Chapter Six Shadow Claws

Chapter Six Shadow Claws

Fallon Bane

Shadow wasteland west of Noilaan

Fallon Bane watches as the Eastern Realm’s distant storm band barrels toward her and Marcus Vogel. Barbed frost ices through

her lines along with an infuriating confusion, her hair increasingly blown back by the mammoth storm band’s mounting winds,

thunder booming through it as it rapidly traverses the Central Continent’s Shadowed land.

Marcus has portaled just the two of them here, their joint power formidable, to be sure, but not able to strike down this

incoming storm band without seriously weakening them both.

She turns to Marcus Vogel to find him watching the incoming chaos with unnerving calm and even more unnerving inaction, the

Magedom’s Shadow storm bands lining the horizon to their backs instead of moving before them , where they should be , ready to smash into the East’s attack and siphon up all that elemental power .

“Why are you not sending our storm bands forward?” Fallon demands of Vogel, the incoming storm band’s bursts of blue and white

lightning flashing over the planes of his green-glimmering face.

In answer, Vogel turns, sets his silver-fire-rimmed eyes on hers and smiles.

Fallon can’t suppress her shiver of excitement—it’s the most predatory smile she’s ever seen. Every nerve in her body grows

deliciously cold as Vogel turns back toward the incoming storm band then inexplicably strides toward it without a trace of

intimidation, Shadow Wand in hand.

Both confused and aroused, Fallon watches as Vogel halts, thrusts his Wand forward, then lifts it in a strong arc, as if summoning something from the Shadow-smoking ground.

Huge storm spiders suddenly burst up from the sand in a line as long as the attacking storm band, their thoraxes marked with

Shadow runes. As one, the spiders dig their legs into the earth to keep from being blown back by the storm band’s increasingly

violent wind as they face it down. Then they still.

Fallon’s confusion ices back to life as the storm band rises like a tidal wave, the wind growing so fierce that she has to

lean into it to remain upright.

What is Marcus playing at? she rages. Storm spiders aren’t powerful enough to keep this storm band from crashing through their defensive line and straight into

us.

As if hearing her internal protest, Vogel shoots her a sly look over his shoulder before angling his Wand downward and blasting

a thin bolt of Shadow into the distant ground.

“Rise!” he commands, and the Shadow fans into a circle of gray, pooling mist.

Fallon’s eyes widen as huge, pale gray horns appear in the misty circle, followed by an egg-flat face, nothing on it but a

slash of open mouth holding row upon row of sharp, gnashing teeth. A slim Shadow tether extends from Vogel’s Wand to the huge

thing’s neck, like a smoking leash.

The V’yexwraith , Fallon realizes, eyes wide—the Shadow Wand’s corporeal form that her brother, Damion, described to her in vivid detail.

The V’yexwraith’s slender body continues to rise, pale gray spikes flowing back from its shoulders and the edges of its form.

Bubbles appear on the creature’s flat face and morph into one Shadow eye after another until there’s a whole teeming mass

of them. The beast is now taller than the Valgard Cathedral, a mist of silvery Shadow power haloing its frame.

The creature barely sways, impressively strong against the incoming storm band barreling toward its back. Fallon’s fingers

twitch around her wand, her pulse ratcheting into a faster rhythm as she bites back a howl of alarm.

“Tether and consume!” Vogel roars, silencing Fallon’s burgeoning protest as he thrusts the Wand toward the demon.

The V’yexwraith rounds on the storm band. It lets out a shriek that spikes pain through Fallon’s ears, then throws out its

slender arms and flicks its long, pale fingers toward the storm spiders at its sides.

Multiple lines of Shadow spear from the V’yexwraith’s fingertips and collide with the spiders, tethering them to the demon like insectile marionettes as the storm band darkens the sky, its western facing wall only paces away.

The V’yexwraith demon thrusts its palms toward the approaching storm band and lets out another ear-splicing shriek.

The roaring, lightning-spitting storm band stills before the V’yexwraith, its winds pulling into its center. The storm spiders

click into a forward-leaning stance, raising their huge thoraxes toward the wall of storm.

