actually dirt—at the gnomes around him.
    “Keith!” I called out, facing him with sword extended.
    He looked back, then stomped toward me.
    “I’m sorry,” I murmured, and when he swung down a meaty hand to knock me off my feet, I slashed out with the katana.
    I caught the back of his hand. Blood splashed the ground, and Keith yelped