53. Clash of Stone and Steel #2
The shift complete, Samhail grabbed at the nearest void in the mist, and his hands closed around the creature. He tore its head from its body and tossed both aside.
Talyn realized she needed to get away from him. He wouldn’t hurt her on purpose, but visibility was limited, and she didn’t want to be mistaken for an enemy if he ripped before looking.
She resheathed her daggers, grabbed the swords he’d discarded, and looked around for something to fight. She jolted as one of the twins in gargoyle form emerged briefly from the fog to barrel past her before being swallowed by it once again.
Three voids shot toward Talyn, swirling the mist in their wake, and she slashed at one of them.
She was rewarded with a shriek, but the thing only swung around again as Talyn tried to stab for the other two voids.
She thrust forward with Samhail’s blades, and the two creatures impaled themselves on the swords as they tried to get to her.
She shoved the blades forward to be sure they were in and then jerked them upward.
Strangled cries came from the invisible forms, and she withdrew the swords so the forms fell around her.
Talyn turned back and slashed the third creature across the neck, and it fell next to the other two, leaving three human bodies on the ground in puddles of blood and blue symbiont sludge.
She didn’t pause to look at them. It wasn’t a courtesy she’d allow herself.
Their deaths would be marked only as another number in her body count.
Between the outlaws and the soldiers she’d killed recently, that count had swelled quickly in the last few days.
Two hundred ninety-eight. Two hundred ninety-nine. Three hundred.
A milestone.
A long, wailing scream rent the air and echoed around the clearing, as if each misty droplet of water sent it bouncing, and the roar of three gargoyles answered from somewhere in the fog.
“Cyra!” Bressen’s panicked shout also answered his wife’s scream.
The scream seemed to come from Talyn’s right, but it was hard to tell in the chaos.
She slashed her sword toward another void that barreled toward her.
It stuck in something solid, and she followed up with her second blade as she aimed toward where she assumed the creature’s head would be.
The symbiont fell to the ground, its headless body again visible as the parasite leaked from it.
Talyn turned and ran toward where she thought she’d heard Cyra. The lady had saved her life, and Talyn was partially responsible for the death of the woman’s father. She owed it to Cyra to come to her aid.
Talyn cried out as claws raked across her back.
She felt the cool air through the torn flaps of her shirt as blood trickled down her back, but she kept going.
She charged across the clearing, not daring to port since she could barely see anything.
She knocked bodies out of the way as she went by, throwing her shoulder into them when she saw voids.
“Cyra! Answer me!” Bressen’s voice called again.
Two forms emerged just ahead of Talyn. Cyra was on her knees while Magdalene stood over her, reaching toward her. Cyra seemed to struggle as what looked like ice or frost seeped over her chest.
Talyn ported immediately. She appeared next to Magdalene and slammed into the woman, sending them both toppling to the ground. Talyn tried to raise a sword to strike, but Magdalene put a hand to her chest, and Talyn grunted as a huge forcefield sent her flying backward.
Talyn landed hard and dropped the swords as her head kicked back against the ground. Her vision went momentarily black before stars flared again behind her eyes. She had the sensation of falling as her eyes fluttered open, and it took her a second to realize she was indeed falling.
She tried to clear the cobwebs from her mind, then a scream tore from her throat as she realized what had happened. She’d been near the chasm Cyra had opened to cut off Sandrian’s retreat, and Magdalene’s forcefield had pushed her over.
Talyn ported upward immediately. Once, twice, then a third time. Her third port brought her to the lip of the chasm, and she grabbed for the edge, but there was nothing to hold onto. She fell back as her fingers came away with only grass and dirt.
She was about to port again when she felt her body being pulled upward by the familiar feel of someone’s summoning power.
A brutally strong hand, rough as stone, closed around her wrist, and Talyn looked up to see two glowing blue eyes.
She blinked as Samhail’s stone face came into focus, his arm outstretched before him, and she followed it to where his huge stone hand held onto her.
She yelped as he tugged her up, and she was momentarily weightless before he dropped her back on her feet. He let go, and she stumbled forward, catching her balance. They looked at each other for half a second before they both turned toward Cyra and Magdalene.
Power flowed between the two women as they seemed locked in some sort of magical battle. Talyn could feel the strength of the energy pulsing between them as it reverberated through her chest.
“I’ll help her,” Talyn promised Samhail.
He hesitated, but four symbionts broke through the fog then, and he turned to engage them with a roar.
He pushed them back into the mist where the outlines of other symbionts still writhed in the disturbing parody of a ghostly dance, and Talyn wondered how Bressen and Maziren were faring against the creatures.
Talyn didn’t see Samhail’s swords, so she drew her daggers and took a step toward Cyra. A voice stopped her, though.
“I finally realized why you look so familiar.”
She whirled to see Aidan standing a few feet away with his crossbow trained on her, the dark head of a caronium-tipped bolt aimed at her chest. She was about to port behind him and drive her dagger into his neck when he spoke again.
“You look just like your sister. At least, I assume she was your sister.”
Talyn’s entire body locked up as her eyes met his.
“I couldn’t pinpoint the resemblance right away,” he went on, smiling at her, “but now it’s all I can see.” He shook his head and looked at her as if in awe. “You did have a sister, did you not?”
Did.
He used the past tense, as if he knew her sister was dead, and something closed around Talyn’s throat.
“How did you know Julia?” she asked, willing her voice not to shake.
“Julia? Was that her name?”
“How did you know her?” Talyn asked again, anger moving in.
He smiled. “Let’s just say she and I shared an intimate week together.”
Talyn closed her eyes and tried to quell the tremble in her chest that was starting to work its way into every part of her body. She wasn’t sure if her legs would be able to hold her up in a few seconds.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
She was afraid she knew, but…it couldn’t be what she suspected.
Aidan shrugged. “It means I spent a lot of time with your sister before she died.”
No. She’d killed the man who murdered Julia. There were any number of other explanations for Aidan’s words. He’d mistaken her for someone else. Or he’d somehow found out about her past and was just trying to get in her head.