by Amy Miles
“Ya have to go, Devlin.” Damn, it hurt to say that. “For Alana’s sake. It’s the only way to save her.”
There was that flash of terror I needed to see when his gaze cut to the side where Aed was speaking with Alana. She looked equally stubborn as Devlin had been at my order to leave, but I knew Aed had to win this fight. Just as I did. No matter the cost. They had to survive the day. Someone had to remain alive to get Alana beyond the Wall. And by the looks of it, a good portion of the lorcan hoard had emptied from that side. That meant that maybe they could find a way to pass undetected.
“Come with me.” His voice was strangled with raw emotion. His grip on my arm was shy of painful, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. His desperation reassured me of his love. Yes, it was love. I knew that now. This moment brought a kind of clarity I hadn’t had before.
I loved Devlin. Curiosity, kindness, and that spark of something more had grown into something deep and real without me even knowing it.
“I canna do that.” I pressed a hand to his cheek, my fingers lingering over the light stubble I found there. “My place is here, fightin’ for my people. For you.”
“You’re wrong. Your place is with me, safe and far from here,” he protested.
The feel of his skin beneath my palm felt warm and safe. The scent of him was still strong as I stepped back, despite the dank mud that surrounded us. He felt real, a moment of perfection amongst such evil. Here, with him, I could almost pretend we could win. That I would see him again.
My heart knew better. Tears slid from my eyes as I crushed my lips against his, tangling my hands into his damp hair. I needed this to last me through to the end. When I stared into the ghostly eyes of the lorcan that sucked my soul from my body, I needed Devlin’s touch to be the last thing I remembered.
“Go,” I shouted, breaking off the kiss far too soon. “Head to the stables, grab a horse, and then haul arse as far south as ya can. Whatever ya do, dunna look back. Tris will guide ya to the sea when all is safe.”
When his fingers tightened around me, I knew he had no intention of following a single command I’d given. There was no part of him that had the strength to leave me. Not again. Not with us having so little time to reunite.
“I love you,” he said as I pushed against his chest.
“And I you, ya daft fool. Now get goin’!” I broke his hold on me and spun away, as the first lorcan breached the gates. Its terrific beastly cry echoed in my ears long after it fell silent.
Layers of muscle and sinew pulled taut as one lorcan held the broke gate aloft. Dozens of its brothers swarmed in around him. Those townspeople closest to the gate fell first in a splash of blood as their throats were cut with razor-sharp claws. I watched another lorcan jump on a woman, jaws gaping not to suck her soul but to take her whole head clean off.
“Monsters,” I heard Tris gasp as the woman’s bloody head rolled away after the lorcan spat it out.
“Tris, go. Get Seamus out of here. Follow Devlin.” I ran to my friend, grasping her in a brief hug that ended in a handoff of the sword I’d picked up. “Make sure Devlin goes. Promise me.”
Tears streamed from her red-rimmed eyes. “I will. Don’t die, okay?”
We both knew it was a promise I couldn’t keep, no matter how I wished I could, so I said nothing at all. Watching her go was almost the hardest thing I’d ever done. Seeing her and Seamus drag Devlin away from me took the top spot on my “hurt like hell” list.
And then she was gone. Together, she and Seamus were tugging Devlin back towards the stables, both having to exert a great deal of force to get his feet moving. The aching in my heart eased slightly when I saw him finally turn his focus on supporting Alana. She stumbled as she reached for her brother. I couldn’t tell if it was her physical weakness or the broken heart wearing her down.
“Aed!” I screamed out a warning.
He ducked a split second before a lorcan took a swing at him with enough force to knock his head off his shoulders. That was way too close. There was no way I could get through this without him.
“Don’t get killed!”
He battled his way to my side, taking down three more hybrids that stepped into his path. The final hybrid had torn a girl limb from limb, her right arm still clutched in its hands as it fell. I turned to fight, but there was no foe in my path. The fighting was all around me and yet none of it had found its way to my feet yet.
