The crowd roared, raising their weapons. And over their shouts, Rosalind yelled, “We could not have hoped for a more worthy general than Caine, or a more worthy king than Ambrose. I am proud to fight by their side, and by yours. And before the sun sets again today over Cambridge, we will defeat the enemies of Lilinor. We will defeat the enemies of those we love.”
From the shores of the Astarte Sea, the ground rumbled with the roars of the demons, the sound sliding through Rosalind’s bones with a dark shiver of pleasure.
Caine descended from the rock. “It’s time to make a portal.”
Rosalind followed him, crossing over the jagged rocks to the ocean’s edge, until the water soaked her toes. Seawater misted the air, and Malphas joined them at the ocean’s edge. When they’d all lined up together, shoulders nearly touching, Rosalind summoned her shadow magic.
A hollow opened in Rosalind’s chest, and from it, silver magic spiraled into the ocean, a vortex of starlight that churned over the sea’s gleaming surface, spreading over the undulating water. The portal had been opened.
Caine turned back to the legion, lifting his sword until it sparked in the light. He shouted an order in Angelic, and the ground rumbled as the legion moved.
Flanked by Caine and Malphas, Rosalind walked into the breaking waves, the water chilling her skin.
When she’d plunged in up to her knees, she turned to Malphas. “Do you remember what you told me when you were training me to use Dagon’s power?”
“We’re walking into the place where life began.”
“And so our new life begins.”
Chapter 27
Rosalind crawled from the Charles River, her clothing drenched, clinging to her skin. As river water sloshed over the grass, Rosalind crossed onto the path, surveying the city.
From here, she could see the city’s landscape had changed drastically, the squat brick buildings of Harvard’s campus replaced with towering white marble, blinding in the rising sun. And behind her, the rest of Lilinor’s army began crawling onto the river’s bank, coughing and spluttering, some of them hurling up river water.
Rosalind stepped onto Memorial Drive. At five a.m., there were no cars on the road, but they’d be arriving soon enough. She needed to clear a pathway for the army. Behind her, Caine was shouting orders, organizing the legion into the proper cohorts again, hellhounds at the front.
Rosalind held out her hands to either side. She let Druloch’s magic spiral through her body, calling to the sycamore trees, her aura becoming one with the bark, the roots. As the vernal magic whirled from her body, she forced it around the rows of sycamores. With a flick of her wrists, she tugged at the boughs, until they groaned and lengthened, slammed against the pavement, snaking over the road. She’d formed blockades on either side of a quarter-mile path.
That should stop the cars for a while.
Behind her, the soldiers had formed orderly lines, and from the front, the hellhounds sparked with golden fire.
Caine shouted an order, and the legion began marching from the river, bodies dripping with water. She moved ahead to make room, then fell in line with Caine and Ambrose in the vanguard. As they marched down JFK street, she blended into the frontline of hellhounds.
On either side of the road, classical buildings loomed, marked with chalices of Blodrial. The city of Cambridge slept, and no one had sounded an alarm yet.
She pulled a sword from her scabbard, glancing at Caine. He lifted his sword, then shouted an Angelic word—the word for Charge. Around her, the hellhounds began running.
Gripping the hilt, she broke into a run. The soldiers’ footfalls pounded the pavement, and they thundered through the narrow streets of Cambridge, heading for the heart of the Brotherhood.
As they ran, an alarm began tolling over the city, and screams began piercing the air. By the time the Brotherhood’s towering marble gates came into view a quarter mile down the road, the sky was darkening with a cloud of swarming locusts. At the sight of them, a chill rippled over Rosalind’s skin.
“The pazuzu,” said Caine. “Demons of famine.”
As the demon legion stormed toward the Brotherhood’s gates, the locusts swarmed overhead, whirling in wild eddies. Caine’s entire body was rigid with tension as he waited for the right moment to strike. His black, feathered wings appeared behind his back, and his eyes darkened with shadows. Long, black talons grew from his fingertips, a growl rising from his throat.
