76. Chapter 76
76
Nelle
T he shadow line of the forest embraced me. Rainwater coursed down the slope, pooling in the long grass and splashing beneath my feet as I dashed onwards. I’d almost reached the thick knotting of wild trees when the loud crack of gunfire had me spinning back around.
My heart stopped beating.
Danne’s mouth was a grim line. He’d fixed his gaze on Graysen, along with a handgun. So much hate blazed in those slitted eyes. Fear more paralyzing than being trapped beneath him in the limousine engulfed me as he pulled the trigger—
The gun kicked back as he rapidly unloaded the magazine. Sporadic white light flashed from its muzzle, and I could almost smell the burnt metallic scent of gunfire wafting through the air.
No!
NO!
Graysen was a smear of movement—
A shifting of his shoulders—
As he ducked and weaved, dodging the deadly shots.
Click-click-click—
Danne cursed and tossed the gun aside. The clatter of metal on stone followed swiftly.
I knew I shouldn’t remain standing here. I should be running. But I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t move my feet.
Black strands of wavy hair swept sideways as Graysen angled his head. He arched an eyebrow. “You were saying, Pellan?”
“Do your worst, Crowther,” Danne spat .
Graysen cracked his neck and knuckles as a bitter smile curved his mouth.
Danne had the good sense to glance warily at his soldiers before taking several hurried steps backward.
Sunlight burnished Graysen’s broad shoulders with gold. The wind teased the ends of his hair as he faced off against the small army of soldiers. His armor, the fabric threaded with adamere and cut like fish scales, clung to him like a second skin. As he reached back to unsheath his wyrm sword, the ancient blade sliding free from leather sang a sweet note that thrummed through my bones.
Graysen’s approach was the stalk of a predator.
Danne’s soldiers spread out to flank him. It didn’t seem to disturb Graysen in the slightest. He simply noted them with cold calculation. He whirled the wyrm sword before him in a humming figure-eight—both a challenge and promise. Faster and faster and faster until the rotating blade moved so quickly it was scarcely visible and became a blur of motion.
Danne stepped behind his men as they raised their machine guns and crossbows, shotguns and swords.
Graysen surged forward, the spinning sword in front of him—
The explosive sound of gunfire tore apart the summery day—
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
RAT-TAT-TAT!
Bullets struck the whirring blade like fistfuls of fireworks. They ricocheted off the wyrmbone to spray the road, the cars and nearby trees in ear-piercing thuds.
Unsheathing a second sword that gleamed a dark silver—a bastard-twin to his wyrmblade—he lunged.
I had heard of Graysen’s strength. I’d felt it when we fought. I knew of his keen senses, too. And this… this was what he was born for. He was deadly and exquisite. Vicious and lethal. I couldn’t tear my gaze away. I should flee—I should be gone from here, but the beauty with which he killed transfixed me.
Graysen was a winter storm. Blustery. Wicked. Malevolent. He flowed with such unnatural speed he was barely discernible as he weaved and whirled, striking effortlessly—a glint of mottled bone, dark silver, and red. Great arcs of crimson sprayed across asphalt and shiny metal cars, pooling on the roadside. The thud of bodies collapsing one by one by one.
He tossed the bastard sword into the air—
Swooping down to snatch up a hubcap—
And flung it like a Frisbee—
To decapitate a soldier .
Whirling—
To block a strike of bullets.
To cut aside a flying bolt.
Bounding upward, he stretched his hand long and caught his bastard sword on its descent—
To drive the vicious edge through the skull of a soldier.
Hurtling forward, kicking a corpse with a heavy boot—
To send the limp body flying into another soldier, knocking her off her feet.
A frenzied attack. A dance of death. A clash of ringing steel.
Three more soldiers were down.
Moving, always moving. Instinctively knowing where the enemy would be before they had even thought through their next move.
I didn’t see it.
I didn’t notice the nocking of a heavy bolt in a crossbow.
Nor the aim and precision of the weapon that crackled and fizzed with dark energy, loaded with a curse until it was too late.
I saw the soldier take aim at Graysen.
My heart exploded into a panicked pace.
“Graysen!” I cried, my voice shrill with fright.
He half-twisted around. His black eyes widened with fear slashing through them to see me still here. “Behind you!” I screamed, pointing.
Too late, too late—
A whooshing sound, fast and deadly, slicing through the air—
The bolt punched through his armor, right into his upper back.
A thud and a bark of pain.
Thrust forward with the impact of the crossbow’s bolt, Graysen went down hard.
His wounded grunt as his knees slammed onto the asphalt tore through me. He tipped forward, quickly splaying a hand against the ground to keep him from keeling over.
His blood-speckled face whipped sidelong and our gazes collided.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry…
Then—
The Cursed bolt exploded into a cloud of black mist—
And he was hidden from me.
