Free Chilled to the Bone by Sindra van Yssel Page B

with red, looking like something out of a chemistry class.
    A tall woman, her black hair streaked with gray, stood at the far end of the counter, waving her hands. She held a wand, a little over a foot long and carved from what might have been ivory. In a loud, sonorous voice she said, “ Parte morfi nychtas .” With the last syllable , she pointed the wand straight at the wolf. Blue flame washed over it, and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees. The wolf howled in pain. Abruptly , the air shifted yet again. A naked Brennan took the wolf’s place. The flame disappeared in the transition, but he didn’t look happy.
    Charles ran at the woman. He didn’t know if either Brennan or Kent would be able to rejoin the fight, but he knew he couldn’t take on two people alone. Maybe taking out the woman would help Brennan and buy time for Kent. Or maybe he was going to get himself killed. Either way, he was committed.
    The woman turned towards Charles and smiled. “A mere mortal,” she said. “How pitiful.” She pointed the wand at him. “ Parte morfi nychtas ,” she intoned, and blue fire came from her wand towards him.
    He dodged to the right, but the streak of fire swerved towards him. Instead of hitting him, however, it suddenly spread out. It was bright, almost blinding for a moment , as the fire coruscated on an invisible curved shield around him. His dodge had taken him inside the pentagram, and apparently her fire couldn’t penetrate it. When the light died, she stood there with her mouth open, her eyebrows arched.
    “No mere mortal after all,” she murmured, in heavily accented English.
    The pentagram stopped it, not me. What’s she on about? Inside the circle , he felt a sense of power he’d never experienced before. But he didn’t have time to wonder about it. I have to get to her before she starts another spell. And hope the other man can’t do anything to me.
    The woman was barely outside the pentagram. He didn’t barrel into her full force. The fact that she was a woman made him pull up at the last moment, but still he sent her sprawling while he landed on top of her. He heard a scuffle behind him. He ought to hit her hard and put her out of the fight. He hesitated for a moment, and then chopped at her wrist, making her drop her wand.
    Kent charged across the room at the man in leather. But Brennan was lying still on the floor, and the man who had fired the rifle had it again and was moving it into firing position. There was too much open space for Kent to cover. He was an easy target. And there was no way he could get back up and run back across the room to stop the man with the rifle.
    Charles picked the wand up from the floor. It was carved from a single bone. He didn’t want to think about where it might have come from. He got to his feet, took a step forward across the chalk line, and felt again the surge of power.
    “That won’t work for you,” said the woman. “It requires years—“
    But somehow , now that he was inside the circle , he thought it might work. He pointed the wand at the man with the gun. “ Parte morfi nychtas ,” Charles said, figuring it couldn’t hurt. A streak of blue fire left the wand, hitting the rifleman as his finger tightened around the trigger. Again the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees as the rifleman was surrounded by the strange blue fire. He dropped the gun like it was red hot and dropped to the floor himself a moment later. Where Brennan had shifted his form and made the flame disappear in the process, it stayed around the rifleman, not consuming him but still licking at the air around him. He rolled back and forth on the ground, curling up into a fetal position and screaming in helpless pain.
    The leather - clad man behind the table uttered some words, and then suddenly , the flame stopped, but the man was still twitching. It made sense to Charles. If magic could be used to cause an effect, there was likely to be a spell that