by Keri Arthur
I smashed the rest of the glass away and then spun around. Saw the thick mass of flesh almost on top of us.
“Commander, we have an exit—move.”
“Team one, go,” he said, shouting to be heard above the blasting of guns, the screams of the demons, and the roar of the oncoming collapse. “Team two, rear protection.”
Six soldiers immediately retreated, Henry safe in their midst. As they ducked through the broken doors, the ceiling above us cracked and the walls began spitting missiles of rock and plaster as the full collapse began.
“Commander, get your men out of there.” I crossed the daggers and blasted lightning at the wall of demons in front of them. Red mist momentarily blurred my vision, and moisture dribbled over my lashes. I swiped it away and swept the lightning back and forth, keeping the demons at bay even as the ceiling and walls began to collapse around them.
“Gwen, come on,” Henry shouted.
I sent a final surge of light toward the horde, then turned and ran, chased by chunks of roof and walls. As the doors began to buckle under the weight of the roof collapsing above it, the ground started to rumble once more. A thick slab of earth rose to enclose us totally and then the tunnel began to extend—lengthen—away from the building.
“Benson, Reggy, to the front,” the commander barked. “Everyone else, on guard. We may be surrounded by earth but there’s still a ton of those bastards outside and the tunnel may not protect us against their weapons.”
A statement that proved all too true as a spear stabbed through the earth and sliced into the leg of the nearest soldier. Weapons fired in response, the noise deafening in the confined space. The commander picked his man up and motioned everyone to move on.
More spears shot through the sides of the tunnel, and all too quickly it became a deadly forest that claimed the life of one soldier and left the rest of us bloody. We might just have stepped from the frying pan into the fire …
From the top of the pod came heavy thumping, and then earth began to shower down. They were attempting to break through … I swore and raised Vita and Nex, but the lightning hit the dome and crawled along it, as if searching for an exit point.
Claws broke through the earth and the lightning leapt forward, spinning up into the gap. If the demon screamed as his body was ashed, I didn’t hear it, thanks to the explosion of gunfire and the sudden howling of the wind.
The cavalry—in the form of the army and air witches—had obviously arrived.
The earth pod continued to move forward, shuffling us away from the sound of fighting. Then the wall of earth at the front of the pod began to disintegrate; the commander snapped an order and the soldiers—bloody and limping—formed a barrier in front of Henry, their weapons at the ready. The night air, thick with the scent of smoke and death, rushed in, but no demons followed.
A woman stood in front of us. Wind streamed through her dark hair, and her eyes were lit with stars.
“This way,” she said, and then punched sideways. A vortex of air shot from her fist; the clawed feet of a demon made a brief appearance as he was flung up and away.
She turned and ran toward a thick clump of trees. The soldiers kept in tight formation around Henry, with the commander and me at the rear. The sounds of battle were now fading, the gunshots fewer. The wind still howled, however, though its force was not aimed our way.
Perhaps the demons were in retreat …
The thought had barely crossed my mind when my foot sank ankle-deep into the soil. I frowned and glanced down, using the light dripping from Nex and Vita to see what was happening. Water was bubbling up from the ground, forming little streams that ran away quickly through the longish green grass. Maybe there was a natural spring nearby … The next step went deeper. Up ahead, the soldiers were now struggling knee deep through mud.
Then I caught the faintest of magic. Dark magic. Earth magic.
The demon’s witchling was still active.
“Get out of here,” I shouted. “It’s a trap.”
The soldiers didn’t hesitate. As one, they moved forward, the two on either side of Henry shouldering their weapons and gripping his arms to move him along at a faster clip.
I lunged after them, but with every step, I sank deeper and deeper into the ground. Then a huge wave of power rolled over me, setting my skin afire with the sheer depth of depravity so evident within it. It sent me sprawling forward, and I hit the wet ground hard, sinking underneath the soil; water and muck flooded my mouth. Panic surged even as someone grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me upright.
A scream rent the air. I twisted free from the commander’s grip, saw Henry and the two men holding him upright drop straight down into the ground.
“No!” I threw myself forward, somehow latching on to his hand a heartbeat before it disappeared. His fingers wrapped around mine, his desperation a force that pulsed through his grip. I rose onto my knees and pulled back with every ounce of strength I had, trying to free him. The commander dropped beside me and thrust his hands into the soil. With a fierce growl, he slowly rose; the head and then shoulders of one of the soldiers came out of the ground.
Henry wasn’t budging. I simply didn’t have the strength.
“Help—I need some help here.”
Soldiers appeared, some plunging arms into the ground, others reaching down and taking a firm grip further down the arm I held. Yet more appeared to help save the other trapped man. He came free, coughing and spluttering but alive.
There was still hope for Henry …
I screamed in fury and pulled back with all my might, trying to break the suction-like hold the ground had on Henry. Energy pulsed around us as the forces of light and dark magic fought for control over the ground that was drowning Henry.
We had to get him up. He couldn’t die. Not like this …
He moved. Only a fraction, but it was a start.
“On three,” the soldier closest to me said, and then counted down.
