by Melissa Grey
“Echo, so glad you could join us.”
Tanith emerged from behind a large air-conditioning unit, its sloping aluminum vent incongruous next to the battered gleam of her golden armor. Blackened veins branched across the angular beauty of her face. She looked worse than the psychic projection she had left in the Drakharin temple. The kuçedra was devouring her, slowly but surely. Echo understood with sickening clarity the emaciated corpses, the poor souls drained dry of life and magic. Stolen vitality was the only thing keeping Tanith alive. She held Ivy in front of her, one arm around Ivy’s waist and arms, while her other hand held the knife to Ivy’s throat at an angle that forced her head up and back, cruelly exposing the soft skin of her neck. Ivy’s black eyes were wide with fear, and tears had made tracks through the dirt on her face, but she was alive. She was alive.
The door banged against the wall behind Echo as Caius finally caught up to her. He was panting, each breath accompanied by a wet rattling sound. It had been one fight after another, and he hadn’t had the time to properly heal. Magic could only do so much for him when it was magic that had caused him so much pain.
“Oh, and you brought company,” Tanith said, forcing Ivy to inch ahead in front of her. “Hello, Brother. Miss me already?”
The gash in the sky seemed even larger from this higher vantage point. There weren’t any towering buildings to block Echo’s view of it. It was bared to her in all its great and terrible glory.
“Let her go,” Echo said. “You want to fight, we’ll fight. But first you have to let her go.”
Tanith let out a harsh, broken laugh. “I have to let her go?” She tightened her hold on Ivy, who gave a whimper of pain. Even without the kuçedra to aid her, Tanith was strong enough to break bones with her bare hands if she wanted. “I do not have to do anything. Such arrogance to make demands. I have always found that to be an especially odious hallmark of your species. And one of the many, many reasons I am going to take this world back from those who do not deserve it. I shall cleanse the world of those who have shown, time and again, that they do not appreciate what they have.” She gesticulated with the knife, waving it at the New York skyline. “I will bring about a new era where my people can know peace—true peace—and prosper. All I seek to give them is a place where they can be proud. Where they do not have to live like rats hiding in the walls. We never should have let your kind have this world. Your fear became our shame, and I will bear it no longer.”
“Save the supervillain speech for someone who cares,” Echo said. “And let Ivy go.”
Tanith paused, as if the interruption had been unexpected. And she thought Echo was arrogant. “No.”
Echo made to lunge forward, to force the knife from Ivy’s throat, but a hand on her forearm stopped her. Caius pulled her back. “Tanith, if any part of you is still in there, please, listen to me. You can fight this. This monster isn’t you.”
“Monster?” Tanith blinked owlishly at him. Her once-red eyes were awash with black as deep and dark as the abyss slicing through the sky above. “I am not so monstrous.” The blade at Ivy’s throat caressed her skin with deceptive gentleness. “I wanted to give the firebird a chance to say goodbye. Your pain will be such exquisite agony.”
The pressure of the knife eased enough to allow Ivy to speak. “Echo, no matter what happens to me, fight her. Don’t—” The knife returned, pressing deep enough to draw a thin rivulet of blood, red as the darkest rose against the snowy whiteness of Ivy’s skin.
“That’s enough, little dove.” Tanith spoke to Ivy, but her eyes were for Echo. A vicious grin slashed across her face. “Say your farewells, Firebird.”
Echo screamed as Tanith began to slowly pull the blade across Ivy’s throat. She lunged, and Caius didn’t try to hold her back.
The knife never finished its journey. A roar so loud the air vibrated with the force of it sent Echo crashing to her knees, her hands clapped over her ears. Tanith started, her hold on Ivy loosening just enough to allow the girl to slither out of Tanith’s grasp. Caius pushed Echo flat to the ground, shielding her with his body.
The gust of wind slammed into them before the cause of it came into view.
Two large pearlescent eyes gazed down at the rooftop as wings lifted the beast aloft, its long neck angled toward Caius in greeting. Even Tanith was momentarily stymied by its sudden appearance.
