“Impossible,” I breathe. Except, not really. My magic backfired on me every time. “Mother saw me steal the Dragon’s Breath from Sybaris. She warded her creatures against it, and wards always corrupt my magic. That’s why the fire turned on me.”
Griffin’s big body coils tight, ready to shield me from anything. “That’s possible?” he asks.
“Apparently. I’ve never heard of it happening to anyone else. I’m special, I guess.”
He grunts. I guess he agrees.
The lead wolf flashes its fangs, and I pull away from Griffin to stand on my own, drawing two knives from my belt. I can’t afford to be weak. Not now. Not ever.
But my head still swims, and my vision isn’t quite right. My grip around my knives feels foreign and feeble. Blood drips onto my upper lip, and I wipe the back of my hand under my nose, my blade glinting dully. In the red streak, I see only the faintest shimmer of gold.
How I envy my Olympian ancestors their near indestructibleness. I’m so destructible that I have no idea how I’m even going to throw a knife in this fight.
CHAPTER 9
Kato throws two knives. Both land in the lead creature’s chest. Without even a flinch, it bares yellowed fangs and leaps at him from eight feet away.
Kato pivots and kicks, snapping his leg to catch the catapulting wolf in the head. It thuds into the even larger creature charging alongside it, and the two beasts hit the ground together, rolling and snarling in a tangle.
The third creature lunges for Carver. In a lightning-fast move, Carver springs to the side and slices it from shoulder to tail. The gash runs the length of the monster’s body, deep enough to reveal flashes of bone. It skids to a stop, crouching low on its front legs with a growl. Raised skin sweeps down its spine, puckering where its fur should be.
The savagery in the creature’s eyes makes my head spin. The wound Carver inflicted closes within seconds, leaving the pseudo wolf’s side smeared with a black liquid thicker than blood. A putrid odor hits my nose, and I shrink back from the awful smell.
Carver attacks, and while the creature is distracted, Flynn rushes in and sinks his short sword nearly to the hilt in its barrel-like chest. The deep thrust must have gone through something vital, but the injury doesn’t even slow it down. Utterly unfazed, the creature pushes, working its way up the blade to get its jaws closer to Flynn’s throat. Black liquid oozes from the new wound, carrying more of the rotten stench. Flynn’s arm muscles bulge as he grips his sword and leans away.
“Decapitate! Decapitate!” I shout. Decapitation is the one way to kill just about anything, even a God.
Carver’s blade flashes, but the other two beasts attack. Every last one of us shouts a warning, and he whirls, swinging out of instinct and hitting the massive body leaping through the air. He severs both front feet from the creature’s body and then ducks as it sails over his head, dripping noxious fluids from the severed stumps.
Kato deflects the third wolf with a swing that should have crushed its skull. It somehow evades, taking the bone-crunching head of Kato’s mace on the shoulder instead. Short metal spikes rip through sallow skin, and the fetid odor intensifies. We all gag as if punched in the throat by it. I cover my mouth and nose and look at Griffin. His eyes water. Other than that, he’s perfectly still, watchful, but I can tell he’s twitching on the inside, torn between jumping into the fight and standing guard over me.
With a nightmarish howl, the downed wolf springs back onto all four feet and charges Carver again.
Good Gods. Regeneration.
Griffin’s large hand splays across my chest, and he pushes me behind him.
“It grew back its feet!” Carver fends off a ferocious attack, his blade whip-fast.
Kato pulls out another knife as he and the third creature circle in a wary dance. He throws well from the right now, but he’s rarely accurate with his left hand. He’ll only be able to use the dagger or his mace in close quarters, and I don’t want the wolf-abomination getting that close to him again.
I step to the side of Griffin and take aim. My tired arm locks as the muscles near my shoulder catch in a painful spasm. I don’t have a consistent clear line with Kato between the creature and me, and for the first time in years, I’m not confident I’ll hit my mark.
Gingerly, I lower my arm. “Griffin. You do it.”
He switches his sword to his left hand and then unsheathes his only short blade. His throw is beautiful, steady and strong. The knife sticks between the wolf’s eyes.