Fallon sucks in a harsh breath of surprise as lightning-flashing columns of storm fly toward the spiders and are sucked into

their forms, the blue-and-white lightning morphing to steel black just before it’s consumed.

The V’yexwraith lets out another ground-shuddering shriek and opens its mouth unnaturally wide, row upon row of teeth telescoping

outward.

A larger column of storm flies from the storm band and bolts into the V’yexwraith’s most extended maw.

The giant demon lets out a screeching ATCH ATCH ATCH as both it and the spiders eat the East’s storm band, siphoning up its power.

Fallon watches, every nerve lit up, as Vogel maintains his hold on the leashed demon, steely lightning crackling through the

beast’s tether to Vogel as the storm band’s energy is drawn right into Marcus via his Shadow Wand. Marcus briefly glances

back at her, his eyes filling with spitting gray lightning.

As he’s transformed into a living Mage storm.

Electricity crackling off him, he holds up his Shadow Wand, the Wand of Power encircled by a spiral of gray storm, threads

of dark, curving lightning flashing through it.

Fallon can’t suppress her smug smile.

The East is finished.

And so is Elloren Gardner Grey and her Icaral demon.

Vogel snaps his fingers, and his Shadow tethers to the V’yexwraith and spiders snap out of view, but Fallon imagines the bindings

are still very much there. Vogel lowers his lightning-flashing Wand and sheathes it as the demon and storm spiders turn toward

him as if waiting for direction.

Smiling, Vogel meets Fallon’s awed gaze once more.

A shock of want races through her power. She’s suddenly unsteady on her feet, overcome by the ferocious desire to throw ice

power through his fireline to find out if it triggers the achingly pleasurable rush of hot steam that she’s felt only once

before—when she kissed Lukas Grey.

But Vogel’s Shadow fire and storm...

The entire East’s power is nothing in the face of it.

Lukas’s power was nothing in the face of it.

“Come with me, my Black Witch,” Vogel croons, that spine-tingling static practically leaping off his skin. “It’s time to fully

join.”

Breathless, Fallon bares her teeth at him in a vicious, excited smile because she can guess what he’s alluding to.

A fasting and Sealing to each other.

Vogel gestures toward the multi-eyed, multilegged dragon that flew them through the portal, the Shadow beast standing several

paces away. Fallon eagerly strides toward it and mounts the beast before Vogel lithely slides in behind her, his body enthrallingly

hot against her chilly frame. Vogel hisses out a command, and they take to the skies, soaring toward the Shadow portal that

will speed them back to the Magedom’s Central Desert military base.

Toward her true and rightful destiny.

Reveling in her incoming position of power, Fallon strides beside Vogel through the Magedom’s sprawling military base that

used to be Issaan’s capitol. Gray Shadow skies churn overhead, everything stripped of color save for the Magedom’s shimmering

green hue.

Erthia’s ruling hue.

Hot static courses from Vogel’s lines to batter against Fallon’s aura of icy wind, their magic crackling against each other’s

in the most exciting way possible. Vogel has come away from his consumption of the East’s storm band with a breathtaking level

of power, and Fallon is beyond ready to merge with all that power through a Shadowed fasting spell that will tether his lines

to hers.

Her excitement surges as she realizes Vogel is headed in the direction of the base’s newly constructed Church of the First

Children. White-bearded Priest Sedric stands in the church’s huge, arching doorway, grayed trees devoid of life set into the

entrance’s bracketing walls.

“Shall I accompany you, Excellency?” Priest Sedric inquires of Vogel, a hopeful look in the priest’s eyes as they flick toward

Fallon, a grayed wand clutched in his hand.

Fallon’s smug smile broadens. It’s clear the priest is eager to be the one to fast them.

But Vogel doesn’t answer him. Instead, he swipes his hand sideward in a gesture of succinct dismissal. Dipping his head, Priest Sedric deferentially opens the door, and Vogel strides through it.

Fallon follows, confusion twisting to brutal life inside her as the church’s door shuts behind them, her outrage rising.

She wants a fasting, and she wants it now . She’s the Magedom’s Black Witch—its true Black Witch all along—and she deserves access to Marcus’s full, unbridled storm . Which will cement her status as the most powerful Black Witch the Magedom has ever seen.

