Chapter 13 Aurora
Down the ravine seemed the only escape route my terror-addled brain could process. I sprinted through the canyon as if the Shepherd itself clawed at my heels. My pulse hammered so violently against my throat I could taste copper with each beat.
I vaulted over a jagged crevice and craned my neck to track the electric lance as it arced downward. Toward us; the realization robbed me of breath and sent me stumbling over fallen rock.
The bolt was following the gorge’s path, cutting through darkness faster than sound itself.
We were running directly into its trajectory.
The narrow walls pressed in on both sides, offering no shelter. I watched the blazing spear grow larger, brighter, close enough now that I could see bright blue tendrils of energy writhing around its head. The bolt would hit the canyon floor ahead of us, but if we stopped, we’d be as good as dead.
Then thunder split the air and ruptured my eardrums.
A frightened scream tore from my lips as I ducked my head, but there was nowhere to go except forward. Blood trickled warm down my neck, the ringing drowning out everything.
Every hair on my body stood rigid from the electric charge building in the air.
Some primal instinct screamed that even raising my arms would strip flesh from bone.
I forced my legs to pump harder despite the loose shale threatening to send me tumbling, knowing it was useless, knowing we were about to die.
Selena was right on my heels, hands pressed over her bleeding ears. Raw terror carved lines across her face as she looked up. Terraknight and Ember flanked her, leaping over the uneven terrain while Gale’s copper wings beat frantically three feet above the ground.
Terraknight suddenly wheeled around, his mouth working in desperate shouts I couldn’t hear. His wild gesticulations sent ice through my veins—
Impact.
The bolt hit the earth just as Harbinger materialized from a portal with Pearl clutched in his arms. Both of them staggered as the shockwave slammed into them first, then hurled the rest of us through the air.
I slammed into an outcropping of stone, my ribs screaming against the collision. Pain exploded across my spine as I crumpled to the ground.
Gasping, for one, two, three seconds, and then I forced my eyes open. The stars rolled overhead through the settling dust. Urgent, desperate voices penetrated my stunned mind.
“Hummingbird!”
“Quakelord!”
I clawed my way to my hands and knees, fighting the skull-splitting headache, and staggered to my feet.
Smoke and pulverized stone choked the air, thick as winter fog. My blood magic swept outward through the murk, hunting for familiar auras. Most of the guild pulsed with battered but steady life—all except two.
My heart stuttered.
Hummingbird’s pulse fluttered weak and thready. His consciousness felt fractured, like scattered glass. Unconscious. Just knocked out.
Quakelord had vanished completely.
I stretched my magic to its absolute limit, probing past the Souleater survivors. Nothing. Not even an echo of his presence.
“Quakelord!” I joined the frantic chorus. “Hummingbird!”
With each unanswered call, the hollow in my chest grew bigger. My subconscious already knew what my mind refused to acknowledge. No living mortal could hide from my Blood Manipulation. If I couldn’t sense Quakelord…
Suddenly, wind gusted through the ravine. Gale’s wings beat in powerful strokes, her magic clearing the choking smoke. The gray veil lifted, revealing the devastation.
Beyond the crater’s rim, a dark shape lay crumpled.
A strangled noise left my throat.
Even through the haze I recognized the sprawled limbs, the wild black hair now matted with blood. Quakelord’s body lay motionless in an expanding crimson pool, his sharp features slack in death.
The sight punched through me like a blade, and the chambers in my heart squeezed shut. My knees gave out, but this time no one caught me as I crashed to the hard ground.
We were too late.
“Over here!” Terraknight’s voice sounded rougher from the smoke and dust he’d inhaled.
He kneeled beside Quakelord, his large frame hunched in defeat. I couldn’t tear my focus from the copper tang mixed with moss and rain—Quakelord’s magic signature still clung to him. For the first time in my life, the smell of blood didn’t trigger my fangs. Acid burned up my throat instead.
Everyone rushed toward Terraknight’s call, but shock had locked my vocal cords. I couldn’t make them understand there was nothing we could do for Quakelord.
Hummingbird’s fading thread lay hidden somewhere beyond the crater. The others couldn’t feel what I felt. Couldn’t know he was barely breathing.
All they could see was Quakelord’s broken body.
My legs moved without conscious thought, but not toward the others. I followed the thin blue thread my magic showed me—the barely there pulse that led to where the blast had hurled Hummingbird against the far cliff face.
“Aurora!” Selena called. “Where are you going?”