The dragon.
The dragon had followed them—followed Caius—to New York. As it approached the roof, a purr rolled from behind its closed jaws, sounding for all the world like the rumbling meow cats made when greeting their humans. It nudged Caius’s shoulder with its snout, hard enough to knock him onto his rear. Caius placed a hand on its muzzle.
Echo had asked Caius once about all those stories of dragons and their hoards. Caius had smiled that soft half smile of his and told her, Dragons are very possessive.
No shit, Echo thought.
The gateway to the in-between hadn’t closed behind them. And it had been large enough for a sizable group to pass through it all at once. Large enough for a dragon, if that dragon was crafty enough to take advantage of all the holes Tanith’s madness had torn into the world.
“Hello,” Caius said to the dragon in a perfectly modulated voice, as if it weren’t odd that a dragon was hovering with great flaps of its massive wings in the center of New York City. As if every camera in the vicinity weren’t capturing that moment.
A body collided with Echo’s side and she brought her hand up to strike before she realized it was Ivy. She curled her fingers into a fist before the sparks in her hand could blossom into a full fire. Ivy wrapped Echo in a fierce hug that lasted only a second or two before she pulled away.
“Are you okay?” Echo asked, trying to keep both Ivy and Tanith within her field of vision.
“Yeah,” Ivy said. “I’m fine.” She was trying very hard to make it look like she wasn’t attempting to hide behind Echo and Caius. Echo spared her the indignation of having to make that choice for herself and yanked Ivy behind her. If Tanith wanted a piece of the Avicen, she was going to have to go through Echo.
Tanith glanced from the dragon to Caius as it came to rest beside him, its talons sinking into the roof’s masonry as easily as if it were sand. Echo sincerely hoped the roof was strong enough to accommodate its weight; otherwise, they were all in for a great deal of pain.
“I see it’s taken a liking to you,” said Tanith. She brushed off her armor as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “No accounting for taste, I suppose.”
“Jealous?” Caius asked, one hand gripping a knife Echo hadn’t seen him draw, the other resting protectively on the side of the dragon’s neck.
Tanith scoffed and waved a dismissive hand, conjuring an undulating mass of black shadows. They grew larger with each lazy flick of her wrist, taking shapes that resembled smaller versions of the dragon. “I will not lie, it would have been grand to go into battle with a true dragon by my side, but I can make do with what’s on hand just fine.”
The shadow creatures expanded and solidified, landing a few yards away with audible thuds. They had weight and substance, even more so than the ones Echo had seen on the streets below.
Echo pushed Ivy toward the door. “Go,” she said. “Get downstairs.”
Ivy shook her head, her black eyes wide but certain. “Echo, I’m not leav—”
“There are wounded below. They need your help.”
It was the only thing Echo could have possibly said to dissuade Ivy from throwing away her life to fight at Echo’s side. She watched conflicts war in Ivy’s expression, her brow pinching, her eyes sliding to the door, then back to Tanith.
“Ivy,” Echo said. “Please. I can’t fight her and protect you, too. Dorian and Jasper are down there. There are people who need you. Find them.”
After a painful moment, Ivy finally—finally—nodded, her eyes bright and shiny with tears. “Don’t let her win,” she said, edging back toward the door, her gaze locked on Tanith.
>
Tanith smiled and waved a mocking goodbye. “Always a pleasure, little dove. But right now you are far more trouble than you’re worth. More than one way to skin a cat and all.”
As much as Echo wanted to watch Ivy’s retreat, to make sure she reached the door and descended into the relative safety of the library—if any place in all of Manhattan could be said to be safe—she didn’t. She kept her eyes on Tanith. But still, she made her promise to Ivy. “She won’t. She’ll have to kill me first.”
Echo realized what a poor choice of words it had been the second they escaped her lips. Caius shot her a look that his dragon seemed to mirror.
“Oh, my sweet firebird,” said Tanith, her voice oozing across the rooftop like an oil slick. “That can be arranged.”
