Page 217 of Jagged Souls

But I’m already dead inside. He’s already killed me. He took my baby and Dayne, and if he takes Varius, there’ll be nothing left. So I jump into the fray, not caring that I am joining a battle between two sups way more powerful than me.

Sixty-Seven

HER

With every minute that passes, Varius is getting weaker and weaker. He’s alive because of the dark magic his mother tied to his soul when she cursed him, but it’s still based on his vampire side. If he doesn’t feed soon, he will die. If he takes the time to feed though, Antonio will cut him down all the same.

I’m not fast enough to fight the blur of bodies. I can’t risk letting my fire outside of myself because I won’t be able to control it at all then. All I can do is wait for Varius to press him hard enough against a wall that I can dart in and strike, burning a clump of the knife into his flesh to stop him from being able to shift and thus heal that part of himself.

Varius takes the hits for me whenever I do that though, protecting me from Antonio’s claws and bites. But he’s not losing chunks of himself like he was before – that smokey substance that filled his chest seems to be everywhere inside him now, and he shifts between smoke and flesh whenever he’s about to get hurt.

Still, he is tiring.

And when he collapses, Maddox and I will be alone, and neither of us are strong enough to fight him off.

“Where’s Aleric?” I shout, risking a glance towards the youngest Shadow brother. The cage is fucking empty.

“I don’t know!” he says. “There’s no blood in it, so he wasn’t eaten.”

Unless they took him away and ate him elsewhere.

But I don’t have time to argue with him. I barely have time to dart into the openings when I see them. Every time Varius gets him in a hold or pushes him against a wall, the next second, Antonio is free and going on the offensive. But the burn on his chest has killed a lot of his speed, and he’s using a lot of energy shifting the parts of himself that he still can, going back between human and wolf to heal most of the damage he gains.

With two punches, an elbow, and a kick, Antonio sends Varius stumbling back a few steps. Not far. He hasn’t even bought enough time for himself to turn all the way around if he wanted to. But he’s bought more than enough to lunge for me because I’m way too damn close.

Way too optimistic in my ability to defend myself alone.

But just as his teeth are about to snap across my face, a large body with black smokey eyes barrels into him from the side.

My heart leaps out of my chest.

Dayne!

He’s alive, and we know each other’s moves. I don’t have to be as fast as I do with Varius because Dayne and I work like two streams merging into one. I dart forward, expecting him to get Antonio to turn sideways like he usually would, force him to open himself up for an attack from me in order to block one from Dayne. But he doesn’t. He fights with the same animalistic, mindless ferocity as Varius, and I end up stumbling to a stop with a claw piercing my shoulder. The knife I’m holding falls from my grip.

The world flickers as the planes of Purgatory tease me with their proximity.

Knowing I’m going to die anyway, I look at Dayne.

But instead of finding comfort, I see that it’s not him at all.

It’s a husk filled with the shadows that swirl around my husband.

Antonio yanks me to him, and I’m just about to give myself up to my fire when Varius lunges past me.

And another blur joins him.

Aleric has finally fucking arrived, and he’s wielding two monstrous blades – the front legs of an echidna perhaps (the same monster that lives in the Shadow’s kitchen counter) and then worked down to be his size.

With a movement too quick for me to track, he slices off the arm that’s holding me. I only know when I stumble back in surprise, not having expected the sudden release. Maddox catches me and pulls me back even further. He removes the claws in my shoulder, then points the wand at me again.

“He’s going to go get Sau in a moment,” he says. “She’ll make sure you’re healed properly.”

The internal bleeding in my belly tells me I might not have that long.

“What’s he done to Dayne?” I ask, wanting to hope that he’s still alive. That the smoke trailing out of his eyes does not mean he’sgone. It just means Varius is healing him in his own way.

Maddox’s voice softens. “He can turn people into husks,” he says. “It doesn’t seem to be reversible once it’s in deep.”