“Their armor is thick, but there’s a weak spot around their eyes and the crook of their underarm. Aim there.” He panted.
Already Aed’s bare arms were slick with black ichor of lorcan blood. The scent of burning hair and flesh rose in my nose. Soon the smell of my own charred flesh would make my eyes water.
“The body count is risin’ too fast,” I shouted, my frustration mounting that I had yet to get my first kill.
Our view of the front gate was marred by toppled bodies, now stacked haphazardly in piles that rose as high as my chin. Soon we would be blockaded by the dead. I couldn’t imagine a more horrific place to die.
“They are pinning us in. We have to retreat back to my parents,” Aed shouted.
One glance over my shoulder told me that the king had taken the cowardly stance of hiding behind his chair. Figures. The bastard wouldn’t even raise a weapon to defend his wife, who was surprisingly good at sword fighting. I won’t deny that that little tidbit of knowledge did rub a whole handful of salt into my open wound. But watching Morrigan jab a lorcan through the eye was undeniably impressive.
I didn’t want to care for them. Hell, both Baylor and Morrigan could rot in Hollow Earth for all I cared, but there was the monarchy to think of. If they died, Aed would be next on the kill list. With all three of them dead and no remaining heir to assume the throne, Netherworld would fall into utter anarchy as the lords scrambled to seize power. And that would strip away any safety I’d managed to wrestle for my family if they survived this invasion.
“Fine.” Finding another weak spot, I slashed at a lorcan, severing the ligaments at the back of its heels, and then leapt over it. “But we only need one of them.”
As I was about to mount the steps of the stage, I felt rather than heard a sudden intake of breath by every living soul that remained in the garden. There was something behind me and I was afraid to look.
“Ryn.” Aed’s hand fell on my arm. The tension in his grip told me that him choosing to use Eivin’s nickname for me was excusable at that moment. I turned to look behind me and fell still.
Standing in the narrowing gap of the broken gate was the beast I had seen on the hilltop not long ago. Up close and with walls to measure him by, I realised he stood a good two feet taller than the largest lorcan I had ever come up against. Unlike the milky-white-eyed demons that surrounded the perimeter of the courtyard, this creature’s eyes glowed a brilliant red.
Muscle had grown on top of muscle in thick layers. Ridges of the stony substance rose like a shield on either side of its head. Its arms and legs were clothed with strength. Its bare abdomen looked as if it had been chiseled from the very earth in which his kind mined for the very same milky white crystals we used to kill them.
Stop!
I screamed as a voice tore through my mind, loud and commanding. Though it held the growl of a beast, the word used from our tongue was undeniable.
“Taryn, look,” Aed said without looking at me.
I jerked my head to my right where I found that two lorcan had stopped wrestling over a screaming boy. They dropped him without a second thought. Their hands fell to their sides, heads raised and shoulders pressed back as they pressed back against the wall, no longer attacking. Each lorcan hybrid in the space followed suit.
“They are followin’ his commands,” I said. “He said ‘stop.’ I heard it in my head.”
Though the enormous creature had not uttered a single sound, I knew he was controlling them. Or, at the very least, leading them. What sort of beast could rein in the rage of hundreds of lorca
n with a single word? I could still feel their will pressing forward as the need for death flooded through them, but there was an invisible barrier holding them at bay. That monster had power over them. Bending their will to its own.
A noise behind me made me turn only to see the king rising from behind his chair. His face was pallid as he tried to stand to his full height but looked dismally short in comparison to the monster striding towards him. Aed placed a protective hand across my chest as it approached.
Still, I shifted so I felt more comfortable beneath his touch.
Three guards, the only ones that remained standing after the first wave of attack, spread out in front of the king and queen. The pitiful front they created was almost laughable. Yet, I admired their bravery in the face of such a terrifying giant.
