“Oh, no,” Roran said. “No, no, no.”
“Not you,” Rilen agreed.
“But—”
“You’re injured and exhausted,” Rilen said.
“You’re exhausted too,” I snapped.
“That’s why we’re not on rotation yet,” Roran stated. “We have another week’s reprieve.”
Dorian nodded. “I called in a few of our more powerful magic wielders that we’ve identified. They are working in pairs, and the masters are working alone. We’re fine without you.”
“But—”
“Kimber, you just literally brought down a mountain,” Jallina snapped. “Let them handle it.”
The twins chuckled while Dorian had a pleased smirk on his face. I narrowed my eyes and turned back to the magical shield.
“We can’t keep this shield up forever,” Mistress Ophelia mumbled from the right. “We’re going to have to fight.”
“We are.” Vitas nodded.
I swallowed hard. “What do we know of fighting? Especially against their guns?”
“Better still,” Mistress Ophelia corrected me, “what do we know of them that is not just legend and hearsay?”
The group moved away from Neves to allow her to concentrate. There was a small tent not far from her where the masters would rest before and after their time at the shield.
Well, two tents, really. And some magical sound dispersal. No one need eavesdrop on a temple master having sex.
There was a table with cheese, fruit, and bread on it, as well as pitchers of wine, water, and fruit juice. Several other temple masters sat there looking haggard and exhausted.
Our group joined them, with Rilen and Roran flanking me at the table, helping me with the crutch and the chair as I sat.
Master Bebbenel snorted. “I see you found your bedmates, Mistress Breaker.”
I stared at him. I hated him more than I had ever hated Master Dorian. At least with Dorian, I could see him doing what was right—no matter how much I had hated him.
Master Bebbenel just continued his jackassery.
I decided I owed him no respect, only an answer. “Indeed I have, Master Bebbenel.”
He leaned forward, his head on his chin. “And what has Master Dorian to say about you borrowing his mates?”
I stared him dead in the eye. “Usually? Something like, ‘Oh, Gods, yes, Kimber. Ride that cock! Ride it!’”
Dead silence.
Lunella burst out laughing, and Jallina followed her into sidesplitting guffawing. The twins were red instantly, but their eyes were full of mirth and pride. Everyone else at the table alternated between humor and horror.
Dorian cleared his throat, but there was no mistaking the smirk on his lip. “Now that we have established that Mistress Breaker is indeed having her sexual needs fulfilled nicely, perhaps we can turn to the pressing matter of the vampires with hand cannons and hate in their arsenal.”
Drez, across from me, fought for his composure and leaned forward. “Guns. Several of our researchers have been trying to recreate what they are using, and have come fairly far, but not near to what Doctor Symi dug out of Mistress Kimber’s thigh. What he pulled from there was a blunted teardrop shape, nothing like our hand cannons have. We’ve given them permission to study the tiny ball and see what they could do with it. It will lead to a breakthrough, but I highly doubt, given the lines of vampires and guns we’re holding at bay, that it will be in time to be of any use to us.”
“I agree,” Vitas said. He was the next on the shield. “Whatever we have now is all we have.”
“What do we have?” Mistress Sona’s voice was low and tired from her time on the shield. Her fingers entwined with Mistress Maurielle’s as Maurielle dusted her other hand up and down the woman’s arm, clearly a comforting touch.
Oh.
“Cannons, swords, and magic,” Vitas answered, pulling me out of the realization. “That’s about it.”
“What do we guess they have?” Mistress Sona asked.
“Guns, cannons, vampire magic,” Jallina answered.
Quirking an eyebrow, I looked around. “What’s the difference between their magic and ours?”
“We have the ability to…” Maurielle’s words started confidently but immediately dropped off. “…um, we can fight with it. Shield with it. We can call objects we’ve bound to ourselves. I, um…”
Everyone glanced around the room, sharing looks of confusion. There was no information on what the vampires could do. I wasn’t even sure they knew what we could do.
Dorian sat back in his chair and rolled his eyes. “We can do everything the vampires can do. Our magicks are equal.”
Bebbenel looked at him, the arrogance rolling out across the table. “The legends say they can move with incredible speed, Master Dorian. Their hearing is beyond compare. They can see in the dark and their marksmanship is perfect, so they don’t have to train at all.”
The entirety of the druid’s answer was contained in the quirk of his dark eyebrow.
The stories I had taught to the children had been full of the tales of the vampires. The way they could move, and the way they enjoyed their blood. Strong, fast, nearly death-proof, silent, and—though the books didn’t say it to young children—ruthless.
A picture of Elex’s dead body on the bed flashed through my mind.
We had ruthless covered.
Argo snorted. “You really think—Ow!” He slapped a hand on his ear and stared at Dorian. “What did you do?”
The sound of someone being slapped in the ear rang out again, and Argo tipped the other direction, covering that ear.
I didn’t even see Dorian move. No one did.
“What the hell, Master Dorian?!” Argo was really pissed he had become the test dummy.
“You can move as fast as any vampire. You’ve all just never tried.” He picked at a fingernail. “We’ve become lax and lazy in our lovely little pseudo-utopia, and that apparently needs to be resolved.”
“Are you going to take on the task of teaching all of us how to move with such speed?” Bebbenel asked.
Rilen was gone from my side and suddenly stood behind Bebbenel, mouth at ear level. “He’s not the only teacher. Do you think he would not teach his mates?”
And he was back and smiling at me.
Holy crap.
I leaned forward and stared down the tabletop at Dorian. “We can all do that?”
He gave a shrug. “If you care to learn.”
Drez nodded. “I sure as hell would. But that doesn’t change our current situation much right now. Even if we are as fast and resilient as they are, they have guns. Dangerous ones. We can’t teach all druids to dodge and duck like Master Dorian. And with those guns, every last person who isn’t highly trained or highly skilled is in serious danger.”
“But what can we do?” Sona asked. “We can’t hold the shield much longer. We’re all exhausted, and there are some of us who can’t rotate in to help.”
Her words were gentle, but I felt them pierce me. I couldn’t rotate in. And my leg wasn’t what was holding me back. Rilen grabbed my hand under the table and squeezed gently.
The civil patrol leader, Captain Staviz Panther, took a step toward the table. “Your honors, if I may?”