Page 31

Mavros struck first.

The Crimson Mage met him with blade and magic. A storm thundered overhead, wind howling and the sky quaking with ominous clouds. Sword met sword, weapons clashed in a wail of magic and ringing iron. The wizard’s power swept over the land in a cloud of bleeding red.

Potent fear struck me. The next impact shattered me, cracked through the tender creature in my chest, and sent shards of ice through my veins. If I wasn’t frozen with frigid terror, I might have wept.

Mavros moved like death given form. His horns shone like a striking crown, fire-eyes burning fever-bright with possession and righteous fury. He was a hulking mountain of protection and vengeance honed for brutality.

The wizard moved like a corpse reanimated. Elegance twisted. A nightmare made flesh, held together by threads of garnet-stained magic. His attacks leeched the warmth from the air, his spreading power caused breaths to fog on parted lips. And light withered under his shadow.

His magic clung to my skin, a sickly grime in the air as revolting as the first time I felt it.

Bolts of crimson zapped around him as he dipped and lunged.

Mavros met each blow, arching his sword before following up with claws.

Their battle was a blight, tearing through the courtyard and ripping through earth, air, and magic as they attacked over and over.

My breath hung in my throat, warping into a gasp when leather boots scuffed on stone.

Behind me.

Human soldiers wearing the modern camouflage uniforms from Earth in the red wizard’s color. A fight occupied their leader, but they had orders they were eager to follow, judging by the wicked gleam in their eyes.

A cry rose to my lips as the first human lunged—

A hissing wind whipped through the air. Long and dark and formless shadows leaked from the cracks in the stone.

Disjointed limbs rose higher, snatching the soldiers around the ankles.

The storm above whipped faster and faster, dampening the cries of the humans as oil-slick shadows wrenched them down into oblivion.

They bled from the walls, oozed through the panes of glass on the windows.

Bubbled up from crevices in the stones and wooden slats of the doors.

Dozens, shapeless at first, then hundreds as their forms materialized.

Curving, spiraling horns, fangs and jutting tusks, claws like meat hooks, and tails thrashing.

Some were no taller than my knee, my favorite little imps, and others ducked their heads to avoid the arches.

The Inferni.

Those who fortified the castle had come to support their master—

But, no. They weren’t rushing to his aid.

They crashed into the soldiers sweeping towards me with a violence rivaling the frenzy of vengeance.

An imp tore out the throat of a human soldier with a visceral spray of blood.

A larger one, lofty and imposing, like a twisted mockery of a deer smashed through a line of men with a massive, clawed hand.

Another took up the spot beside me, eyes glowing and breath heaving with a lust for blood.

“Thayer…”

The gloomthreader nodded at me before bursting into the fray, joining the fight to defend me. Tendrils of darkness spilled from their form, coiling like sinful dancers. They stepped between soldiers and beasts, their body a conductor of chaos, weaving shadows into ropes, into blades, into nooses.

They caught a soldier—twisted him within a ribbon of inky silk—and dashed him against a pillar. Again and again and again. Until he ruptured like broken pottery.

The Inferni didn’t fight like beasts.

They fought like death given permission to devour. Like monsters.

Though the human’s weapons shot a shower of ballistics, the demons persevered. They were beating the human men back.

A flicker of umbral flame burst near me.

Domovoy leapt from the darkness, stretching from his cat-form into something I’d never seen before.

Like a plume of smoke, he swirled higher, taller, morphing into something other .

Tall and sleek, his head a cat’s skull, with waxy antlers tipped in candle flame, he prowled forward, fangs bared and eyes glowing like embers.

Mortals hesitated before him as their fear surfaced, and Domovoy’s searing gaze was the last thing they saw.

He became a barricade between me and any of the mage’s men, quick enough to evade the line of Inferni.

He curled protectively around me, his flames casting long, hellish shadows, purring low as if promising that none would reach me .

Gratitude swelled in my chest for him, for all of them.

They weren’t the innocent animals of the sanctuary I once guarded, but they were my creatures now. And I was theirs.

My heart thundered. My breath came in ragged, stunned bursts. The Inferni demons came, not only for Mavros, but because I belonged to the castle, to the realm, to Infernus. A threat against one was a threat against all.