“Tell your guards to stand down.” The deep baritone voice that erupted from the hybrid leader’s throat shocked me. It rolled over me with such force that I felt the hairs against my neck flutter. If it hadn’t been for the reflexive tightening of Aed’s hand on me, I might have taken a step backwards in amazement.
“It can talk,” I whispered.
Aed nodded. “You mean he can talk.”
Up until this point, I hadn’t even considered that the beasts had a certain sex. I couldn’t remember seeing definitive body parts that would differentiate a male from a female. That made it easier to think of them as simply it. But this lorcan’s voice was very deep. Aed had to be right about it being male.
The leader came to a halt less than ten paces from us. Every muscle in my body was flexed, ready to attack if it so much as sneezed in our direction. I knew Aed stood in a similar manner, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the beast.
“Hello, Mother,” the leader said, addressing those on the stage behind us.
“Mother?” I inhaled.
A snarl escaped Aed, but it was masked by the sudden gasp over my shoulder. I glanced back to see Morrigan collapse into her chair, looking dazed.
“What is this nonsense?” King Baylor demanded, stepping over to his fallen wife. I gritted my teeth. Even now the arse was making a fool of himself. It was almost as if he couldn’t help it. “How dare you speak to my wife like that? She is your queen.”
The hybrid cocked its head as if contemplating how easily he could crush the little king in front of him.
“I did not come for her. Morrigan’s sins are her own.” His voice echoed around me, bouncing off the walls only to hit me for a second time. My leg muscles had begun to ache, held tight for too long.
“It would be wise not to speak to my mother in such an informal tone, beast.” Aed took a step forward.
I reached out to pull him back, but he had become an immovable rock. His hand tightened on his sword hilt as humor seemed to birth a light in the back of the leader’s eyes. They glowed with a creepy luminescence I had never seen before.
“Do you not recognize your own brother, Aed?” The creature held out its hands and turned in a slow circle. “I know I am not the man I once was, but even so, the resemblance is still uncanny.” His lips peeled back into an evil smile.
“Blasphemy,” the king spat. “I have only two sons and my eldest is dead.”
“Ah, my dear loving father. How good it is to see you again after all this time. I’m sure you hoped I would rot away with the other filth you dumped over the Wall. But time has a way of changing a man…as does losing your soul.” When he smiled, I saw things crawling between the gaps in his teeth that made me feel ill. “Family was never important to you, Baylor, but it means everything to me. And so, I have returned for my sister.”
I watched as Aed’s tight expression melded into disturbed confusion.
“You claim to be my lost brother, Alroy, yet the words you speak are madness. My brother is long dead and I have no sister.”
“Ah.” His smile widened with the sound of rock grating against a rock. It made me wonder how much stronger his armor was than the normal lorcan. He would not go down without a fight. “That is where you are wrong, little brother. My sister stands just behind you.”
Aed spun around. His eyes met mine. In them, I saw a disbelief that could not compare to my own. A thousand thoughts filtered through my mind. The beast is lying. He’s insane. But when I heard Morrigan fall out of her chair into a dead faint behind me, I saw something else flicker in his gaze. Belief.
“Holy shite.” I gasped.
Chapter 24
Aed
This was sheer madness. The beast standing before me couldn’t be my brother. He was gone, killed during his time in the human realm. The only way he could become a lorcan...a sharp inhale drew Alroy’s gaze from Taryn. It fixed its attention on me, unblinking and intense. The brilliant red was unnerving. Why were his eyes so different than the others?
“You lost your soul,” I muttered, low enough that I was sure even Taryn struggled to hear the words, but Alroy did not. He dipped his head. His sigh sounded like wind grazing over bones left to the elements in an animal graveyard. “What happened to you?”
I took a step forward without considering my actions. Taryn’s hand clenched around my bicep, but I pulled away. I needed to know. If this beast was my brother, it opened a world of questions that needed answers.
