Lucille
Chapter
Fifty-Three
Ronen
Icarved through necks, sifting souls. My shadows felled leagues of infected. Aspen burned them, recycling them to the lowest circles.
The taste of tar wrapped in winter berries sat on my tongue like a corrupted treat. But that was all it did. My skin didn’t line with black. My teeth didn’t sharpen, nor did my head grow horns. Sam’s shot worked. Not that I thought it wouldn’t, but the confirmation was relieving.
A bellow and a scream sliced through the clashing battle. Both familiar.
I whipped my head toward the hellion first.
She plowed through the infected, beelining for Lucifer, rage filling her features and our bond.
Then Alexei.
He faced Ridigar, a dagger lodged in his wing and suffocating smoke surrounding him. My gut clenched.
Rune slammed me with a warning.
She leaped on one infected, then devoured a blood-banded male luscelering toward me. Her unhinged jaws snapped back to their natural position after a gruesome swallow.
I twisted and plunged my sword into the chest of another, ripping it free to thrust into the next. My shadows leaped out, unhinged and merciless.
The hellion didn’t need help. She could do this. I had to trust her skill. Trust her plan. My fears were useless here.
And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t know something I needed to.
Rune, I ordered, nodding toward the hellion.
She answered by switching directions and eating any infected in her way, carving a path toward our cordistella.
And I luscelered toward Alexei.
Vicious wind sheared through Ridigar’s smoke, and heavy rain poured on their position. But it wasn’t enough. At least ten other infected attacked him, pushing against his wind, squinting through his rain.
The squad Alexei had led were all dead but one. Even the archers in the sky were thinning.
His lightning rained down in blinding flashes, frying them on contact and keeping them at bay. The booms carried over his screeching wind.
But there were always more.
And they had found his weakness.
An infected Dominion ripped out the dagger lodged in Alexei’s tender membranes, pulling another bellow from him. His pain rang through their satisfied hisses and Ridigar’s laughter.
His wings were too large a target.
It was a death sentence to have them out on the ground. A death sentence to have them soaking in the rain.
But they were still injured, and he’d chosen to keep them, knowing this could happen.
Three flaming arrows sank into the infected Dominion’s chest.
I glanced to my right.
MJ.
She carved another path toward him.
Ridigar noticed us coming and called out an order.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty infected circled him, pushing in like a rabid mob.
Alexei’s wind and lightning kept them at a distance, but he struggled.
MJ and I moved faster.
I white-knuckled the hilt of my sword as I blocked elemental attacks, dodged flying weapons, claws, and Glory. I threw out waves of power.
Still, we weren’t fucking close enough to help.
Alexei noted our distance, then looked at the Dread near him. He stared at Xavier longer than he should have, something silent passing between them.
The message cost him.
The infected closed in.
“Alexei!” I bellowed.
The infected’s faces and bodies morphed into Alexei.
There were thirty of him.
They all paused in confusion, and Alexei used that moment.
His rain poured harder, flooding the ground. Not just around him, but farther out, encompassing more infected and blood-banded than I could count—and our larger targets, the Spinewalkers.
Something inside me stilled, a sickening realization carving through my stomach.
My movements turned chaotic, my shadows gripping minds and puppeteering them to turn. It took more energy to use them than to kill them. I didn’t have the luxury to waste power like this.
But I didn’t care.
They blocked a swarm of infected trying to reach me, and I materialized my wings, throwing myself to the ground as Dominions targeted them.
Then I shot into the air.
I flew.
Rain drenched me.
His lightning bolt came.
The world slowed.
It streaked through the air toward the pool of water.
“Alexei!” I shouted, dropping altitude and reaching out toward where I had last seen the real him.
He leaped into the air with a roar, wings beating uselessly as the infected clawed him back down.
Xavier was in the same state.
I latched onto Alexei’s hand.
His wind and my shadows pushed back the infected.
I wrenched Alexei free.
Xavier’s wings flapped, gaining altitude.
Alexei’s bolt struck.
Thousands standing in the water convulsed and collapsed, bodies snapping into the mud. Those closest to the strike were dead or about to be. Farther out, the infected locked up, stunned and immobilized.
Along the tree line, Spinewalkers went up in flames, their burning trunks worth the lives Alexei had sacrificed.
It was our biggest hit yet.
“Nice job, L—”
Xavier plummeted from the sky, a dagger in his spine.
Then Alexei roared. The rain stopped. The lightning paused.
A large sword protruded from his wing.
Ridigar hovered in the air, smirking.
My shadows raged toward him, seeking to eradicate him from our lives.
