Page 61

IRIS

Air whooshes . In free-fall, my stomach bottoms out.

That flip-flop feeling twists with Vhex and Remy’s emotions.

The guys feel strangely tight. They’re ready for something in a chaotic way that I can’t stop myself from trying to untangle.

“We’ll be okay,” I murmur.

My voice is lost in the fall, but I know they feel my heart as I smooth their souls. Their silks butt against me like wolf pups, all warm and welcoming, hooking me in and pulling me deeper.

Pressed between them, I’m totally protected.

I grip Remy’s lapels.

Running away from liches hasn’t worked out great for me.

It’s time to make a stand.

When the light hellfire shows us nearing the ground, Remy’s shadows slow our fall. We touch down in the twisted passage of a naturally formed tunnel.

Vhex’s fire casts shadows on the crooked walls, but his heat can’t cut the chill. Thick, yellowy mist gathers at our ankles. Its icy bite pierces bone.

The miasma muffles my senses, but down here, the source of the death magic is as easy to track as a rotting tooth.

I don’t have to point to the lich king’s position.

It feels like he’s pointing at us.

Instead of spreading out in a defensive formation, I tug Vhex and Remy closer, steering them away from the ceiling hole. “Stay with me.”

“You said it.” Vhex hauls me against his chest.

Remy glares down the tunnel.

As soon as I focus on him, my throat throbs.

With the flash of pain, I slip into his vampiric senses. To me, the cave smells like damp clay. To him, it’s a rotting stench.

Thick. Choking. Decay.

The taste fills my mouth. Somewhere in the foulness, I catch a hint of old blood.

I salivate, then gag.

What a terrible thing to crave.

“Where’s your mask?” I ask, patting Remy down.

The shadows unfold, presenting a black leather face covering that dangles with complicated clasps.

I lift it to my face to figure out how it works.

“Lend me your scent,” Remy says huskily.

He guides my grip, moving the straps aside, pressing the mask to my face instead of his.

The rigid leather is fitted. It’s too large to mold to my cheeks, but Remy holds it roughly in the right position on my face.

I catch a darkly floral scent before my nose finds the trough meant to pinch it off.

When a copper bit bumps the seam of my lips, I meet Remy’s swirling, red eyes.

“Curl your tongue,” he says huskily. “Coax the bit into place.”

I hold his gaze as I suck the metal nib into my mouth.

“Slick the leather.” Remy gently moves the mask. “I want it soaked in your flavor.”

He presses the bit deeper.

I open my mouth.

The metal is cold, but the kiss?—

So fucking hot.

I work the bit with my tongue, wetting the metal and letting my spit overflow. It drips into the leather.

Soaked.

Perfect .

I want Remy to taste me.

I want to leave a part of myself with him so that he’ll never forget who owns his marble-sculpted ass.

When sand shakes from the hole above, announcing that Simms and Tan are almost here, I finally push away the mask.

Just one more thing.

I offer Remy my thumb. “Fang.”

Surprisingly obedient, he bites. His silky but controlled pierce leaves me shivering. A drop of blood beads at the tip.

I smear a red streak below the nose hole and just behind the bit, at the seam of the leather. He’ll scent my blood but won’t be able to lick it clean.

“You torture me,” Remy sighs, but his smile isn’t tortured at all.

“You like it.”

“Very much.” He ducks his head.

I flip the mask around and help him strap it on. When the clasps are tightened, black leather tightly seals his chin, throat, and the bottom half of his face. Over his mouth, Strips of metal and leather are layered to look like savage fangs.

Remy’s eyes flame.

The mask shifts from the movement of his lips.

He’s sucking off my spit.

Obscene .

Vhex rumbles with jealousy.

“Unfair.” He snatches my thumb and sucks it between his lips. Licking, sucking, teasing with his fang.

He’s not wrong.

I let Vhex have his taste, stroking his horn while I straighten his tangles.

All totally on-the-clock Guide behavior.

Ha. Right.

I only pull away when Simms and Tan drop down.

They brush off dust, then turn to face the obvious path ahead.

A beacon of undead power throbs as if the lich king is inviting us deeper into his prison.

“At least we won’t get lost,” Tan mutters, rubbing his arms.

I don’t bother stretching out my silks. The miasma numbs my spiritual senses—half frostbite and half rusty fork scraping a plate.

Vhex and Remy aren’t actively using their powers, but the cave’s deathly aura speeds up the corruption of their silks.

It’s toxic to the living.

“Let’s sprint through these caves,” I say, unstrapping my glaive. “Vhex will take the lead. Then me, Remy, Tan, and Simms bringing up the back.”

The narrow tunnel forces us to move in a single file.

With Vhex lighting the way, we hurry toward the pulsing power.