“Do not be fooled by his lies, son.” The king’s voice sounded strained over my shoulder, but I did not look back at him. I felt drawn to the lorcan, a kinetic pull that made me take a second step. And then another. As I approached, I did not sense any danger from the creature. Curiosity and amusement, but not hostility.
“You always were foolhardy, Aed.” When he laughed, I found myself desperate to hear some semblance of my brother’s former voice or the lilt that used to trail off at the end of his laugh. Before his death, my brother had not had much reason to laugh except in private, with me. My father had been strict with his teachings and demanding on Alroy’s duties as the future king. What little time we’d had together was done in secret, but even then, I was the younger tagalong. We were brothers, but we were never close. Our age difference and my father made sure of that. Now, I wondered if there was more to Alroy’s death like I’d suspected.
“Someone had to annoy Father,” I said.
A twitch of a smile at the corner of the lorcan leader’s lips sent a fluttering into my chest. Could it really be him? I couldn’t imagine what he had been through. Staring at his transformation now, I knew it had to have been something terrible.
“I forbid you to speak to this...this...monster,” my father spluttered behind me.
Alroy lifted his gaze. The red of his eyes darkened, hardening to the sharp edges of a roughly cut ruby. “I know what I am, father. What you turned me into. It is time for those who grovel at your feet to see the truth of who you are.”
Though I heard my father bluster and stomp his foot behind me, he made no move to face off with the lorcan. A fact I knew Taryn did not miss.
“He fears you,” I called to Alroy.
“As he should. But not for the reasons you think.” The lorcan moved closer. With each step he took away from his army, an unease rippled through them. He not only held sway over them. They cared about him. As much as a lorcan could care. I wasn’t sure that they were even capable of such a thing, but the evidence before me was disturbing.
How had my brother infected the lorcan with this new level of awareness? As my gaze travelled across the courtyard, I counted at least a hundred of these new hybrids left alive standing to attention, ready to return to their slaughter with a single word from Alroy. More stood outside the gates. This went beyond unusual and plunged deep into the realm of impossible.
“You are the reason for the organized attacks on the Wall these past few months, aren’t you?” I asked, redirecting Alroy’s attention.
“Yes.”
On this, he gave no further information. My frustration began to mount. If he was not here to explain his actions then why was he here? And that was when I remembered the final bombshell he�
�d struck with.
Taryn.
“Why do you claim this girl is my sister? She’s not royalty, so what is your meaning?” I reached out and took Taryn’s hand. I felt the tremble in her fingers and wished I could protect her from this.
“Because it is the truth,” Morrigan said.
My eyes flew wide, and I spun to see my mother rising to her feet with the help of one of the guards. Her skin was paler than normal. Her eyes were rimmed with red. Tears dampened her cheeks as she stared over my shoulder at the monster claiming to be her son. The one she’d loved most.
“Mother?” When she finally looked down at me, a tortured smile spread along her lips. “I don’t understand.”
“I know—” she cut off when Baylor seized her by the arm.
“Hold your tongue, woman.” The vein spanning the bridge of my father’s forehead appeared, highlighted by the intense flush of anger.
“Remove your hand from my mother or I will take it from you.” Alroy’s voice boomed out of his expansive chest with such power that I felt Taryn cringe back. I held on to her, tucking her into my side. There was so much strength in him now that it terrified me. At the same time, I couldn’t deny I was also intrigued about how it was even possible for him to be what he was. If we could understand more…
Baylor spat at my brother, interrupting my thoughts. “I do not take orders from the likes of you.”
“A single command would see you shredded at my feet,” Alroy said. I almost laughed at how bored he sounded when he said it. “Have you not noticed the lack of guards at your back, King?”
Damn. Even I had missed the arrival of three lorcan hybrids rising from behind the rich purple drapes. They created the temporary backdrop for the stage. They were two feet taller than my father and double his width. At that moment, I realised we never stood a chance in this fight. We had been outnumbered and outmaneuvered.
“If you wish for me to listen, brother, you will call off your...men,” I called to Alroy. “The king must not be harmed.”