Page 78 of Jagged Souls

Eduardo blasts my arm sideways, breaking it backwards against the bars of the cage and snapping my bone out of my skin. As the werewolves keep Maddox off him, he starts to complete his spell.

I scream in pain as I try to move.

To stop him.

To save myself before it’s too late.

Another shadow streaks across the floor, bypassing all the wolves, and Rudy materializes in front of me. An army of giant spiders arrive a second later and start attacking the wolves.

He swirls his shadows around the cage.

Hope wars with panic inside of me as I try to do the math, seeing who will finish first.

Eduardo is only a few inches, a few seconds away from completing the circle.

Rudy, like Maddox, is now being forced to fend off a pile of wolves. He’s having a better time of it, able to keep one hand on calling out his shadows, but Maddox has just gone down, sliced into pieces – hopefully not dead, just shifting like he did before, and the wolves that were fighting him now turn to his brother. The spiders can only stop so many.

Rudy’s tackled from the side, his concentration broken. He kills the wolf quickly, but as another of Sau’s monsters go down, torn apart by teeth and claws and suicidal guards, Antonio enters with three full chimeras.

They tear their way across the gym. Rudy’s trying his best to stop them, manifesting giant snakes, wasps, rats, any and every horror he can pull on, but he’s also trying to fight Eduardo, stopping him from completing the spell or erecting a ward. He throws ball after ball of magic.

But he can’t concentrate on four different foes at once, especially one with Antonio’s speed.

A soundless scream erupts from his lips as Antonio bites him on the shoulder and shakes him hard. Another chimera grabs him on the leg, and they rip him apart at the waist.

Eduardo’s breathing hard as I’m screaming.

I stick my other arm out of the cage, try to use my magic to burn through his line, but a wolf just steps on my fingers, crushing them. Making them useless.

Eduardo finishes the transportation spell.

Antonio and his remaining men step inside it.

But as he starts the incantation needed to send us out of here, Rudy’s shadows swell across the floor. His magic is keeping him alive even though he’s in pieces.

I don’t know if he can heal from that. Don’t know if he’ll live an eternity as severed parts.

But right now, he is saving me, and I will dedicate the rest of my life to figuring out how to heal him.

Antonio grabs hold of the cage, trying to keep it from sinking into the Plane of Monsters.

Rudy’s magic is stronger though.

It pulls me down.

Down.

Down.

Into safety.

Into hope.

But just as my head is about to go under, the Boss of the Death Hunt lets me go. Then he grabs both halves of Rudy and brings him into the transportation circle.

I scream in utter terror, knowing that when I come out, it will be at another of Antonio’s compounds. Rudy will hold out as long as he can, but eventually, they will torture him until he breaks.

Everyone breaks.