This time the bolt hadn’t been cursed with lightning or fire or ice, this one was cursed with the darkness of a tangle-web spider .
As the mist scattered, a webbing of black tendrils crawled around Graysen’s body like phantom fingers. A spider binding a fly.
Danne snatched a gun from a soldier. His cruel gaze hunted the tree line and when he found me, his mouth became wolf-like as he pushed off, running toward me, a soldier at his heels.
“RUN!” Graysen roared, pushing himself upright as he struggled to free himself against the cursed magic that had lashed his arms to his sides.
I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…
He yelled one last time, “NOW NELLE!” before the creeping tendrils wound themselves over his face, wriggling up over his mouth and covering his eyes in a thick layer.
Like the catacombs beneath Ascendria, where I’d yelled at Graysen to do the same, this time it was me spinning away and running. I wondered if he’d felt the same desperate need not to go. If the same awful heaviness of guilt that suffocated my mind and heart had suffocated his, too.
The crisp scent of pine and rotting vegetation assailed my senses as I plunged into the forest. The morning light cut sharply from the dense foliage overhead. Stormwater run-off flowed in wide streams as it coursed downwards. Flying through the thick undergrowth, I barely felt the branches tearing at my face and arms, or that my feet squelched through soft muddy earth and wet leaves, that a spike of pain stabbed my toes when I tripped over jutting roots.
I didn’t know where I was running, only that it was in a straight direction on a decline.
There was a roaring sound, growing louder.
I burst through a gap between leafy bushes and slammed to a halt—
Swaying precariously over the edge of a cliff—
I flung my arms outward to steady myself, my heart slamming into my throat and my eyes bugging at the dizzying height. The earth beneath my feet was sodden. Where I stood was right on the brink of a ravine, and down below, at the base of the sheer cliff, was a thick cropping of shrubs and from there the ground gently rolled to a rocky riverbank with churning white water.
Panting hard, I hauled myself to safety.
Blowing out a pent-up breath, I pressed a shaky hand to my chest, where my heart hammered an erratic beat against my ribs.
So close. That had been so close.
Where to run?
I jittered, turning back and forth, moving forward before stepping back in utter panic, absolutely bewildered by what I should be doing. Stormwater poured over the cliff, cascading into white-tipped streams. Rising on my toes and canting my upper body, my gaze frantically followed the winding edge of the ravine’s steep sides with the angry, swollen river below.
There!
I spied an area not too far from where I stood that wasn’t as sheer as this part of the cliff. Shrubs and flaxes were growing down its gentle sides that could help me clamber down safely. I could keep running through the forest or I could climb downward.
Climb down…
No, run. RUN!
I spun around to flee, but a soldier bolted through the gloomy forest and cut me off.
Someone huffing and out of breath arrived behind me. I whirled. My torn skirt, damp and dirty, slapped against my thighs.
Danne, his cheeks red, pushed through the webbing of thick shrubs. He leaned forward, bracing a hand on his thigh to catch his breath. Straightening, he grimaced and wiped a forearm across his sweaty forehead with the hand that clutched a gun. “Nelle. There’s nowhere else to run.” Sweat darkened his auburn hair to bronze. Blood ran from his half-bitten ear down his freckled neck to soak the white collar of his dress shirt. He raised his arm and trained the gun on me. “I never said I’d give you over alive , or at the very least unmaimed .”
I tipped my chin up— Calm, calm, calm.
“Get over here, now!” he ordered.
“Go fuck yourself,” I barked, fisting my fingers so hard my nails bit into the soft flesh of my palms.
“Now!”
A noise in the undergrowth—a snapping of twigs and branches.
Both Pellan Soldiers braced themselves, swinging their guns in the same direction.
Danne cursed, but kept his hateful gaze pinned on me. “I’d stay right where you are, Crowther. I don’t think Nelle can dodge bullets like you. And if you choose to test me…you might just be able to catch her corpse before it hits the ground.”
My gaze slid to Graysen. My heart swelled to see him alive. Gore and filth splattered his chest. A few of the cursed tendrils he’d somehow hacked away hung off his body. His voice was low and lethal. “Let her go.”
“Too late for that, I’m afraid. ”
Movement drew me back to Danne. His finger twitched on the gun’s trigger as he took a long step toward me.
I took a step back.
My heel found the edge of the soft, sludgy cliff and skidded out from beneath me.
Unbalanced, I swung backward—
My terror squeezed my chest like a vise. I threw my arms out to catch my balance and right my body—
The ground jolted—
Like the tremble of an earthquake.
Panic erupted, razoring through my veins and choking my lungs. It was still there beneath my chilled, dirty feet—the packed earth, the edge of the precipice. Only it had shifted ten inches lower.
Pure fear burst into Graysen’s black eyes. He parted his mouth—
My muscles bunched to spring forward—
My weight was too much for the rain-soaked mountain and a generous slice of the cliff crumbled beneath me—
I fell.