27. Hale
Hale
The weak shot crackles over my shoulder and sinks into my arm.
It doesn’t hurt much. It does piss me off.
“Sweetheart,” I bite out, driving my boot into the chest of the next construct hard enough to crack its armour open, “if you want my attention that badly, ask.”
Another one comes at me from the right. I catch the blade before it reaches my throat. The thing’s arm judders in my grip, dead-light whining through the metal, and I rip it clean off before smashing the stump into its face. Hellfire rolls out of me in a hard burst, taking its head with it.
The chamber is a mess of black, silver, weak blue, and my fire, all of it bouncing off black stone and old ward-lines.
Tobin’s net collapses as one of the trapped things tears through it.
Leith goes cold and vicious to my left, his magic cutting clean through another construct at the knees before he finishes it with a second strike through the chest.
Asha ducks under another swipe and grabs a fallen blade from the ground.
That gets my attention for half a second too long.
A construct hits me from behind. Metal slams into my back. I go forward a step, snarl, and throw my elbow backwards into its ribs hard enough to dent the bastard in half.
It staggers. I grab its head and drive it down into my knee. Metal gives with a nasty crunch. Then I hurl the wreck into the wall and turn back to Asha.
She has the blade in both hands and murder in her eyes.
That is, annoyingly, hot as fuck.
“Left,” I say calmly.
She pivots fast enough to catch the next construct coming for her flank.
The blade screeches against its arm, skids, then bites in on the second pass when she stops trying to fight like a witch and starts fighting like herself.
Brutal, efficient and angry. She drives the point up under its chin and kicks it away when the thing starts convulsing.
“Nice,” Tobin says, silver current snapping from his hand to bind another one mid-charge.
“Don’t encourage her,” I chuckle and slam both palms into the floor.
Hellfire punches out in a hard ring around me. The chamber lights up orange-white for one violent second. Three constructs catch the full blast and go down in a shower of molten metal and dead light.
The fourth gets clipped at the edge and keeps coming.
“Persistent little cunt,” I mutter.
It lunges straight through the fading fire. I meet it head-on, catch its wrist, and feel the old power worked into the metal under the surface. Not academy-made. Not even close. This shit is older, nastier, built to guard something important.
Good. Gives me an excuse.
I let the shift roll through me, changing from a man to a three-headed hellhound. My bones grind and fire tears through muscle. My spine cracks into a new line and keeps going.
The construct gets one final second to realise it has picked the wrong target before my hand is gone and my paw slams into its chest. His armour caves.
Dead-light bursts out in a thin scream. I tear it open and toss the wreck aside as my other two heads surge into being with a violence that always feels right.
The chamber erupts.
“A warning would’ve been nice,” Tobin snaps.
I don’t answer because I can’t talk in this form and I have no need to.
I’m busy taking the next construct apart with the centre head while the right one locks onto another, closing in on Asha.
I lunge, heat and claws, and catch the thing round the middle.
Metal shrieks under my jaws. I wrench hard and fling half of it into the far wall.
Asha stares at me for one beat, blade in hand, blonde hair wild, eyes bright with lust.
She turns and drives the stolen blade into the shoulder gap of another construct trying to get behind Leith. It sticks. She abandons it instantly, shaking out her hand, and drops low as Tobin sends silver current over her head.
Leith steps into the opening I make and cuts through the construct in front of him with one clean, black strike that severs spine, armour and whatever passes for life in these things.
I surge forward and hit the middle of the chamber hard enough to crack stone. The silver lines under the floor flare in answer. Wrong move. The entire room answers me with a low thud from beneath, and three more constructs tear themselves free from the walls.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Tobin sees them at the same time I do. “That floor is anchoring them.”
Leith turns sharply. “Then stop feeding it bodies.”
I wheel and slam my front paws into the nearest one before it’s fully formed, crushing the chest plate inward.
My left head tears at its arm while the right catches another by the neck and wrenches it aside before it can get near Asha.
She moves fast now. Faster than before. She isn’t trying to cast. She’s reading movement, stepping into openings, using whatever brutal instinct she brought from her own realm.
It does beautiful things to me.
One construct rushes her with a spear this time instead of a blade. Different design with gold worked through black metal in old lines that make my fire snarl under my skin
I launch for it.
I’m too late.
Asha sees the line of the strike and twists, but the spear catches the side of her top and slices through cloth and skin at her ribs before she can clear it. Blood gushes out.
Everything in me goes feral.
I hit the construct so hard that the wall behind it fractures. My centre head closes on its shoulder and crushes down. The right tears the spear free and flings it across the chamber. The left catches another construct that thought the distraction was an opening and rips half its face off.
Asha presses one hand to her side and swears.
Tobin’s silver current lashes out, pins one of the half-formed constructs to the wall, and he shouts, “Hale, the fucking floor.”
I know.
I can feel it now under my paws. Every wrecked construct, every spill of dead-light, every impact is sinking into the silver lines and waking whatever sits under this chamber.