Caine’s voice boomed, rumbling through Rosalind’s bones, as he shouted for the winged cohorts to take to the skies. His black wings beat the air, and he lifted into the skies at the front of the attack.
Rosalind summoned her storm magic, and it surged through her body. Within moments, she lifted into the air after Caine, the wind rushing over her skin. Blazing with the power of the storm god, she felt the phantom wings spread from her back, and she gripped her sword. And all around them, the cohorts of valkyrie and keres swarmed the air, heading for the locusts, who were weaponless. But Caine had already told her what terrors awaited them with the pazuzu…
As Lilinor’s army surged closer, a hundred feet in the air, the locusts shifted into larger, winged demons, with leonine faces and fingertips ending in large talons. Ribs protruded from their emaciated chests, and they glowed with a sickly, gray light. At the front of the legion of demons, one of them wore a thorny, copper crown. The pazuzu king.
Blazing with pale auras, the valkyrie and keres raced toward them, wind whipping at them.
The pazuzu king’s eyes landed on her, and her stomach clenched.
The two forces met in the skies, and Rosalind swung her sword into a locust’s neck, slicing off its head. Dark blood arced through the sky, staining her clothes. Around her, the pazuzu tore into Lilinor’s army with their talons.
Electrified by the ancient power of storms, Rosalind’s sword found its mark in one locust after another, slicing through limbs, hacking off heads. And yet the locusts kept swarming, heading for the land-bound soldiers below.
Rosalind glanced down at the army of Lilinor. Horror bloomed in her chest. She rushed through the air, darting and weaving to avoid the locusts while she took in the scene. There, on the streets of Cambridge, the locusts who descended seemed to be sucking the life out of Lilinor’s army. With each stroke of their long talons, the Lilinor demons seemed to wither before her eyes, their muscles shriveling, bones jutting from stretched skin. And all around her, keres and valkyrie were raining from the sky, bodies drained. Embedded within the hellhounds, at the front of the battle lines—Ambrose was hacking into the locusts.
Caine shouted an order for the winged cohorts to retreat to the rearguard, to the back of Lilinor’s legion. The hellhounds were going to fight the locusts with fire now, and their own troops needed to clear the way. Good thing Rosalind couldn’t burn.
Rosalind and the rest of the flying cohort swooped lower. As she neared the vanguard, a locust slammed into Rosalind, knocking her to the ground. She crashed into the road, her sword clanging against the pavement.
Above, the unending swarm of locust-demons darkened the sky, writhing and pulsing like a living thing. These things would destroy the entire legion if they didn’t burn them fast, but Caine would wait until the flying cohort had fully retreated to the rearguard. Otherwise, they’d be igniting their own soldiers.
As she reached for her sword, another pazuzu slammed into her, teeth bared, knocking her to the ground. Her head slammed against the pavement, the wind rushing from her lungs. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, and grasped for her sword. The locust bent over her, his body blazing with sickly gray light, the color of a corpse’s skin. Grinning, he reached for her with a long, black talon.
No! She gripped the hilt of her iron sword and swung for the demon, cutting into his side. He threw back his head and shrieked, the sound agonizing and otherworldly.
The pazuzu fell to the ground, but already chaos reigned around her. She gaped at the tormented faces of Lilinor’s
legion. Those who’d been touched by the locust demons seemed to be withering away—just as Caine had said they would. Some gnawed frantically at patches of grass, trying to fill their stomachs, their cheeks smeared with green. Others, ravenous, pounced on each other, tearing into flesh. She glanced at Caine, who hovered above the fray, cutting into the locusts as they approached, but they were getting dangerously close, even to him.
Rosalind rose to her feet and heard a screech behind her; she turned, slicing her sword through a locust’s throat. Dark ichor oozed from its neck.
As another locust swooped down, Rosalind drove her sword up, stabbing it through the gut. The creature fell to the ground with a thud, and Rosalind pulled her sword from it. Dark blood stained her blade.
“Rosalind!” Malphas shouted.