So why is she following Vogel like a dog brought to heel?

Her resentment mounts as she trails him through the dead-tree-bracketed interior of the church then into a back corridor,

Vogel dismissing the few soldiers stationed there as they pass.

Fallon has to bite back her snarl of protest as they descend into the church’s lower levels via a spiraling staircase cut

into grayed stone and Vogel opens the door to a former wine cellar, the heathen spirits removed and likely smashed to pieces,

only empty shelves cut into rock remaining.

Fallon’s anger breaks loose, brittle hoarfrost coating the room as Vogel shuts the door, throws the lock and faces her down.

His pale green eyes are rimmed with silvery fire that quickly deepens, igniting to darker flame, a blast of his heat pulsing

toward her.

Fallon gasps at the sensation, all her hoarfrost instantly melting, Vogel’s radiating aura of heat forcing so much steam through

her lines that her angered protest singes away in her throat.

“I thought you sought a fasting,” she demands, dizzy from his fiery draw, but angling to regain a position of strength with

him.

And wanting him more than she’s ever wanted anyone.

Smoothly, Marcus closes the distance between them, slides a hand around her waist and draws her against him. Fallon’s pulse

quickens as he brings his mouth toward the base of her neck, a more wanton desire shivering through her. His mouth is so thrillingly

hot against her skin, his body radiating heat straight through his silken uniform.

An incredible amount of heat.

“Do you want a full binding to me?” Vogel croons, his hot lips tracing her skin.

Fallon’s skin prickles against his touch, hunger igniting low in her body, everything in her ready for a full fasting to him...

and more.

Ready for a full Sealing .

“Fast to me, Marcus, and Seal it,” she growls, ready to feel him unleashed.

Ready to feel his full storm inside her.

So she can wrest hold of it.

“My Black Witch,” he croons as he runs his tongue along the nape of her neck in such a shockingly serpentine motion, an excited

tremor tingles through her. “I want your ice,” Vogel murmurs, and she can hear that bite of want in his tone. “I want your purifying storm .”

“It’s yours, Marcus,” she breathes.

He draws back slightly, the side of his mouth curling into an enticing smile as he holds out his free hand. “Give me your

hands.”

An icy thrill coursing through her, Fallon places both her hands in his, and Vogel’s fingers close around them. In one deft

movement, he presses his Shadow Wand to her skin and murmurs the fasting and Sealing spells.

Fallon draws in a tremulous breath as steel gray lines tendril out from Vogel’s Wand and loop around their hands, the lines

undulating, then pulling in to fuse with their skin in an identical gray smoking pattern.

Vogel’s power winds around her lines in a warm rush before seizing tight hold of them in a shock of burning heat.

Before she can protest, Vogel brings his mouth to hers with bruising force.

Fallon gasps against the kiss as a more painful blast of fire shocks down her throat and sears through every line, her body

trembling against Vogel’s as the sudden bite of claws pierces through her tunic at the same moment that unnaturally sharp

teeth slice into her lips.

Her shocked fury turns seismic.

Yanking her bloodied lips from his, she lurches back, just as a tearing sound rips through the air. Pieces of Vogel’s shredded

tunic flutter to the ground, and she freezes in horror as she finds Vogel before her, terrifyingly transformed.

Her whole world tilting into chaos, she reaches for her wand at the same moment that Vogel flicks his Shadow Wand toward her.

Fallon cries out as bindings snare tight around her wrists, ankles, and wand, the wand yanked away and her arms pulled behind

her back and bound, her ankles tethered to the floor.

She meets Vogel’s merciless stare, feeling as if the ground is giving way beneath her.

“Release me,” she demands in a quavering voice, realizing, even as she makes the demand, that it’s over. It’s all over. “Release me, or I’ll tell the entire Magedom what you are.”

Vogel smiles. “You’ll tell them what I want you to tell them.” His smile morphs into a burning look of hunger as his gray-fire

eyes rake over her form. “And your ice will be my salvation.”

Fallon screams as he lunges toward her, his mouth clamping down on the base of her neck. She cries out as teeth bite through

her skin, Shadowfire races through her lines... and the whole world turns gray.