As one, we all pulled. Slowly, ever so slowly, more of his arm came free.
Mo’s magic joined the fray, but it was little more than a pale whisper of her usual force. The dark pulsed again; it gripped Henry and ripped back down, deeper into the earth, pulling the three of us down with it. My face hit the soil and liquid earth rushed into my nose and mouth. But I refused to release Henry’s hand and, with a surge of strength from god knows where, pushed back up, clear of the ground, somehow halting Henry’s slide deeper into the earth.
But the strength in his fingers was gone; there was no life in them, no pulse. If we didn’t get him out soon, then he was truly dead.
There was only one way to save him. I had to find and kill the witchling.
“Here,” I said to the soldier kneeling next to me. “Grab his hand.”
He immediately did so. I thrust up, loosely wrapped the daggers together, and then sprang skyward. Smoke was thick in the air, distorting the view, but I could see that the demons who remained were on the run, their asses chased by winds that occasionally caught their heels and flung them high.
The red demon and his witchling wouldn’t be where his forces were running. He’d be somewhere safe—somewhere apart from the conflict and yet still able to see it.
I circled around and spotted the tor on the nearby summit. There. They were there.
I arrowed toward it, the daggers trailing behind me, hampering my speed. For one insane second, I considered dropping them, but they were the only real advantage I had over the demon. I just had to hope the few seconds of delay they were causing wasn’t the difference between life and death.
As I drew closer to the summit, I saw them.
But they also saw me.
Something small and wiry scrambled onto the red demon’s back. A heartbeat later, he was in the air, his wings pumping hard enough to stir a vortex of dust and debris. It didn’t stop me from seeing him—I was higher than him.
But I wasn’t faster.
As he began to pull away, I
did the one thing Mo had told me never to do—I changed shape in midair and, as I plunged downward, unwrapped the daggers and clapped the blades together. Lightning shot across the distance between us and clipped the red demon’s tail. He bellowed in fury and swooped upwards, the wiry figure clinging like a limpet to his back. I followed his movements and forced every ounce of remaining energy into the blades, demanding—wanting—death.
Nex responded.
As moisture filled my eyes and pain exploded through my brain, a thick bolt of lightning shot across the night sky and hit the demon dead center. It cindered the wiry figure and burned a hole right through the red demon’s chest.
He dropped.
So did I.
As the ground loomed at alarming speed, I reached for the shifting magic. It answered far too slowly, and the ground approached far too fast … I banked my wings, desperately trying to slow down, and hit the ground in a crunching tumble. The pain in my head exploded through the rest of my body, and I knew no more.
Fifteen
Waking was a painful process. The mad drummers were back in my head and working hard, and my eyes were sore and gritty.
But my fingers and toes all moved and I wasn’t wrapped in bandages, which meant enough time had passed to give Mo a chance to recover from her efforts at the hospital and then heal me.
I shifted slightly, felt silk sheets run across naked skin, and suddenly wondered where the hell I was.
I opened my eyes. The first person I saw was Mo. She was asleep on an old brown chesterfield, her feet propped on the end of the bed, her skin pale but holding none of the gauntness that came with expending too much energy.
The other person was a presence I felt rather than immediately saw. Just for an instant, our connection surged to life. His relief, his caring, and his desire ran through me, a fierce wave that made my heart sing and body ache.
Then it was gone, ripped away by a will of steel.
I took a deep breath that did little to calm the tide of anger, and then said, “Where are we?”
“At a friend’s country estate, not that far from Ainslyn.” His voice was calm but remote. “It’s safer to stay here until we can figure out our next move.”
I wanted to jump up, grab him by the shirt, and shake some goddamn sense into him. But there was little point. He was holding strong, and arcing up against it would only harden his resolve.
“And Henry? Where’s he?”
His long pause said it all. I closed my eyes against the tears. Damn it, we’d come so close, fought so hard, and it had all been for naught.
Fingers twined around mine. Mo, not Luc.
“They did get him out,” she said softly. “But his mouth and nose were blocked by earth and by the time they cleared it—”
I studied her for a moment, seeing the grief. Seeing the guilt. “How’s Ada coping?”
“As well as can be expected.” She squeezed my fingers. “Her grandmother has come down from Scotland to be with her.”
“And the funerals? When are they?”
“Tomorrow. We can’t be there, Gwen.”
“But—”
“You would only put Ada and everyone else in danger,” Luc said, a gentle note of compassion in his voice. “They may have succeeded in killing Henry, but they missed you. I have no doubt they will try again.”
I took another of those deep breaths that really didn’t do a whole lot. “Have you contacted Max? Is he still safe?”
“He’s still in Paris, but lying low, as promised. I’ve convinced him to move out of the Castille. He’s now in a small apartment under an assumed name.”
I grinned. “I bet he’s unhappy about that. I mean, there’s no room service to cater to his every whim.”
“He did mention that. Several times.”
I could imagine. “That leaves us with the unknown Jules—are we any closer to knowing who he is?”
Mo shook her head. “I contacted Jackie again and asked if she’d found anything else on him. She said there was an Okoro line that had a direct link back to Aquitaines, and she believed it was possible his claim to the sword was stronger than Max’s.”