And then she and her shadow beasts attacked.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Jasper was good in a fight. Better than most people expected. He had spent years carefully cultivating an air of languid indolence, projecting an ease that said to all who looked his way that he was more of a lover, not a fighter. That he preferred to keep his hands clean no matter how dirty his task. It was a ruse. A shadow of a lie that had served him well. Being underestimated was a weapon all its own, and one Jasper knew how to wield with skill.
But this was no fight.
This was chaos. This was the slam of one body into another, the sound of cloth and metal and flesh tearing, the fever pitch of shouts and wails and pleas. Smoke clogged the air, battling for dominance with the electric ozone scent of the in-between hovering above it all. Somewhere, gas was leaking, painting the atmosphere with its thick, sickly stench. Jasper thought that if he struck a match, the air itself would catch fire, burning them all in an orgiastic frenzy of violence and blood and death.
Metal screeched as a body landed atop the car behind which Jasper crouched. Shattered glass rained down from the ruined windows, scattering to the ground like chunks of hail. Dorian knelt to one side of Jasper, sword drawn, while Ivy huddled by the wheel on his other side, her already-pale skin even paler, her black eyes wide. Jasper had spotted her white feathers as she’d come running out of the library. Luck had drawn her eyes to them, and Jasper hoped that luck held on a little longer.
He peeked over the now-concave roof of the car. It was the body of an Avicen warrior—the bloodstained feathers protruding from its head confirmed that much—but whoever it was had parted with their face and what looked like half of their internal organs. Bile rose, quick and sour, in Jasper’s throat as he ducked back down. Something dark and sinuous weaved between the nearby vehicles before disappearing from view.
“This is bad.” Jasper usually tried to avoid stating the obvious, but the situation was so very bad it seemed worth mentioning. “They’re being slaughtered, if our new friend here is anything to go by.”
“Stay here,” Dorian said, already leaning around the trunk of the van to gauge his next move. The sword sat so naturally in his hand that it might as well have been an extension of his arm. “Take care of Ivy.”
Jasper seized hold of Dorian’s sleeve before the other man could escape to throw himself boldly into the fray.
Dorian glanced down at Jasper’s hand, then darted his gaze up, his expression more than a little forlorn, dusted with a hint of desperation. “Jasper, I—”
Jasper stole the rest of Dorian’s sentence with a kiss. There was no grace to it. Just a hard press of lips and teeth. It was over far too quickly. “I love you,” Jasper said.
Dorian blinked, startled. “I love you, too.” He said it reflexively, as if it wasn’t something he needed to think about. Something deep inside Jasper lurched with glee.
“And if you think,” Jasper continued, “that I’m going to let you die in a blaze of glory, you are sorely mistaken.”
Jasper unsheathed the twin set of knives he’d strapped to his forearms before they’d left the keep in a whirlwind of steel and magic; then he reached into Dorian’s pocket for the small vial of bloodweed elixir he’d seen Caius toss to Dorian before running after Echo toward the library. He slicked a coating of it over the two blades before Dorian had a chance to protest. Oh, the protest was coming. Jasper could see it forming on those perfectly plump, kiss-bruised lips. But Ivy—patron saint of perfect timing—swooped in with the save.
“I’m not staying here,” she said. Her eyes were a hair too wide and her skin a touch too pale, but there was a determination in the set of her jaw that Jasper knew was reflected in his own expression. “I’m a healer, and there are people out there who need my help.” Dorian frowned, and Jasper saw another protest trying to break free before Ivy cut him off. “I can help. And I will.”
A scream cut through the air, accompanied by what sounded like bones cracking. Another screech—this one distinctly monstrous—rose above the cacophony. Jasper fought an involuntary shiver. Dorian’s head twitched toward the source of the noise.
He closed his eye briefly. “There’s nothing I can say to convince the two of you to find a nice, safe place to hide, is there?”
“No,” said Jasper and Ivy at the same time.
“Fine,” Dorian said through gritted teeth. He pulled Jasper in for another kiss, this one as vicious as the last.
