14. Varyx
VARYX
A thunderclap pulled me back to the world, and I cursed as I looked up to see my lair haloed in crackling energy. Impossible. Things couldn’t have gotten so bad this fast.
I had no time to waste denying the obvious. Leaping to my feet, I lifted Lena with me.
“What’s wrong?” my mate asked as I set her down on the sand. Then she followed my gaze and paled. “Oh, fuck. Varyx, I’m sorry. It’s my fault, I think I?—”
“Don’t.” I leaned down to kiss the top of her head, interrupting her confession.
“No time for blame. You touched the Gate? Fine. You had no way of knowing that would disrupt the wards, and neither of us could have anticipated how fast things would go bad. I am glad we met, glad of the time we spent together, and glad we said goodbye properly. Those are the memories you must hold on to as you leave.”
She looked from the Voidstorm to me, and finally to the portal. Whose bright idea was it to put the only escape route in the middle of the bay? Already, waves crashed over the pier. Things would get worse as the winds rose.
“What about the others?” Lena asked.
“Anyone with the brains of a dead fish will be on their way already. You can be the first to arrive. Avoid the rush.”
We have no time for this. Clouds of black energy washed over the mountain, filling the air. My marks tingled as they absorbed some of it, but there was a limit to how much they could hold. That limit was coming up fast, so I might as well use it.
I’d claimed Lena already, and I was certain now that she was the one fate intended for me. Planting a kiss on her shoulder, over the teeth marks I’d left there, I concentrated. Let the energy flow through my lips and into her body, forming channels where it touched.
When I stepped back, rivulets of Void energy ran through her skin, mirroring my markings. Marking my mate.
“What was that about?” Lena looked up at me, confusion clouding the brilliance of her green eyes. Before I replied, a deck chair tumbled past us, missing by inches, and I shook my head. It had become too dangerous here.
“No time. Lena, I love you. You are my one and only fated mate. Now go! I must know you are safe.”
I didn’t dare let her answer, for fear of her talking me out of what I had to do. Instead, I turned and leaped into the sky, shifting as I went.
It was the right decision. It was. I repeated that to myself as I flew toward the mountain and the Void Gate behind it. Energy sparked from my wings, too much for me to absorb before the Gate fell. Good. Something to fight, to kill, to distract me from the pain in my heart.
Behind me, far below, Lena watched me go. I felt her gaze follow me, and it took all my will to keep from looking. If I saw her sorrow, I would falter and turn back, and the Gate would fall before I found the strength to leave her side again.
The temptation to run away with her was overwhelming, but it would be her doom.
This is better. She will live a long, happy life.
Focusing on thought, I lifted myself above the mountain peak and looked down at the terrace and the Void Gate.
I arrived just in time to see the wards shatter and darkness spill through.
A twisting length of blackest nothingness, a tentacle of non-existence, tore its way into reality and lashed out in my direction.
A beat of my wings took me over it, and I breathed a gout of flame into the dark.
My flame burned bright enough to cut through the tentacle, severing a length of it which unraveled as it fell toward the sea.
More limbs forced their way through the gate, tearing it wider as the Void sought to consume the tiny world I had made my home.
“You cannot have this place,” I roared into the breach. “You cannot have her!”
My flame flayed the next tentacle to emerge, scouring the surface off it.
Grasping claws slashed at me, tearing into my wings, but I grabbed hold of the gate with my talons and heaved against the forces keeping it open.
When the claws swung for me again, I greeted them with a blast of flame so intense it almost blinded me.
The Void-claws disintegrated in the face of that, but more darkness poured through the gap even as I heaved at it.
It’s too late. I’ve already failed. The thought sent ice into my heart, but I kept fighting.
All around, the storm picked up strength, and I had to hope Lena would get back to her world before I fell.
Before the doom I’d invited in consumed the woman I loved along with everything else here.
Marisol had started evacuating by now, surely?
I resigned myself to not knowing. My only way to help anyone was to hold back the tide of Voidborn monsters. A tendril whipped across me, a thousand mouths biting hard. With a roar, I returned the favor, sinking my teeth into the Void before letting out a wash of flame.
In the time that took, a half-dozen other limbs emerged, pushing me away. The rift widened, letting through more Void energy to strengthen the storm. Unless something changed soon, my battle would become a doomed last stand.
At least Lena is safe, I told myself. She went straight to the portal and back to her home, just as I told her to .