“Meaning she did find a royal connection in the De Montfort line?”
“Not as yet—she still believes it’s more a combination of bloodlines that brought Gareth, Henry, and your brother into the firing line.”
I frowned. “I get Gareth and Henry being targets—their mom was a Valeriun, and they’ve a strong history with the Aquitaines. But the Okoros—or at least, Mom’s branch of it—don’t.”
“That we know of,” Luc said. “But remember, both family bibles are missing—”
“I think it would be fairly safe to say that, given recent events, the bibles are not missing but rather in the hands of our enemy,” Mo said. “Which means we must now proceed on the presumption that the unknown Remy or Randy is the one behind these murders.”
I gripped the silken sheet, keeping it close to my chest as I sat up. “Do you think that now both Gareth and Henry are dead, our would-be king will make another attempt to draw the sword?”
“More than likely,” Mo said. “It would be the only way of testing whether he’d succeeded in erasing the competition.”
“And that’s what I don’t get,” I said. “You both said earlier that the sword makes a judgment on worthiness—wouldn’t erasing all other heirs result in unworthiness?”
“In peaceful times, undoubtedly,” Mo said. “But we’ve now taken several gigantic steps closer to a war.”
“A war they can’t win without the sword to open Hell’s Gill,” I pointed out. “So why don’t we just hide the sword? It may take a couple of strong Chen witches to break the knob away from the stone circle, but surely—”
“That’s been tried in the past,” Mo said. “The De Montfort blessing hasn’t always held out for the full year, and gold will always draw the greedy.”
I grunted. “Then we need to place a round-the-clock watch—”
“We haven’t exactly been sitting around idly while you’ve been unconscious,” Luc said. “No one will get onto the island, let alone draw the sword.”
I hoped he was right, but there was a niggling doubt deep within. Everything that could go wrong had, up until this point, so why would things suddenly start changing? I opened my mouth to say as much, but Mo squeezed my hand, drawing my gaze, and then shook her head.
Luc’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. “Sorry, I have to take this.”
I watched him leave, and then returned my gaze to Mo’s. “How long was I out?”
“Three days.”
I stared at her. “Really? Why? How badly was I broken after my nosedive into the ground? Or was it more a case of you needed to recover first?”
“I did have to recuperate, but that is neither here nor there simply because there were no broken bones to fix.”
“That’s impossible. I hit at speed—”
“Yes, and Luc witnessed it.” Her smile was one of absolute delight. “Trust me, that boy is yours. You just have to give him time to get used to the fact.”
“I don’t think there’s enough time in the entire world for that to happen,” I muttered. “So how in the hell did I escape without breaking anything?”
“I would imagine you have Vita to thank for that.”
“What in the hell has a knife got to do with it?”
“She is life, remember, and they have obviously accepted your heritage and your claim.”
“Well, great, but I still don’t see how that—”
“It’s very possible you did break multiple bones when you crashed, because as Luc raced toward you, he said you disappeared under a strange golden glow. Life is golden. Death is harsh white.”
I blinked. “But how can that possibly be when I don’t have the De Montfort healing ability?”
“As I have said, your problem has always been your negativity—”
“It’s not neg
ativity, it’s fact.”
“And yet the daggers recognized you. They would not have done so if you were completely void of magic.”
“Then it has to be buried damn deep,” I muttered, “because I kept coming up as null whenever I was tested.”
“Null simply means no visible force was detected. It doesn’t mean you are without power.”
I snorted. “That’s splitting hairs, and we both know it.” I waved a hand. “So why was I unconscious for three days if Vita healed me?”
“She healed you of the physical damage done by the crash, but she could not heal the damage caused by using her and Nex.”
I stared at her for a moment, unease stirring through me. “But it was just a headache—”
“One that caused blood vessels in your eyes to burst and your body to go into a type of hibernation.” She hesitated. “In your case, it was only three days. In the past, there have been cases of hibernation lasting weeks. Even years.”
I scrubbed a hand through my hair. “I take it the more I use the daggers, the greater the toll on my body?”
“Yes. There will come a point where even I cannot save you.”
“That’ll teach me to watch what I wish for,” I said. “What are we going to do about the sword?”
“There is nothing we can do, beyond watch and wait.”
“So you do think our murderer will go up there to test his claim.”
“Yes. And I also think the Blackbirds will not stop him.”
I frowned. “Luc seemed pretty certain they had all options covered.”
“All except the sky.”
“Okoros can’t fly.”
“De Montforts can, and we could be dealing with an unknown offshoot line, remember.”
“Then what are we going to do? We can’t camp on King’s Island—we’d be too easy to spot.”
“As humans, yes. As blackbirds, no we won’t.”
“As plans go, it isn’t one of my favorites.”
She grinned. “It’ll be fun.”
“Your idea of fun and mine are two very different things.”
“That’s the trouble with young things these days—you’re all too soft.” She squeezed my fingers and then released them. “I’ll go organize some food for you. Once you’ve eaten and showered, we’ll head off.”