The beast swings feral, glowing eyes on us and laughs. It’s grating and animalistic, but I could swear it laughs.
Flynn utters a strained grunt. The creature has wormed its way so far up his blade it’s almost on top of him now.
Griffin starts forward, but Carver whirls out of his confrontation and, with one sharp, downward slash, tries to sever the impaled wolf’s head from its body. The beast jerks back at the last possible second, pushing on powerful forelegs to slide off Flynn’s blade. The two swords meet with a jarring, metallic clang. There’s the high-pitched, scraping ring of steel on steel as Carver twists back around, leaving Flynn to deal with the beast that just slipped from his blade.
With a fiendish growl, the monster races past Flynn and heads straight for Griffin and me. The one Kato was keeping at bay takes its cue from the other and darts around the blond warrior. The two hairless creatures converge, and my pulse hammers as they barrel toward us.
Griffin’s sword crashes into the underside of the closest wolf’s neck and sticks, not severing it. His shoulders tense, and it takes a powerful yank to get his weapon free. The creature readies for another attack almost immediately, alarmingly unaffected by the damage Griffin inflicted.
The second creature circles wide to avoid Griffin and then jumps on me. Its massive front paws slam into my leather-clad chest, shoving me back. I cross my daggers and push, catching the base of the monster’s elongated jaw between the blades. My arms shake as I work the knives into the softer skin of the neck. Inches away, the beast’s saliva-strung mouth opens, and its stinking exhale breaks like a rancid wave over my face.
Balanced on its hind legs, the wolf’s front claws scrape at my chest. Only the thick boar’s-hide armor saves me from a mauling. Slowly, my knives sink through skin, muscle, and sinew. Black liquid smears my fingers. An overwhelming stench inhabits my nose, coating my senses. My stomach heaves, and I nearly retch.
“Cat!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Griffin frantically hacking at a beast that just won’t die.
“I thought she wanted you alive!” he shouts.
“She does!” I think. The state I’m in when she gets me has never concerned her, though.
My worn-out muscles can’t take the beast’s weight for much longer. I want to slam my foot into its rear leg joint and hope it crumples, but I don’t dare shift my balance. My legs are locked, and that’s the only thing keeping me upright.
“Carver!” Griffin’s shout is smoke-ravaged and panicked. “Carver! Get Cat!”
Carver tries. Everyone tries, but the third wolf, the biggest and most ferocious of the three, is between Beta Team and us. It wheels and snarls and lunges, keeping them away. Every move one of them makes toward us is countered by an even quicker, more vicious attack from the beast.
My body has already burned up the last of its reserves. Heat crawls up my spine. A chill slides back down. A numbing weight presses on me, and as if the world took a step forward and left me standing there alone, sound and sensation fade, growing distant.
My back cramps, snapping my consciousness back into place with a ribbon of pain that races from my waist to my neck. I jerk, and the jagged claws of one paw scrape off my leather breastplate and slice into my armpit. The sting is heinous. I cry out, reflexively pulling my arms down.
In the next second, I’m on my back. My head cracks against the ground, a
nd bright spots explode behind my eyes. I blink, dazed. The creature is over me, its front paws planted on my shoulders and the air punched from my lungs.
Griffin’s anguished roar overlaps the wolf’s triumphant howl. A violent shudder runs the length of the creature’s deformed body. Its face twists and pops, moving like there’s something alive and churning beneath the skin. The monster turns into a living nightmare before my eyes, and I finally understand what we’re dealing with.
No wonder injuries don’t affect them, their breath smells of decay, and their skin is the yellow-gray of death. I should have known.
The canine snout, ears, and fangs melt, turning malleable and unrecognizable before sharpening into human-like features. Leathery skin pulls tight over harshly angled cheek and jawbones. The eyes don’t change. They’re still glowing and soulless.
