“Hawk!” Aisling screamed.
Fire erupted from her hands, and when another branch whipped toward them, she grabbed it. The smell of burning wood filled the air as an ominous groan started. Debris and dust rained down from above; it was only a matter of time before the place collapsed.
A trail of fire spewed from the calamut when it jerked free of Aisling’s grasp. She cried out as blood spilled from her palms and splashed onto the floor. Hawk tenderly grasped her hands and pulled them toward him.
“Are you okay?” Hawk demanded.
“Yes!” she yelled over the growing cacophony filling the room. “I’m fine!”
Corson and Wren jumped out of the way of a nuckal charging at them. As the creature passed, Corson swung upward and embedded his foot-long talons in the nuckal’s throat. Red blood spilled onto the floor as he twisted the beast’s head to the side at the same time Wrath severed the rider’s head.
The musclebound horse attempted to rear and free itself from Corson’s talons, but Corson twisted it to the side, bringing it down and pinning it to the ground. Wren used her talons to sever its neck. When Corson lifted its head free of the body, the beast gave a few more kicks before going still.
Wrath kicked aside the rider’s head. “You have to cut off both its heads to kill it.”
More calamut branches burst through the side of the building. This time, when one came at me, intending to disembowel me, I hacked off the limb. Inflicting injury on the calamuts was enraging them, but they weren’t giving us any other options.
“We have to get out of here!” Shax shouted.
Raphael and Caim dodged more branches as they spun through the air and dashed in and out of the lethal projectiles.
“Raphael! Caim!” I yelled. When the angels looked down at me, I pointed toward the holes in the ceiling. “Leave! Both of you, go!”
Someone had to survive this, and they were the only ones with an exit. Caim dove toward us, and Raphael followed. Before Raphael reached us, a branch pierced through his calf and plunged him toward the earth. When it embedded itself in the ground, it pinned him there.
“No!” Wren shouted as Caim released a caw so loud I had to resist covering my ears.
Caim twisted and turned through the air to avoid more branches before arcing and swooping low past a group of nuckals. Unable to turn over to face the calamut, Raphael couldn’t release the ball of life forming in his palms.
Running forward, I shoved past Wrath, who was fending off another nuckal with Magnus. Lifting my sword over my head, I gripped it in both hands and swung it down to sever the branch impaling Raphael. He started to rise as another branch burst through his back. Blood spewed from his mouth and sprayed my face before the calamut pinned him face-first to the ground.
I ducked another branch and rose to sever the limb skewering Raphael when a fiery hand clasped my wrist and yanked me back. My shout of protest died away as Wrath pulled me down in time to avoid the hooves of the nuckal that would have bashed in my head.
As it was, the hooves grazed my temple, split open my flesh, and caused warm blood to spill down my face. Wrath’s fire didn’t burn me, something he would know from our battle in the minotaur’s lair, but his touch seared through my skin and imprinted itself on my cells.
He’d saved my life. That realization didn’t rattle me as much as the concern in his eyes when they settled on the blood spilling from the gash on my head. I could handle him being antagonistic and arrogant; I could not handle him caring about anything other than himself.
I jerked my wrist free of his grasp as Caim transformed back into angel form and crashed into the branch pinning Raphael to the ground. The impact snapped the limb, but a foot-long piece remained jutting out of Raphael’s back.
Caim knelt beside his brother and rolled him over to reveal Raphael’s ashen face. The branch had pierced straight through his heart, and though he was still alive, he was unconscious. Blood oozed around the broken branch embedded in him, and once removed, the blood would pour from him.
“Caim!” Corson yelled. “Get him out here. Both of you get out of here!”
“We can’t leave you here!” Caim shouted back.
“You have to go. If we don’t make it out of here, someone has to tell Kobal what happened. Someone has to keep fighting!”
