Chapter 7 #2
“We can’t kill them by ourselves,” I gasped, pulling my shirt over my mouth against the dust. “And there’s something far worse we have to…”
Whoosh.
With a heated roar, all the air was sucked out of the space when Dante arrived in an explosion of fire. Flames swept across the dock, devouring Ashbound like cordwood, leaving nothing but crumbling piles of ash and the piles of bone behind.
Two guards fell, screaming as they were burned alive. Then a third.
Good fucking riddance.
“Where is my wife?” Dante’s thunderous growl rolled across the carnage, then he turned his attention our way and that knot of fear in my chest tightened. There was nothing of my friend left in that fiery gaze, nothing even remotely mortal.
“She’s with Luca.” Not technically a lie, but there was no telling what fire-Dante might do if I told him I had no earthly idea where Emberline was.
Chances were, he’d burn this entire building down, and while I wasn’t opposed to burying our enemies under a metric shit ton of stone, we had to get the fuck out of here.
The two remaining guards reformed their line, and a creeping dread took hold of my bones, my fingers shaking too badly to even pull the trigger, chest compressing down until I saw spots.
We were going to die down here.
Gods. I had to get my shit together. I couldn’t fall apart now, but fear had already settled into my marrow, paralyzing me from the inside out. Gasping out a final warning, the edges of my vision began to fade to black.
“Gabriel, I have never run from a fight in my life, but I swear, we have to leave this place. Right the fuck now. I used too much of my magic, so you’ll have to carry Rocco…”
“If we dematerialize, it’ll kill him.”
“There are some things worse than death, trust me.”
“How did they get the boat out of here? How can you be so sure they escaped?” he demanded, surveying our enemies like he was formulating a defense. Like we weren’t running out of fucking time.
“We need to search this entire dock. We’re not leaving them here.”
“They’re gone, they have to be gone,” I babbled, scanning the area again, the black sticky marks, the shadows, panic clawing up my throat until I could barely get the words out. “They’re not here, Gabriel.”
“I’m not leaving Emberline behind. Or Luca. What the fuck is wrong with you, Nico? Dante will take out the rest of the Ashbound, then you and I will handle the guards. They’re just vampires, for fuck’s sake.”
I didn’t have the right words to explain they weren’t just vampires.
That their magic wasn’t like any other.
I couldn’t fucking think around this paralyzing fear, stealing my nerve and turning me into a spineless coward. Above our heads, the ceiling rumbled. Reinforcements were on their way.
Faster than I could track, glistening black ooze dripped down the wall. Five. There were five nests, and I’d never fought that many at once before.
We’d never survive this.
My terror became a living thing, consuming my ability to think. To function.
“Gabriel… please listen to me.”
A leg stepped out of one of those sticky black pools, thin and long and jointed in too many places, followed by another, dragging an articulated body the size of a small horse out of the pool with a wet, sucking sound.
The glossy black chitin shell was smooth, like its eyeless face, but the mouth had two rows of sharp, black teeth and a pair of razor-sharp mandibles.
“What. The. Fuck. Is. That.”
“They’re called Drax. Don’t let them touch you, or you’re dead. They suck the soul right out of your body.”
All the blood drained from Gabriel’s face, horror written all over his features in stark, white lines.
“I’ll distract them. Get out of here,” I urged. “Use the cipher, take Rocco with you, but if one of those things touches any of us, we are done.”
In the center of the dock, Dante slowly turned toward the approaching creature, two more hatching out from their sticky nests. Then a fourth, clicking those sharpened mandibles. One for each of us. As if this had all been planned.
I closed my eyes. Cursed my own stupidity.
Because it had been.
Of course, Blackwood had seen what would happen tonight.
A trap set, not for the others… but for me.
“Take Rocco and get out of here. Take your brother, too, if you can get him to listen to reason.”
Dante tipped his head, then sent a plume of fire toward the spider, engulfing the beast in a whirling twist of flame. When the fire died away, the thing shook off sparks and ash—like a wet dog—and skittered straight toward him.
I shot out a tendril of shadow, catching one of its legs before the thing got close enough to drain Dante and flung it across the dock. Every piece of me recoiled from its foul magic, my shadows slithering away from that void as if they’d been burned.
The creature rolled, then was up, snapping its teeth.
Great. Now I had its attention.
“Dante,” Gabriel roared. “Get your shit together. If one of them touches you, you’re dead.”
Dante clumsily pivoted, another of the Drax making a beeline for him.
“You can’t kill them with fire,” I shouted, casting out another tendril of shadow, slower this time, barely stopping the thing in time. “They can only be killed with black magic.” If I was at my full strength, I might hold my own against one. Maybe two.
But I was drained.
My emotions were a fucking mess. I couldn’t focus. I was running on fumes, and once my magic was completely gone…
“Please,” I begged Gabriel, my voice breaking on the raw, terrible truth. “You are my best friends. Don’t make me watch the two of you die.”
I pushed to my feet, but Gabriel caught my arm, yanked me back down, something blooming in his narrowed gaze I’d never seen before. Suspicion.
“How do you know about these things, Nico?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said miserably. “I just… can’t.”
The remaining guards closed in, and Dante exploded, fire erupting from both hands. The guards might create the Drax, but they weren’t protected by the same magic.
Everywhere Dante’s flames touched, they burned, just like everything else.
When the inferno died away, it was just us and four soul-sucking monstrous voids none of us could kill. I erected a sloppy web of shadow around us, strong enough to keep them out long enough for me to make Gabriel see sense.
“Listen to me. I’m not strong enough to kill them all. Speak to your brother mind to mind; do it now. I’ll drop the shield around Rocco, then you’ll have about ten seconds to reach him and dematerialize.”
“He’ll bleed out.”
“Probably. But better than getting his soul sucked out through his eye sockets.”
“Fucking godsdamned hell.” Gabriel closed his eyes, beads of sweat forming on his brow, wrinkled in concentration.
Dante’s head swung our way, and the flames cloaking his body died away. “Where is Emberline?” he demanded, an echo of the demon’s power still in his voice.
“She and Luca took the boat and got out.”
Gabriel dropped his voice, his hand tightening around my arm. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“No,” I shook my head. “But I have to believe it’s true. I can only hold this shield together for a few more seconds, then we’re all dead. Are you ready to move?”
He dipped his head as the first creature breached my shadows, one grotesque leg easing through. Then another. Mandibles sliced and slashed, as if they were already tasting us.
“It’s now or never.”
The first reinforcements poured onto the dock, and the other three Drax lunged, uncaring they were allies.
Uncaring of anything except the bright, glowing souls inside their soft, fleshy bodies.
Attacking soldiers turned, scrambled for the door, going down screaming beneath a flurry of black, spindly legs and gnashing teeth as the dock became nothing but carnage.
“Now,” I shouted. Gabriel touched Rocco, and they both disappeared. Then Dante vanished.
I took one last look at the chaos, but even as I dematerialized, I knew with absolute certainty that whatever ancient horrors Blackwood had unleashed tonight…
He wouldn’t stop until he got what he’d always wanted—my soul.