Behind him, Jasper heard Ivy mumble, “Time and a place, guys.” He flipped his middle finger at her, then immediately regretted it, as there was a very real possibility it would be the last thing he ever communicated to her.
Dorian pulled away just far enough to rest his forehead against Jasper’s. “No unnecessary risks.”
“Like getting run through by a sword meant for you?”
“Just like that, yes.”
Jasper afforded Dorian a small smile and nodded. They both knew it was bullshit, but Dorian needed that promise, no matter how flimsy, and there was nothing Jasper would deny him. Besides, being impaled once was more than enough. No one needed a repeat of that. Especially Jasper.
“Stay close,” Dorian said to them both.
The next instant, he was on his feet, rounding the corner and delving into the chaos, Jasper and Ivy one step behind.
Dorian’s penchant for heroics might have been one of the things Jasper loved about him, but if Dorian got himself killed, Jasper was going to follow him to the afterlife and smack the pretty right out of him.
Jasper gripped his knives tighter and plunged into the fight, praying to gods he wasn’t sure he’d ever believed in that they would all make it out of this mess alive.
—
Dorian’s sword sank into the beast’s hide with startling ease. The dark flesh moved and bunched as if there were muscles flexing beneath the skin, but there was little resistance as it parted beneath Dorian’s blade. No catch of bone or gristle, no spill of blood across naked steel. A piercing cry sliced through the air, loud enough to make Dorian want to drop the sword and clap his hands over his ears. He didn’t. But gods, it was loud.
He slid his sword free and the shadow creature—not an animal; animals bled—disintegrated, its particles spreading free like smoke on the wind.
A grunt sounded from behind him and he turned to find Jasper crouched low, one of his knives slicing through the neck of one of the blasted creatures while his other clattered to the ground. A tendril of liquid shadows had wrapped itself around his wrist, preventing him from plunging the second blade home. Dorian moved without thought; his legs ate up the distance between them, and within seconds, the beast met the same fate as its brethren.
Jasper wasted no time picking up his fallen weapon. His feathers had tumbled from their normal artful styling, and swooped across his sweaty brow. “Thanks,” he breathed, pushing himself to his feet. He glanced around, and Dorian followed his gaze. The shadows were coalescing into other shapes, bigger and more monstrous. The things couldn’t be killed. They could be slowed. Stopped, for a time. But not killed.
“Jasper,” Dorian said, hefting his sword to meet the oncoming assault. “Do me a favor.”
Jasper brus
hed the feathers off his forehead with the back of his hand before sinking into a fighting stance, his back to Dorian’s. “Anything.”
“Don’t get yourself killed.”
—
Ivy let Jasper and Dorian go on ahead, clearing a path. She spared the mangled Avicen’s corpse a glance, ignoring the sickened roil of her stomach. It was, by far, the worst thing she had ever seen.
Dead, Ivy told herself, wrapping her hands around the straps of her borrowed backpack. It was Echo’s. Ivy had stuffed it full of all the healing supplies she could get her hands on at Wyvern’s Keep, before Tanith had taken her hostage, and it felt like the only thing grounding her in that moment. Nothing you can do. Move.
A soft moan drifted to where she stood.
She followed the sound to a recessed alcove tucked between two storefronts. There she found one of the human soldiers huddled, his limbs splayed and quivering, one arm wrapped around his bleeding midsection. His eyes widened as she approached, flicking between the feathers on her head and the eyes that were larger and blacker than any human’s could ever be.
He began to mumble incoherently as she knelt down beside him, trying to back away despite the fact that there was nowhere for him to go.
“It’s okay,” Ivy said, her voice as soothing as she could make it. She set the backpack down and began removing the items she’d need from it: sterile bandages, a salve that tingled in her palm with the healing magic imbued in it, a potion to help with the pain and slow the bleeding. The soldier blinked too rapidly at the brisk movements of her hands, but the trembling in his limbs seemed to abate. “I’m here to help.”
—
There are too godsdamn many of them.
Jasper had just enough time to form this thought before three of the shadow beasts fell upon him, black teeth flashing, death dripping from fangs that shouldn’t exist.