Caim glanced around the room that had become a bloody, body-strewn battlefield. His expression softened when he looked at Raphael. With Raphael so severely wounded, there was nothing the golden angel could do here, and getting themselves killed wouldn’t help win this war.
“We will continue the fight,” Caim said.
Caim’s rainbow-flecked ebony eyes were troubled as he lifted Raphael and looked to us. “When you are free of here, we will meet you outside the forest. Return to the last place where we camped. Take care, my friends.”
Caim spread his wings and took to the air, but instead of flying toward the ceiling, he went straight for the door. Calamut branches speared the sky in an attempt to stop his exit, but he dodged them and the swinging arms of the nuckals before disappearing out the door.
I hoped he somehow, miraculously, made it through the rest of the forest. But then, I hoped the same thing for all of us. However, their chances were looking a lot better than ours right now.
Chapter Twelve
Wrath
The calamuts took out more of the nuckals, but they destroyed just as many innocent bystanders as they did those freaks. I shoved Bale behind me when a nuckal took a swipe at her. It didn’t matter that she would try to chop off my head as soon as we were out of this place; in this battle, we were united.
Craetons and palitons brawled side by side as they tried to avoid death by nuckal and calamut. I wasn’t so lost in the fight that I couldn’t see this was the way it could be between us if we could put aside our pride and forgive past slights. However, far too many demons were too engrossed in their hatred to let it go. I was one of them.
I would use the palitons to escape this, and they would use me, but when it was over, we would be on opposite sides again.
I hacked and cut my way through more of the calamuts that kept coming as we edged toward the exit. Despite little more than half the patrons remaining alive, screams continued to reverberate through the room.
The fresh blood spraying the walls and floor made it slippery, and Corson’s Chosen went down. Bracing his legs apart, he grasped her arm and hauled her to her feet.
“This way!” Shax shouted.
He scrambled across a tabletop and toward the wall the calamuts had repeatedly broken through. Curling his hands around the bricks, he pulled away some of the jagged pieces. A calamut limb shot toward him, but Corson severed it before it impaled his friend.
Sheathing her sword, Bale leapt onto the table and scrambled across the top of it before dropping into the booth beside Shax. The two of them tossed aside the bricks they pulled from the wall.
When the hole was big enough to fit through, they turned back to the room. “Hurry!” Bale urged.
“Jolie, Dana, Darcy!” Corson’s Chosen shouted as she waved her arm. Three humans lifted their heads from where they cowered under a table. “This way!”
A girl with golden-brown hair scrambled out from underneath the table and raced toward them. She darted around a tree branch that slammed into the ground and threw herself forward to roll across the floor.
She bounced to her feet and zigzagged in and out of the dead, embedded calamuts, and nuckals. For a human, she was fast and agile, but I still expected something to kill her at any second.
Somehow, the woman managed to make it alive, and when she reached Corson’s Chosen, Corson took her hand and helped her onto the table. The human scrambled across the surface and threw herself out of the hole with little concern of what lay on the other side.
“Dana! Darcy!” Corson’s Chosen shouted again. “Come on!”
The other two humans, who remained under the table, shrank away from the stomping
hooves of a nuckal. When his Chosen stepped toward them, Corson halted her.
“We have to go, Wren,” he said.
“We can’t leave them here,” she protested and tried to shake her arm free.
“I will get them.”
“I’m not letting you go alone.”
I almost killed them for being stupid enough to consider risking their lives over a couple of idiot humans who were too scared to save themselves. Then I recalled Bale, perched on the booth with her hand stretched toward Corson. I didn’t know if I would let her go alone either.
“Hawk, Aisling, come on!” Bale shouted and waved at the man I hadn’t known and his Chosen.
They hesitated before Hawk nudged Aisling toward the table. “Go,” he said.
I fended off an approaching nuckal while Magnus dodged a tree limb and created ten more versions of himself and his Chosen. The nuckals and calamuts were briefly confused by the illusions, but that wouldn’t last.
