Chapter 10 At The Edges
Seri
I stayed three steps behind Casimir, exactly where Rule Number One dictated I should be.
A bad feeling was growing in my stomach, though, the longer we stared at the stone-ringed fire pit. Something crawled beneath my skin, whispering warnings I couldn’t quite translate.
None of the reports or scouting had found anything other than a lingering resonance of magic here by the fire pit, and even that was small. Tiny. So why was I starting to feel like ants were marching along my nerves?
“Sim—”
My warning was cut short by a sound like a hundred gummy worms being squeezed at once.
That’s when the marshmallows attacked.
They erupted from the fire pit in a gooey, blazing swarm.
Flaming globs of sugar launched into the air, trailing smoke and sparks.
One whizzed past Casimir’s ear, and he jerked back with a startled curse.
The sticky projectile hit a nearby pine tree with a sizzle, leaving a smoking, caramelized patch on the bark.
Zane, of course, whooped like a kid at the world’s most dangerous birthday party.
“Dude! Flaming marshmallow ghosts! Told you this place would deliver!”
“They’re not ghosts,” I murmured, feeling uneasy.
Even Koa looked slightly amused as he batted a molten glob away from his face. It splattered against a tree, too, hissing and spitting.
“Ridiculous,” Casimir muttered. Annoyance threaded his tone as he ducked another barrage of fiery puffballs.
The marshmallow creatures made sounds like fire embers popping as they hurled themselves at us with surprising speed. One went straight for Zane, who, instead of dodging, grinned. His eyes had that reckless gleam they got right before he did something stupid.
“Bet I can eat one!”
Before he could test that theory, Koa shoved him roughly to the side, saving him from getting a face full of molten sugar.
“Dumbass!” Koa snapped, drawing his blade and slicing through one of the creatures. It split with a sizzling sound, but the two halves simply reformed into smaller versions of the original.
“Oh, cool! They replicate!”
I pressed myself against a nearby tree, trying to stay out of the way while keeping all three brothers in sight. Rule Number Four: Under no circumstances does Seri engage in combat.
“Come to papa, fluffernutter!” Zane jabbed at a swooping marshmallow with a branch he’d picked up, the improvised skewer impaling it. For one second, the creature hung there writhing, then detonated in a caramelized shockwave.
Koa moved faster than human eyes could track, hauling Zane backward by his coveralls as the blast radius scorched the earth where he’d stood.
“Are you trying to die?”
“But think of the tactical applications!” Zane’s grin flashed white in the lingering smoke. “Edible incendiary devices!”
The crawling sensation under my skin increased, centering around my lungs, making each breath feel like inhaling static. This wasn’t just about the marshmallows. Something else was here, something hiding beneath the marshmallows…
Rule Number Six stated that I immediately alert the brothers to any magical disturbances I sensed, no matter how minor. This definitely qualified.
“Guys, this is a distraction—”
“Stay back!” Casimir barked, his sword slicing through three of the creatures in one stroke.
“But there’s—”
“Watch out, Seri!” Zane shouted.
I spun around to find five of the marshmallows floating behind me, their ember mouths growing wider. I scrambled backward, but my heel caught on a root, sending me stumbling to the ground.
One flaming glob hurtled directly at my face. I didn’t have time to dodge, but I didn’t have to. Casimir appeared in front of me, taking the hit on his bicep with a sound of disgust. The molten marshmallow splattered against his coveralls and began burning through the cotton fabric.
“Damnation!” He batted at it ineffectively as it sizzled. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I—”
“Rule Number Two. Designated safe zone.” His green eyes filled with anger and something hotter. “Now.”
“How?!” I gestured wildly. “We’re surrounded!”
“Stay behind me.” He pushed me behind him with one arm while continuing to fend off the creatures with his other, and I noticed that the marshmallow had burned through his coveralls to the armor underneath.
“Your arm—”
“It’s fine. Focus on staying safe.”
“This is the stupidest thing we’ve fought in weeks!” Zane was now armed with two branches, whirling them like twin swords through the flying marshmallows. “I love it!”
Koa had taken a different approach, herding groups of them together before dispatching them with broad sweeps of his blade.
“Something’s not right,” he rumbled. “These things aren’t attacking with any strategy.”
“I told you, they’re a distraction!” I repeated, louder than before.
“From what?” Casimir demanded, eyes scanning even as he shielded me.
