fire shield

It bought me a second to act, and I raised the blasting rod and tried something new on the fly, a blending of a blast of fire with my shield magic. I pointed the rod at one side of the shore, gathered my will, and thundered, “Ignus defendarius!”
A bar of flame, bright enough to hurt my eyes, shot out to one side of the room. I drew a line across the stone with the tip of the blasting rod, and as the flame touched the stone, it adhered, spooling out from my blasting rod until it had formed a solid line between us and the water, and an opaque curtain of flame three feet high separated us from the shellycobbs. Angry rattles and splashes came from the far side of the curtain.
If the fire dropped, the faerie water monsters would swarm us.
The fire took a lot of energy to keep up, and if I tried to hold it too long, I’d probably black out. Worse, it was still fire—it needed oxygen to keep burning, and in those cramped tunnels there wasn’t going to be much of it around for breathing if the fire stayed lit too long. All of this meant we had only seconds and had to do something—fast.
“Murph!” I snapped. “Could you carry her?”
She turned wide blue eyes to me, her gun still held ready and pointing at the shellycobbs. “What?”
“Can you carry her?”
She gritted her teeth and nodded once.
I met her eyes for a dangerous second and asked, “Do you trust me?”
Fire crackled. Water boiled. Steam hissed.
“Yes, Harry,” she whispered.
I flashed her a grin. “Jump the fire. Run to her.”
“Run to her?”
“And hurry,” I said, lifting my left arm, focusing as my shield bracelet began to glow, blue-white energy swiftly becoming incandescent. “Now!”
Murphy broke into a run and hurtled over the wall of fire.
“Forzare!” I shouted, and extended my left arm and my will.
I reshaped the shield, this time forming it in a straight, flat plane about three feet wide. It shot through the wall of flame, over the water, to the stone upon which Georgia lay. Murphy landed on the bridge of pure force, kept her balance, and poured on the speed, sprinting over the water to the unconscious young woman.
Murphy slapped her gun back into its holster, grabbed Georgia, and, with a shout and a grunt of effort, managed to get the tall girl into a fireman’s carry. She started back, much more slowly than she’d gone forward.
The shellycobbs thrashed even more furiously, and the strain of holding both spells started to become a physical sensation, a spidery, trembling weakness in my arms and legs. I clenched my teeth and my will, focusing on holding the wall and the bridge until Murphy could return. My vision distorted, shrinking down to a tunnel.
And then Murphy shouted again and plunged through the fire, this time more slowly. She let out a gasp of pain as she got singed, then stumbled past me.
I released the bridge with a gasp of relief. “Go!” I said. “Come on, let’s go!”
Together, we were barely able to get Georgia lifted. I was only able to hold the wall of flame against the shellycobbs for about fifty feet when I had to release the spell or risk passing out. I guess the shellycobbs weren’t sprinters, because Murphy and I outran them, dragging the naked girl out of her Undertown prison and back to Murphy’s car.


Side Jobs, Something Borrowed, Page 48-50