But MJ shot up behind the cocky bastard before I reached him, flaming hands closing around his throat.
Flesh burned.
His shriek turned into a choked gasp.
His head sloughed away under MJ’s grip, the surprise on his face sweeter than any blade.
I tucked my wet wings in close and wrapped them in thick shadows, and we hit the ground hard. Luckily, MJ’s wings were dry enough to dematerialize them.
The battlefield stalled into a single stolen minute of reprieve.
Alexei dropped to his knees in the mud, gasping.
“Take it out,” he rasped as he gazed up at me. “Then cut them off.”
His pain went deeper than his wounds.
He had fought so hard to keep them.
And we should.
But—
“Lex, we don’t have Sam to heal the scars.”
He flicked his gaze to MJ.
“Cauterize them.”
Two clipped words.
The next round of infected would be spilling from those Spinewalkers, and he couldn’t fight like this.
I nodded and sent my shadows into his nose.
“No,” he snapped, emotion thick in his voice. “I want to fucking feel it.”
“Alexei,” MJ and I protested.
“You are taking a part of me away. I will not have it feel painless.”
He rose on shaky legs and leaned against MJ.
“Do it.”
I resheathed my sword, then clenched my jaw as I ripped the blade from his wing.
Spittle flew from his mouth.
I held up the foreign sword.
Alexei tensed, digging his fingers into MJ’s shoulder.
I looked away from the emotion rimming his eyes and blinked back my own as I sliced through the muscle connecting the wings to his back.
He screamed, collapsing against MJ.
His dappled wings dropped into the mud.
“Lex, let Ronen numb your pain as I cauterize them,” MJ said softly. “Please.”
He nodded, head bowed, and I held him as MJ stopped the bleeding, his cries and gasps breaking me.
MJ burned his wings before the next wave of infected storming us could trample them.
We fought through them while targeting the Spinewalkers.
MJ and I cleared our surroundings, guarding Alexei as he flooded their area with rain and zapped them.
Three of the twenty went up in flames, their dark bark burning as infected Damned came running out like human torches.
Despite Alexei’s wishes, I kept numbing his pain. It didn’t cost much energy, and it was worth it if it allowed him to better defend us.
We repeated the process over and over.
But I felt a creeping heaviness in my body, a subtle signal that I couldn’t do this forever.
Still, more came.
But it wouldn’t be enough.
I could only hope that wherever the Hellion was, her plan worked.
Lucille
“Melanie!” I screamed, shooting my powers at her infected. Cluster after cluster dropped, their goopy bodies turning to dust once my powers had their fill of torture. A heavy weight pulled at my chest and feet, but I wasn’t sure if it was the start of a drain or something else entirely.
Aspen and my squad fought alongside me as Melanie, inside my father’s body, led us farther away from the main fight. Her infected thinned under our efforts, and we almost had her outnumbered.
Then we broke through the line of trees.
There were two large groups.
One in front of the gates and one shouting and slamming against the bars on the other side.
“Lucille!” Aspen shouted while he fought, a question in my name.
“I have a plan!” I assured him as I shoved an icicle into an infected’s chest, then burned them.
My squad efficiently downed every infected that came in range, giving the final kills to me and Aspen. We thinned the horde surrounding Melanie and pushed her back toward my trap.
It felt too easy.
And the opening leading straight to her felt too suspicious.
But she lingered at the edge of the pentagram, and if this was my only shot, I needed to take it.
I luscelered through the gap, beelining for her grinning, smug face.
A sword slammed into my collarbone mid-run, the impact snapping through me and ripping my feet from the ground.
I flew back, hitting the mud hard as a cry tore from my chest.
Aspen bellowed.
Ronen’s wrath speared through my pain.
Rune and Hadrian released vicious growls.
I clawed at my chest, fingers coming away slick with blood. The blade had sliced through my uniform and scored my skin, but the wound was shallow.
The real agony burned deeper.
My collarbone was broken.
Melanie’s infected filled in behind me, separating me from my squad. They fought with fervor to get to me. Our Soulhounds’ snarls ripped through the clearing. Blue fire flashed at every turn. The earth rumbled. Flesh split. The sickly, rotten scent of infected blood filled the air.
Yet the infected never touched me.
They wanted me isolated.
I pushed to my feet.
A sharp throb stabbed through my shoulder, and my nostrils flared, but my anger and pain had nothing, absolutely nothing, on how I felt when he stepped into view.
“Miss me?” He twirled his sword, the edge dark with my blood.
“Brockalian,” I spat.
“Princess,” he taunted. “Ready for me to take the other?” He tapped his ear, his wrinkled face goading me.