She whirled to find a locust’s talon just inches from her body. But before she could even strike the creature, Malphas’s sword pierced him from behind, protruding from the creature’s chest. The locust fell to the ground, and Malphas nodded at her before returning to the fray.
“Get to the vanguard, Malphas!” She shouted. “We’ll be lighting up the air with fire any minute now!”
She glanced at the sky, and her pulse raced at the sight of the creatures dropping to earth, bodies glowing with that sickly gray light, the color of a corpse. There were just so many of them…
“Caine!” Rosalind shouted, her sword slamming into a locust demon. “Get to the back!”
A shadow darkened overhead as Caine lifted into the air. His command boomed across the city, so loud it seemed to ring in her skull, to come from her own mind. He was giving the order for the hellhounds to unleash their fire.
All around her, fire blazed, hot as the infernos. A fireball rose into the air, igniting the pazuzu.
Just as she was summoning her own hellfire, a bony hand gripped her arm, and her stomach dropped. She turned to find—not a locust—but one from her own army. A ravening hellhound who’d been touched by one of the locusts, her face gaunt, eyes hollow.
The hellhound opened her mouth wide, revealing a sharp set of teeth. “So hungry…” In the next moment, she was leaping on Rosalind, teeth in her neck.
Pain ripped through Rosalind’s throat, but only for a second. Becca came up behind the emaciated hellhound, her body blazing with flames.
Becca pulled the creature off her, and in one fluid movement, snapped its neck. “She’s not one of ours anymore.”
Rosalind looked at the sky, where the locust bodies blazed like torches. Some of them were plummeting to the earth, bodies blazing.
Caine roared the command for fire again, and the angelic word rang deep in their skulls. The hellhounds unleashed another brutal blast of fire, aiming for the heavens. Fire blasted the skies, and shrieks rent the air. Some of the pazuzu began to retreat, flying away from the flames, ragged bodies blazing.
Caine’s voice boomed in her mind, speaking in Angelic. Fire and storms, he commanded. This was his command to her alone—the one here who could withstand fire, and call the storms of Mishett-Ash.
She lifted into the air, ducking the plunging bodies of burning locusts. As she flew, she summoned the power of the storms, letting the gods’ ancient power ignite her veins.
The gods’ magic lifted her into the air, the wind whipping at her hair, and she cast a glance back at Caine. He was flying high above his army, sword drawn. His dark clothes glistening with ichor and blood, an angel of death. She nodded at him, and he flew lower over his army, sword ready for battle with the land-bound locusts.
Rosalind rose into the air. Rushing at the speed of a hurricane wind, she swooped beneath the locusts, her body charged with electricity, with fire.
Caine’s Angelic command boomed in her mind, rumbling over the horizon. Flames.
Rosalind and the hellhounds below her unleashed a wild burst of flame, searing the air. Fire billowed all around her, igniting the skies.
Shrieking, the locusts retreated higher into the air, bodies flaming. As they crashed into each other, chaotic, panicked, the fires spread from one creature to another.
Again, from far below, Caine’s voice rumbled through her mind. Flames.
Together with the hellhounds, Rosalind summoned hellfire. I am the goddess of the volcanoes, of molten rage. I am the flames of Pompeii…
Flames exploded from the hellhounds, from her body, curling high into the skies.
Storms, boomed Caine’s voice.
Before all these flaming torches plummeted onto Lilinor’s army, it was time to move them elsewhere. Ancient currents danced through her body. Lightning seared her veins, and hair rose on the back of her arms.
First, I bring the winds…
She closed her eyes as she flew, riding on the wind, becoming one with the storm. All around her the winds picked up speed, carrying her faster, harder. Her body was exhilarated.
Dark clouds moved in, roiling and churning, darkening the horizon.
She swooped higher between the flaming locusts, expertly avoiding their toxic talons. And as she flew through the air, she focused on building the storm, until it rattled the rooftops and windowpanes below her, and ripped off tree branches.
She was at one with the storm, and the storm with her.
Far below her, she caught a glimpse of Caine slicing off the head of a locust, his speed breathtaking in a blur of silver and black. Winds, his voice boomed.