“I don’t know, but something bad.”
Heart hammering, I peeked around Casimir’s shoulder.
The marshmallows were still coming, leaving trails of melted sugar as the boys diced them up.
My gaze dropped to the fire pit, to the stones that ringed it, and I felt it again.
That unsettling warning, only stronger now, spreading like spiderwebs under my skin.
Drawing tighter. Pulling. Demanding to be felt.
“The fire pit,” I called. “There’s something wrong with—”
A flaming marshmallow sailed past my head, missing me by inches, but I barely noticed, too focused on the terrible certainty that we’d just stumbled into something much worse than sugar kamikazes.
“Simmy, we need to leave. Now.”
His eyes met mine, but before he could respond, everything changed.
Slashing at the barrage, Koa kicked one of the stones surrounding the fire pit, and something clicked. Not as a sound, but a sensation, and shadows suddenly swarmed to swallow the world.
#
It should have been funny. The boys versus burning fluffs. The perfect story to tell over breakfast tomorrow with Zane embellishing wildly and Casimir correcting every exaggeration. And it would have been funny. If Koa hadn’t activated the portal.
The second his boot kicked the misaligned stone into place, I felt magic snap like a rubber band pulled too tight.
The marshmallows dissolved into wisps of sugar-scented smoke as shadows roared out of the fire pit, darker than night despite the noon sun.
Sliding across the ground like spilled ink, they rose up, forming twisted figures with hollow faces and vague hands.
“We seemed to have stumbled into a grade-A clusterfuck.” Zane’s voice lost its earlier playfulness.
They weren’t just shadows. There was something inside them, burning with black flame, and they stank of the same Dark fume that always trailed the Harrows.
My heart pounded like a wild thing. I wanted to run, to pull my mates away from this place, but there was nowhere to go. The shadows had encircled us.
“Back to back,” Casimir instructed, and they instantly formed a triangle around me, weapons raised. “Seri, stay in the center.”
I couldn’t follow some of the rules because it was impossible to now, but I clung to Rule Number One: Seri stays behind at least one Cimmerian brother at all times. I had no idea how to fight these things. I didn’t even know what they were!
The boys apparently didn’t, either, because Koa snapped, “Now what are these fang-rotted fuckers?”
“Dunno, but something Diabolical,” Zane called back. “I can see it. Bet Seri can, too, can’t you, treasure?”
“You mean the purplish-black fire inside them?”
“Yep. Erebean fire.”
“Demon-core shadows,” Casimir suggested. “Controlled or created by Dark magic.”
Then there was no more time for theory. The shadows charged forward, and my boys traded blows with them in a dizzying dance.
I could only parse pieces of it: Casimir’s grace as his sword swung in blurred arcs, Zane manic laughter as he moved like quicksilver, and Koa battering through them with his gloved fists and blade.
They were a storm of deadly force, my beautiful monsters.
Savagery and skill twined into art. But for every shadow they dispatched, another rose to take its place.
The horde was relentless, unending, and I pressed my back against the cold remains of a camp log, trying to make myself as small as possible while scanning for any weakness, any pattern to exploit, but the shadows moved unnaturally, sometimes solid enough to land blows, other times insubstantial as smoke when my husbands tried to strike them.
And I could feel their hunger. Not for flesh or blood, but for something deeper.
Souls, I realized. They want to consume souls.
One caught Koa by surprise, sweeping his legs and sending him crashing to the ground.
In the same moment, Casimir was driven back by a flurry of strikes, forcing him to give ground.
The protective triangle around me was breaking apart.
Casimir recovered quickly, positioning himself back between me and his shadow, but Koa was now several yards away, and Zane was surrounded by the ones still pouring out of the fire pit, blocking his escape route with elongated limbs that stretched like taffy.
Everything was happening too fast, the shadows moving with a speed that blurred my vision.
Casimir couldn’t break away without leaving me exposed, Koa was hidden behind a wall of shadows, and one had Zane cornered, looming over him as a mouth opened in its featureless face, a gaping void that seemed to know nothing but hunger.
And I knew. Knew with absolute certainty that if I didn’t act, these shadows would take my husbands one by one.
And when I finally stood alone, they’d take me, too.
Something inside me snapped. Rule Number Four shattered into glittering shards as I stopped thinking and went with pure adrenaline-fueled instinct. Even at noon, the moon was still there, and I reached for its energy like an old friend.