The heavy paws crushing my shoulders morph into a man’s enormous hands and grab my wrists. Muscles and bones in the creature’s ropy forearms snap into place and weigh painfully on my bent arms, grinding my elbows into the dirt. The torso transforms, narrowing, and then the hind legs trapping mine become thick thighs, calves, and feet. Every part of the monster is hairless and tough, massive and muscled. The Vrykolakas lowers its face to my neck and inhales deeply.
I shudder. The living dead. The wolf-men Charon won’t ferry into the Underworld for any price, leaving them here instead.
The undead creature’s entire body drops heavily onto mine. Its unnatural eyes flare brightly as it sniffs once more and then groans a guttural sound that sends a bolt of sheer terror through me. Fear and revulsion spur me into action as the creature grinds what can only be a male erection against the juncture of my thighs.
My thrashing only seems to excite it more, and it ruthlessly rams its swollen member against my groin. “She said alive, Princess. All she said was alive.”
I jerk my head up, catching it on the side of its chin. I can’t move, and that’s as high as I can reach. I’m pinned, powerless, and deeply afraid.
The Vrykolakas bites its lower lip with a still lethally sharp incisor, drops its head, and then smears its disgusting blood across my mouth. Griffin shouts my name. I twist away, gagging.
“Fight me. Yes, fight.” It breathes in quick, harsh pants against my neck as it switches my wrists into one hand and then shoves its other hand between us, getting up under my tunic to grip the fastening of my pants.
A hollow feeling carves a hole in my chest. It can’t end like this.
“Don’t let it do this, Mother.” A pleading note slips into my voice, and I hate myself a little more for it. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill her all those years ago, and she sends me this?
The undead creature barks a canine laugh that mixes with Griffin’s wild shouting. “Mother lost control. But I’ll still sell you for a mountain of gold.”
The Vrykolakas lowers its head and licks my neck, its tongue dry and scraping. Panic spikes impossibly higher when pointed teeth scrape down the column of my throat, pausing over my thundering vein. The creature shudders, grating a harsh sound against my skin. “You’re worth a lot, or I’d drink you dry while I rut.”
Claws score my stomach and fold viciously inward, ripping open my pants. I scream as the Vrykolakas tears the barrier away. Fear and rage blister through me. I see no way out of this.
Griffin suddenly smashes into the creature’s body like a charging Centaur, throwing the monster off me. They both pitch over and tumble to the side. Griffin rolls to his feet first, his face a nearly unrecognizable mask of fury. He lands a punishing kick to the creature’s rib cage, flipping it onto its back. Before the Vrykolakas can move, Griffin’s sword spirals in a tight, deadly arc and severs its head from its body. Leathery skin collapses onto bones, desiccating within seconds.
The monster Griffin was fighting before he came to my rescue surges over me and then leaps on top of him, knocking him to the ground. Griffin twists, but the creature is still in wolf-form and weighs more than he does. It pins him in the ash, its jaws descending with brutal force.
“No!” My heart vaults straight up my throat.
Griffin shields his neck with his forearm, and the Vrykolakas’s teeth latch around his vambrace. I thank the Gods the leather is thick, tough, and boiled into near solidity as the creature snarls and shakes its head, whipping Griffin’s arm around.
I stagger to my feet, lift my arms, and plunge both the daggers I still hold into its back. The jolt up my arms tells me I hit the spine. The creature releases Griffin’s arm long enough to snap at me, and I reel back, narrowly avoiding a vicious bite.
I look to the others for help, but it’s pandemonium across the clearing. One huge creature, the most terrifying of the three, takes hit after hit, keeping its neck out of reach and making it impossible for anyone to get past.
There’s no time for weapons, and they don’t work anyway. Snarling, I throw my weight forward and ram my hands into the beast’s side, frantic because I don’t have a chance in the Underworld of saving Griffin like he saved me. He sacrificed himself for me, and I will never forgive him.
Lightning leaps down my arms and shoots from my hands with a deafening crack. The twin thunderbolts throw the creature off Griffin and puncture two smoking holes in its side, destroying the wards. It lands with a pained yip and then tries to stand up again—and fails.