“Magnus, Amalia, you’re next!” Shax yelled.
The demon of illusions didn’t look at me as he grasped his Chosen’s arm and ran with her toward the table. His illusions didn’t vanish when he left the building, but the nuckals were no longer confused by them.
“Corson, come on!” Bale yelled when Magnus and Amalia went through the hole.
Corson glanced back at her. “We have to get the humans. Go without us, and we’ll meet you outside the forest.”
Bale opened her mouth to protest, but Corson was already racing across the room with Wren at his side. Bale’s hand fell away, and she looked to me before turning to Shax.
“Go,” she said.
Shax vanished through the hole, and Bale looked at me again. She hesitated before going through.
“Go!” I shouted at her.
Her jaw locked before she turned and followed her friends. I watched Corson and Wren dodge in and out of enemies as they sought to rescue the cowards under the table.
I didn’t understand why anyone would risk their life for someone else, let alone why they would do it for the moronic, meddling, destructive species who once ruled this plane. The palitons’ loyalty to those who didn’t deserve it was why we would win the war.
Oh well, at least if Corson and his Chosen died, it would be easier for me to get to the varcolac.
I jumped on the table and sliced my way through the calamuts trying to stop me from getting to the hole.
Bale
“Where are Corson and Wren?” Hawk demanded.
“They went to try to save Dana and Darcy,” I said.
“We have to help them!” Jolie cried.
“I know,” I said as Wrath landed on the ground beside me. “I’m going back in, but the rest of you have to go.”
“You’re not going in there alone,” Hawk said.
“They’re humans; let them die,” Wrath said.
When Hawk went for his axe, I stayed his hand as the ground trembled and booms shook the air. The calamuts continued to destroy the school, but they were leaving us alone. As badly as I’d like to kill Wrath myself, I didn’t know how long our reprieve with the calamuts would last, and we couldn’t push them.
“Violence will draw the calamut’s attention,” I said to Hawk. “We can’t fight here.”
Hawk glowered at Wrath, but his hand eased on the handle of his axe. “I was once human too, and I can assure you, their lives are worth a lot more than yours.”
Wrath didn’t seem offended by Hawk’s statement as he studied him curiously. “You were once human?”
“So was I,” Aisling said. “Or at least mostly human.”
“Well, ex-human or not, a couple of cowards hiding under a table aren’t worth dying for,” Wrath said.
“Neither is a vendetta held against a varcolac who doesn’t know you,” I said pointedly.
“And that is where we can agree to disagree.”
“You were locked away for wreaking havoc and causing death and misery wherever you went. You deserved your punishment. It’s too bad you didn’t learn anything from it.”
With that, I turned dismissively away from him. Maybe he would attempt to kill one of us now that we were free of the building, but I doubted it. The horsemen weren’t stupid enough to piss off the calamuts.
“We have to find Lix,” Shax said.
“Take Hawk, Aisling, and Jolie to do that. The hounds must be around here somewhere too.” They’d stopped howling, but I didn’t believe they were dead. “Magnus and Amalia, maybe you can find them?”
“We will,” Amalia said.
“I’ll go back in,” Magnus offered.
“No, if something goes wrong, your ability is of more use to this war than I am.”
Magnus started to protest, but I cut him off. “I’m in charge. Go.”
His silver eyes narrowed, but he gave a brisk nod and clasped Amalia’s arm. “We’ll meet you where Caim indicated,” he said before leading her away.
“I don’t know if the calamuts will attack when they notice us again, or if we’re okay now that we’re out of the school, but don’t use any violence unless it’s necessary. I think the nuckals might have killed some tree nymphs, so it won’t take much to set the calamuts off again,” I said to Hawk.
“We can’t leave you here alone,” Hawk said with a pointed look at Wrath.
“He’s not stupid enough to try something right now,” I said. “I’ll get Corson, and we’ll meet outside the forest.”