I drop back from the nearest body before the floor can drink the remains, then slam my paw through the chest of the next construct and fling the pieces into the passage behind us.
Leith catches on at once. “Keep them off the runes.”
No shit.
Asha wobbles on her feet, but Tobin is there to catch her. He presses his hand to her side and heals her, not as quickly as I’d like, but quickly enough.
Asha shoves his hand away at once. “I’m fucking fine.”
She isn’t, but she’s upright and swearing, which counts.
Another pulse hits through the floor, and the silver lines flare brighter. The broken constructs twitch where they’ve fallen, dead-light crawling back towards the runes in thin ugly threads.
I lunge and rake both front paws through the nearest line. Stone explodes upward. Silver fractures under the impact, but not cleanly enough. The chamber booms in answer, and pain shoots through my legs. The old magic in the floor bites back.
A conduit.
Leith lands beside me with cold black power already cutting into the stone. He gets it faster than I do. “Not the channels. The joints.”
I wheel towards the outer ring where the floor-lines meet the wall and slam my weight into the seam. Black rock cracks and gold flashes under the silver for one violent second, and the whole chamber shudders.
Tobin throws a binding behind me and catches a construct by both arms before it can spear Asha again. “That did something.”
I hit it again, harder.
The seam gives with a crack that runs through the wall and under my paws. Gold lines blaze under the silver and then snap dark. The chamber lurches. Every construct still standing jerks like something just yanked a chain through its spine.
“Yes,” Tobin says. “Again.”
I don’t need to be told twice. I slam my full weight into the next joint and feel the old stone split under me.
Leith drives his power into the opposite side without needing another instruction. Cold black current slices through the outer ring in a clean, brutal cut. The chamber screams under us.
Asha staggers to the fallen spear, snatches it up with blood still on her side, and plants the butt into the throat of a construct trying to reform near the wall. “Stay down, you metallic prick.”
Hot. Inconveniently hot.
The half-made thing spasms and drops apart.
Tobin’s silver lashes across the floor in hard lines that catch the dead light trying to crawl back to the broken runes and pin it in place.
I drive forward and smash through the next seam before the chamber can recover. Stone bursts under my paws. Gold flares, then gutters. The construct nearest the centre collapses, armour dropping empty to the floor with a flat crash.
One left.
It turns on Asha.
Big mistake.
I hit it from the side before it gets within striking distance, all three heads going for something different.
One tears at the shoulder joint, another clamps around the middle, and the third bites down on its weapon arm.
Metal gives. I wrench hard enough to rip it into three useless pieces and throw them in different directions.
Silence slams down.
Asha is breathing hard. Tobin’s magic still hums over the floor. Leith’s death-current cuts through the room in thin, cold threads as he checks for movement. But the constructs are done.
For now.
I force the shift back. Fire rolls through me again, dragging me down into skin and muscle.
It hurts more going back than it does going over.
My bones lock into place with a savage series of jolts that drag a curse out of me.
I drop to one knee on the cracked floor and brace a hand against the stone until the fire settles under my skin again.
“Next time,” Tobin says, breathing hard, “give me half a second before you become a fucking nightmare.”
I lift my head and smirk. “You seemed to cope.”
Leith ignores both of us and moves straight to the outer ring, crouching by the broken seam. His fingers skim the exposed gold under the silver. “It’s not dead.”
“Of course it fucking isn’t,” I mutter and get to my feet.
Asha is still standing, which is impressive and irritating. Blood has soaked through the side of her top despite Tobin healing her. It’s not enough to worry me properly, but enough to keep me on edge. She’s holding that spear like she means to threaten the room with it.
“You missed one,” she pants.
I look down at her. “You’re welcome.”
Her eyes flash. “I had it.”
“You got stabbed.”
“It was a scratch.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Look,” Leith says, interrupting us.
We turn to where he is staring at something on the ground.
At first, I think it’s just more of the same old gold under silver, but then the exposed seam moves, enough for the light under it to shift and reveal a line cut into the black stone beneath, thin and deliberate, too straight to be damage.
Leith presses his fingers harder into the crack, and the gold answers with a low pulse.
Tobin steps in beside him at once. “That’s script.”
Asha moves before either of them can stop her. Spear still in hand, blood on her top, temper all over her face. She drops into a crouch opposite Leith and looks down at the line in the stone.
The second she sees it, she goes still.
That gets my full attention.
“What?” I ask, already moving closer.
Her throat works once. “I know this.”
Tobin’s eyes sharpen. “Can you read it?”
She looks furious for half a second, which is answer enough. “I’m not able to say it.”
Leith traces the line without touching the centre of it. “It wasn’t part of the construct anchors. It was hidden beneath them.”
“Hidden by who?” I ask.
“It’s the gate the old bag spoke of.”
She looks up at Leith. “She was right.”
“So how do we open it?” I ask, and it’s only slightly rhetorical.