It’s not healing! Hope rises in my chest. I hold out my hands, willing more lightning to come. I extend my fingers. Shake my arms. Nothing happens.
Griffin regains his feet, disheveled and dirty but miraculously intact. He places one large, warm hand on my lower back. “You can do this,” he encourages quietly, although there’s steel in his voice.
I try. I really do. The magic just won’t come. Something inside me feels off. “Gods damn it!” I explode. “The wards must be doing something again.”
“It worked before,” Griffin points out. “And the wards were intact.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand, then.”
“We’ll practice.” He raises his sword, stalking forward as the creature snaps, twists, and shudders into an approximation of a man, two holes still punched through its oozing side. The Vrykolakas looks at Griffin with defiant yellow eyes. This is a being that even Death won’t claim. It has no mercy—and it expects none.
Griffin takes the monster’s head, and the undead creature shrivels, leaving behind parchment-dry skin clinging to distorted bones in a sickening parody of humanity.
“Talia!” Mother’s voice is a guttural snarl in the final creature’s mouth. With just one Vrykolakas left, I have no doubt she’s back in control and fully aware of everything that’s happened here.
The creature sheds its wolf shape, standing on two legs but keeping the elongated arms, razor-sharp claws, and lethal fangs that continue to hold Kato, Flynn, and Carver at bay. Even in this grotesque half-form, the monster is so huge that it makes three of the biggest men I know look small.
I draw my sword and charge the Vrykolakas in a blind rage, ignoring Griffin’s startled shout.
“How could you!” It turns toward me, and I slice the monster’s middle, cutting deep enough for rotting intestines to spill out. “How could you do this to me?”
“Talia! Enough!” The creature twitches angrily but doesn’t attack.
I swing again, slashing at its throat. It dodges and then just barely misses clawing Carver, who slices the tendons behind the creature’s knees from behind. It drops, and Flynn darts in, his ax whistling toward the monster’s neck.
The Vrykolakas somehow avoids Flynn’s attack. Hissing in fury—or maybe that’s Mother—it grows dark claws the size of daggers, wielding them so fast they ping and hum. Carver drops, twists with athletic grace, and then slices from underneath, severing one of the creature’s hands before rolling back to his feet. Kato lunges forward, his mace thundering down just as a pulse
of blinding green light sends all three of them flying across the clearing. They land sprawled on their backs, stunned.
I lurch when the surge of power ricochets back to me from off the blackened trees. What is that? She’s…telekinetic? From a distance! I had no idea Mother could channel physical magic through creatures. I didn’t even know that was possible, which fills me with an even deeper rage.
“I hate you!” I chop furiously at the Vrykolakas, my hits wild and reckless, made up of impulse, and chaos, and wrath. They open the creature’s torso over and over, so the wounds don’t have time to heal before I inflict another. This is retribution. Torture, maybe. And I don’t care.
I feel Griffin’s strong, steady presence right behind me, but it does nothing to calm my savagery. And he does nothing to stop me. The creature evades anything lethal but still doesn’t attack. Mother has never wanted me dead. Sometimes I wish she had. Maybe Eleni was the lucky one, ending up in the Underworld instead of beaten, terrorized, and nearly raped. I shake, pitch-black emotion pounding through me.
The undead creature’s hand and claws grow back. Black fluid seeps from its open wounds. Needing both hands to lift my sword now, I throw my weight into yet another attack. My body wants to quit on me. It needs to stop, but I keep swinging because the devastation inside of me hasn’t even begun to run its course. Was I really stupid enough to hold on to some idiotic morsel of hope that Mother would look at me one day and see a person, a daughter, instead of a vessel to use and mold for her own nefarious gain?
I wipe my forearm across my face, clearing my eyes of splattered blood. Then I slash and hack, knowing that Griffin is watching my back, likely my front, too, and letting me burn through my rage.
Mother knew exactly what kind of monster she was dealing with. She knew that sending three of them at once was a risk, especially from a distance, and that she could lose control. And she knew better than anyone that I never practiced compulsion or creature driving, and that I had no hope of controlling one, let alone three.
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