The signal makes me shiver hard enough to rattle bone, but it works like a compass when the tunnel branches.

We jog past fork after fork, following the call until Vhex hits an artificial cutaway in the raw wall.

The rough-shaped doorway braced with stacks of stones is the first sign we’ve seen of human hands.

“Knock, knock,” Vhex calls and tosses a fireball.

It ricochets into a round cavern, lighting the dull and faded lines of an ancient, golden array.

At least a dozen tunnels flow into the chamber. Howls echo from the darkness beyond.

The voices are dry. Discordant.

Not wolves.

My hair stands on end.

Not human either.

“Ghouls,” I say shakily, readying my glaive.

“And something else,” Remy adds, his voice muffled by his mask. “Armored.”

Simms kneels to touch the ground and reach his senses through the rock. “At least twenty sets of footsteps. No more than thirty.”

“That’s all?” Vhex grins, sparking pink flames around his fists.

Tan unsheathes his sword and moves to my side. “Are we making a stand or pushing through?”

“Keep moving,” I answer. The lich king clearly knows we’re here, and he has near infinite corpses to throw in our way. “We have to punch through before we’re mobbed.”

Once we take care of the lich king, his minions will fall.

“Heard.” Simms straightens, cracking his knuckles.

Vhex flaps his wings. Casting sparks and grinning pure murder, he barrels through the ancient door.

Heart pumping for battle, I chase behind him.

With wordless coordination, the Sentinels form a shifting triangle around me and Tan.

We sprint across the cavern in a pack.

A ghoul pops out of a tunnel to our left.

It has creepy, grub-white skin, long limbs, and half-moon claws.

The thing is humanoid, but its face is all mouth—a split-open, bloody maw packed with jagged teeth.

Ghouls choose to be monsters, eating corpses and swearing their afterlives in service to the higher undead.

They keep their intelligence, and their bites can turn you into something like them—a creature doomed to crave flesh.

The ghoul hisses.

It can’t really smile , but it quirks its teeth at me.

“Don’t fucking look at my wife.” Snarling, Vhex launches and grabs the ghoul by the throat.

A palmful of hellfire melts through its spine.

More ghouls pour out. With dry howls echoing from the other directions, more are on the way.

“Pick any tunnel,” I call, gripping my glaive. They’re all packed with enemies. The wide chamber gives them too much room to surround us.

Vhex ignites what’s left of the ghoul in his hand and tosses it down the closest tunnel in a howling fireball. Screeches echo from the blaze.

His horn extends as he bulls ahead. As his skin reddens, flames flow over his muscles, forming a living, burning armor.

Vhex flames through ghouls to clear our path. Simms collapses the tunnel behind us, and Remy works at both ends, slicing ghouls in pieces, then dropping them in the bonfire. The flames glint off his mask, turning him into a shadowy god of battle.

I follow close, constantly combing their silks. They dance between feral and focused, a perfect balance of Sentinel and monster.

Tan moves beside me, stabbing at the still-twitching pieces of half-melted ghouls.

I sweep aside charred parts with the flat of my glaive.

We hit a fork where the tunnel widens and the ceiling towers too high for Vhex’s flames to light. Our boots fly across softer ground—there’s a layer of soil laid above the bare rock.

My instincts scream a warning.

Straining to find the danger, I slip into Vhex and Remy’s senses. Remy’s sense of smell is masked, and Vhex is drowning in sulfur. Their superhuman eyes see color and motion I can’t perceive.

Something metal glints high above.

I grab Tan’s jacket and yank, barely fast enough.

Boom!

A bolt of black lightning hits where he was standing, knocking us off our feet.

Remy catches me in a shadow blanket.

Ears ringing, I struggle to my feet.

“Shields,” I call. “Draugr.”

“Not these fuckers again.” Simms pulls Tan off a sandbank, then hurls a ball of earth power high into the dark.

Remy’s shadows cover our heads as the first draugr drops.

As if zombies weren’t enough.

Now we have to fight armored zombie priests who can cast spells and summon their own minions.

“Child’s play,” Remy mutters. He drags me into his cape. While shadow-silks run across my skin, checking me over with the greatest care, he shoots brutal shadow blades that cleave draugr in half.

Their bodies start to reunite before they hit the ground. Remy lobs them to Vhex for kindling.

“Keep moving,” I insist, still wobbling from the thunder.

I’ll recover.

We can’t get trapped here.

I’m jogging at Tan’s side when something catches my ankle.

I swing my glaive as I topple, turning the fall into a controlled roll. My ankle twinges.

I kick out anyway. There’s a crack of shattering fingers. The skeleton hand that tripped me flies off my boot.

A shadow crushes the attached arm-bone before it digs itself out of the earth.

Tan stomps through the crown of a rising skull. “We must be getting close.”