Hawk hesitated, but when another boom vibrated the building, he relented. “Stay safe.”
“You too.”
They all gave Wrath one last, blistering look of loathing before turning and loping around the side of the building. I turned dismissively away from Wrath and grasped the edges of the hole. I ignored the broken brick biting into my flesh as I started to lift myself off the ground.
His large hand encircling my wrist halted me before I could go any further. “Don’t be a fool,” he said.
I jerked my wrist free of his grasp. “You’re the only fool here; it’s time for you to leave.”
More fire flared through his eyes as a muscle in his jaw jumped. Then, he released my wrist and stepped away from me. “If you’re in such a rush to die, then I won’t stop you.”
“My life was over the second I met you.”
Hurt briefly flickered through his eyes, but he quickly covered it up as the flames died away and his fathomless, black eyes returned. Are those eyes the darkness?
As soon as the possibility occurred to me, I shook it away. The darkness had haunted me for so long that I had no doubt I would recognize it the minute I saw it. That hadn’t happened when I first saw the black of Wrath’s eyes. No, he wasn’t the darkness, but it was coming.
A cruel smile curved the corner of his mouth. “Until we meet again, then.”
With that, he turned and sauntered away.
When he disappeared around the side of the building, I shoved aside the unexpected disappointment filling me before self-loathing swamped me for expecting more from a horseman.
I was about to climb through the hole when Wren appeared on the other side. Startled, I fell back as she scrambled through and fell to the ground. Corson followed her. Fresh blood splattered their clothes and covered their faces as they lay on the ground, panting before rolling over and pushing themselves onto their knees.
“Are you okay?” I demanded as I knelt between them.
“Yes,” Corson said.
“Dana and Darcy?”
“Dead,” Corson said. “A nuckal got to them before we could.”
Wren’s fingers dug into the earth. The Wilders meant a lot to her; she’d done everything she could to keep them protected over the years, and she took it hard whenever one was lost. Corson hugged her close.
“We have to go,” I said.
“Where are the others?” Corson demanded.
“I sent them to locate Lix and the hounds. We’ll meet them at the campground; we’ll never find them ag
ain in these woods.”
“Then let’s go,” Wren said as she wiped tears from her eyes and blood from her cheeks.
They rose, and I glanced back at where Wrath vanished. I had no idea why I was stuck with a Chosen who cared so little for anything outside of himself. I was not the most caring of demons, but at least I stood for something.
He only cared about revenge and destruction and had little concern for life. However, I couldn’t deny the incessant pull I felt to go after him. Instead, I ran in the opposite direction.
Chapter Thirteen
Wrath
I will not go back for her. I will not go back for her.
With every step I took away from the foolish woman, my irritation grew. When flames came to life at the ends of my fingers, I suppressed them. If the calamuts sensed my building rage, they would attack.
However, I couldn’t believe I’d been saddled with such a tenderhearted fool for a Chosen. She was a demon, and she was going to risk her life for two humans who couldn’t crawl out from under a table. She clearly lacked in the brains department, and I was better off without her.
I didn’t know what would happen if we never completed the Chosen bond; other demons claimed it would eventually drive us mad, but I was stronger than most demons. I could, and would, survive without her in my life.
Yet, every step I took away from her became increasingly difficult to make. Considering she was surrounded by her self-righteous friends, returning to her would do me little good. They would try to destroy me as soon as we left this forest, and I would gladly kill all of them too. She would probably try to destroy me as soon as we were out of the woods.
I’d have no problem killing her friends, but I didn’t think she’d like that very much. And I loathed that I cared about her being upset. She’d happily see my head on a spike, and I was considering her feelings, something I’d never considered for anyone before.
When I came here, I simply planned on claiming my Chosen. She could deny me in dreams, but seeing each other again and in the house of the nymphs, a place designed for hedonism, it would be far more difficult. I didn’t care if she liked me or not; I would be inside her. And now I found myself concerned about the woman.
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