In the driving gales, the locusts struggled to control their flight. Screeching, the burning creatures scrambled to stay on course, knocking into each other.
Hard gales whipped through the skies, slowly driving the creatures south in frantic whorls.
Flames, Caine commanded.
Another explosion of fire from below, but this time, Rosalind was working on the winds.
She swooped again, soaring beneath the locusts, and electricity charged her body.
Flying on phantom wings, she arched her neck, and slashed her wrists at the iron-gray storm clouds. A spear of lightning ignited the sky, striking a cluster of locusts. The creatures screeched, some falling to earth, smoke curling from their bodies.
Rosalind struck again, calling down twin shards of lightning from the heavens. Forked lightning touched down in the cloud of locusts, and the creatures writhed, smoke rising from their bodies. Frantically now, they were fleeing the storm and the flames. Rosalind soared below them, the storm’s power thrumming through her veins, and she built the wind’s power. One by one, burning, charred bodies plummeted to the earth, smashing cars, roofs.
She swooped back again, heading for Lilinor’s army. As she flew she surveyed the damage below her. Among Lilinor’s ranks, famished soldiers were gnawing the bark off trees, shoving dirt into their mouths, and worst of all, trying to eat through each other’s flesh. Most of the locusts had been slaughtered, but too many of Lilinor’s army had been transformed.
Rosalind scanned the crowd until her gaze landed on Caine, who was driving his sword through a locust’s chest. She heaved a sigh of relief to find him unharmed.
She landed next to him, and his silver gaze met hers. “We need to heal them. All the soldiers touched by the pazuzu—we need to heal them with shadow magic.” An emaciated ker stumbled forward, grasping for Caine, who slammed a hard punch into his face. The creature fell to the ground, unconscious.
“Malphas!” Caine’s voice boomed, the command of a god.
Instantly, Malphas was at his brother’s side, their bodies blazing with silvery magic, brilliant as the stars. Caine threw back his head, as if in a strange sort of ecstasy, and his stunning magic snaked from his body. Without realizing it, the ravening soldiers cleared space around the incubi, as if they instinctively knew they were in the presence of gods.
Rosalind’s shadow magic built in her ribs, then curled into the air, mingling with Caine and Malphas’s magic in perfect tendrils. Shadow magic caressed the sickened soldiers, gently coiling around their poisoned bodies. She could almost feel the pain ebbing from them
, all that agony, evaporating into the darkened sky.
After a few minutes, she looked around again, catching her breath. They hadn’t managed to save everyone. Some of Lilinor’s soldiers had been too far gone, and they lay on the road, their mouths smeared with dirt and grass. Others had been eaten alive, and Rosalind’s stomach turned at the sight of them. Blood stained the ground, and charred demon bodies smoked among the starved, the ravaged.
“Rosalind,” said Caine.
She clenched her jaw, trying to tear her eyes away from the carnage.
“Rosalind!” he said, meeting her gaze. “The real battle hasn’t begun yet. Stay with me.”
Chapter 28
Embedded in the vanguard, Rosalind marched for the Brotherhood’s towering marble gates, the ones she’d stared at from the window of her decadent prison. Colored magic swirled around the wall, a relic of Drew’s magic, and a few rays of sun pierced the clouds, glimmering off the magical wall.
When she’d been imprisoned, she’d spent so long trying to make sense of those gates, to imagine someone coming to rescue her over the wall. Under the ice floes of her mind, she’d pictured herself on the other side of them, or running freely through the long, narrow courtyard that spread out before the palace.
As she stood now, on the other side of the gates, her stomach clenched. If they failed here, it wouldn’t be death for Rosalind—it would be much worse. The thought of Drew’s hands on her made her sick.
Worse, it wasn’t just she who had a lot to lose here. If they lost the battle, it could mean the end of the army of Lilinor. The Brotherhood’s power would grow after a victory against the dark forces—the evil demons they needed to torture to death. Don’t you see, Americans? This is why we must torture and burn.
Divine Hunter (The Vampire's Mage Series Book 4) Page 18