A discordant ripple of magic carved through the turbulent, rising winds.

A horrific crackling that cleaved through the battle and pierced ears.

Several Inferni crashed, grabbing their ears and howling.

Even half the remaining mortals collapsed, writhing with agony.

The wave of power that followed scorched the courtyard grass, splintered stone pillars, and battered imps to the ground.

I turned, stunned by the storm of Mavros and the wizard unleashing the full might of their power against one another.

When one slashed, the other parried, when one jabbed, the other countered.

True to his word, Mavros seemed to be predicting the wizard’s next moves, reading his body language like a complicated equation and solving with brutal swings.

Yet the wizard had magic, and Mavros was half mortal.

I saw the first falter—the stagger as the beast prince tired.

Ice shards assaulted the warmth from my blood.

The Crimson Mage, a brutal hunter, the last wizard from Earth, he saw it too.

And smiled.

The hammering thing in my heart battered itself against my ribs. His name rose on my lips, lost in the cacophony of open war and a thunderous sky .

A primal roar sundered the air.

A flash of pain twisted across Mavros’s expression. He snarled, staggering back and clutching his side. The mage jerked his arms back, revealing the sticky, dark blood coating his blade. And a rose of red bloomed under Mavros’s fingers.

Relentless, driven, the mage advanced. He pressed forward with the tenacity of a man reaching the cusp of victory. Steel sang as his blade arched.

Mavros twisted away, his hulking form hunched and his breathing ragged.

“You bleed like all the rest,” the mage said, voice sibilant and sure. The calm assurance of his triumph chilled me. “Beast or man, it doesn’t matter. You will die like all the others who stood in my way.”

Mavros readjusted his sword even as he staggered. His face scrunched into an unheard growl, and his eyes blazed with fierce determination despite his hand staunching the blood flowing through his fingers.

The red-stained hunter, the same terrifying phantom I’d seen lurking in my dreams, stalked toward the beast prince like a patron saint of savagery.

“You cannot keep the air spirit from me. She must die like all the rest.” He raised his sword, and lightning flashed across the black sky. “And you belong in a grave, as well.”

Mavros flashed a vicious grin at the mage. Even exhausted and bleeding, he rose to meet the wizard’s challenge. Agony and fury radiated off him in palpable waves that sprung tears to my eyes. My heart skipped when he growled. “If it keeps you away from her, I’ll take you with me.”

With a half-roar, half-howl, the beast prince launched himself forward.

He slammed into the Crimson Mage with a bone-rattling force.

The power of it drove them backward, allowing Mavros to pin the wizard into a pillar.

With the wind knocked from the mage’s lungs, Mavros stole the moment to slash his claws down the man’s face.

When he screamed, the beast wrenched the sword from the wizard’s hand.

“You filthy fucking creature!” the hunter spat, pushing to grapple Mavros with a pulse of magic sparkling like cursed rubies. “I’ll skin you alive and wear your coat as a trophy! I’ll make you watch as I gut the sylph before killing you!”

They fell together in a flurry of blood and sizzling red. Magic fizzled and hissed while Mavros growled and launched himself at the faltering mage. The wizard’s obscene obsession with mythical creatures, with me, was met head on with something pure and bright.

“You think you can take her? Take what’s mine?” Mavros bellowed as he dug his claws into the man. “You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her, to look at her, to exist in the same realm as her.”

The human soldiers were all dead, dying, or fleeing.

The Inferni were feasting on them. Gorging on warm flesh, guzzling on blood like the finest of wines, supping on the viscera and sinew of mortals.

Gore coated their snouts and slavering maws, scraps of flesh clung to the sharp teeth in their mouths, their eyes gleamed with bloodlust and slaughter.

They cracked bones and sucked down marrow, wrenched open ribcages to feast on fleshy intestines.

The sounds escaped me, all of it fading as my focus zeroed in on Mavros and the Crimson Mage locked in a culminating moment of kill or be killed.

“You’re just a beast!” the mage spat, gagging around the claws choking him. “You’ll never deserve her!”

Mavros hesitated. Time slowed. He inhaled and all the tension in his body seemed to gather and flow outward on his exhale. “No, but I’ll live to worship her. And that’s more than you can say.”