I stumbled over loose rocks, ignoring her call. A sob tore from my throat despite my hand pressed tight over my mouth.
Just like with Phoenix, I’d been too slow when it mattered most.
But Hummingbird was still breathing. That thin thread of life pulsing through my magic meant I had a chance. One last chance to do something right. I’d tear open my own veins if that’s what it took to keep him alive.
I wouldn’t lose another one.
A streak of red painted the stone wall from ten feet up to where Hummingbird lay twisted at its base.
His head tilted at an unnatural angle, brown curls plastered to his skull with blood and grime.
One dove-white wing sprawled beneath him, bone fragments piercing through torn feathers.
His leather vest hung in tatters, revealing deep lacerations that had shredded the white cotton shirt underneath.
But the massive wound splitting his abdomen open made my knees buckle all over again. Pale intestines spilled through the tear in his flesh, steam rising from the exposed organs in the cool mountain air.
Dark Father, help us.
Quakelord’s lifeless form… the extent of Hummingbird’s injuries… A searing bolt of grief pierced me as I dropped to my knees beside him.
No. No, no, no.
We were going to lose him too.
There was no way his body could heal that wound fast enough to save him. I lifted his head gently into my lap and brushed the matted curls from his forehead. His amber eyes fluttered open, unfocused but aware.
“P-Projector,” he whispered, blood frothing at the corners of his mouth. “Sorry I… I’ve been such an ass to you. Always was… shit… with outsiders. Especially purebloods.”
“Hummingbird, don’t talk. Save your strength.”
“Too late,” he breathed. “Can’t… can’t fly anymore.” A weak smile ghosted his pale lips. “Tell the others… tell them I went down swinging.”
“Don’t you dare give up on me!”
He just looked at me with a crooked grin. Something sharp twisted in my chest; a thin line of pain stretched to the breaking point. It hurt so much I couldn’t draw air into my lungs.
Hummingbird’s body went rigid in my hands, and I felt the last flutter of his life slipping away.
No!
I seized that fragile thread of consciousness. With all my magic, with all the strength I possessed, with everything Derzelas gave me, I gripped that fading piece of Hummingbird and refused to let it go.
Vanilla and pennies saturated the air. Power vibrated in my very veins as I poured everything into his body, drove it deeper, forced his blood to multiply, to circulate, and his heart to beat.
I won’t let him die. He will live. He must.
God, please don’t let him die.
“Aurora, stop!” Selena’s voice sounded from miles away. “You can’t fight death like this!”
Try me. Hummingbird’s life force sank further into the void. I poured more power into him. More… I needed more.
Copper coated my lips, and I tasted my own blood when I licked them. Pressure built in my head, my body’s warning that I was running on empty.
“You’re killing yourself!” she screamed, but I channeled more magic, pulled harder on the threads of his life.
His heart stuttered, then beat once. His eyelids twitched.
But something was wrong. His eyes, when they opened, held no warmth. No recognition. They stared through me like glass.
“Let me go,” he whispered, but his voice sounded hollow, empty. “Please… let me go.”
“This is how monsters are made,” Selena said, closing a hand over my shoulder. “This isn’t healing, A. You’re binding his soul to a dying body.”
The knowledge settled cold and certain in my bones.
Selena was right. My chest tightened, and my stomach knotted, and I felt the blood I drank from Radu earlier edging back toward my mouth.
I swallowed hard and took several deep breaths, disgusted with myself for even contemplating doing that to Hummingbird.
I wouldn’t become the very thing I despised. Wouldn’t create the abominations that haunted our darkest legends. Because what I was attempting had been tried before, centuries ago, by desperate purebloods who couldn’t accept loss. The results were always the same.
Ghouls.
The word alone made my skin crawl. Creatures that existed in the space between life and death, their souls bound to decaying flesh by blood magic gone wrong. They weren’t unlike Souleaters—pure hunger wrapped in rotting skin, driven only by an endless need to feed.
Ghouls lurked in the deepest tunnels beneath the Carpathians, as far from sunlight as they could burrow. The Council pretended they didn’t exist, but every pureblood child learned the stories. Warnings about what happened when you tried to cheat death itself.
I wouldn’t curse Hummingbird to that existence. Sweet Derzelas, I wouldn’t wish that fate on Lev Wurdulak himself.
My shoulders sagged and rounded inward as I looked down at Hummingbird’s pale face—so young, so fragile. “Let me go, Projector,” he murmured again, weaker this time.