Chapter 53
CAM
“Willowman. Oh gods. What happened? What are you doing here?”
“Prasan,” he groaned. “Traitor.”
An icy fist formed in my stomach. “No…”
“Cameron, the tincture,” Palia urged. “Maybe it can help him.”
Yes. I rummaged in my pack for a vial, popped the cap, and pressed it to his lips.
He gulped it down. “Thank you. Oh…” He pressed his fist to the wound at his chest. “He thought I was dead. I faked…but then…the blood loss. I slowed it down, but…” He groaned again.
“You’re healing?” I wanted to pull his hand away to examine the wounds.
“Hey!” Waxen waved his hands in the air, turning this way and that. “Hey, we need to stop the test.”
“He’s communicating with the cameras,” Hawke said.
“They won’t get here in time,” Willowman said. “We’re two hundred miles south of the academy. Prasan shut down the warp to this place. I need to open it again.”
He was too weak, though. “You’re hurt.”
His mouth flattened. “One more of your tinctures should do the trick.”
I gave him another vial.
“We have incoming!” someone shouted.
A dark mass was on the horizon, getting larger by the minute.
“Help me up!” Willowman said. “We don’t have much time.” He grabbed my shoulders. “This is about you. He wants you dead, and he doesn’t care who he takes down with you.”
I wanted to ask why. Why would Prasan want me dead? But the threat was getting closer. “What is it? What’s coming?”
“Graynites!” Hawke bellowed.
“Keep her safe!” Willowman shoved me at Curi and Touron, then broke into a loping jog toward the tree line.
I didn’t need to ask why he wasn’t taking me with him. I was a target, and having me with him would make him one too, making it impossible to fix the warp.
“They’re after Cameron!” Palia said.
“Close in!” Curi ordered.
The gargoyles closed in around me, hiding me with their huge frames.
“Wait!” Palia said. “I have an idea to buy us some time.”
“Spill it,” Touron said. “These fuckers are coming in fast.”
Palia shifted to her human form. “They can’t possibly know what Cameron looks like, right?” Murmurs of assent echoed around me. “But they might know she can’t shift. So Ginia, Shar, and I, we need to shift to human form.”
“They won’t know which female to target,” Shar said. “Genius.”
But they’d target them all. “No. I won’t have you put yourself at risk like that.”
“If you die, we’re all fucked,” Hawke growled. “Protect the females!”
I was shoved into a circle of male gargoyles with Shar and the twins.
They were defenseless—no weapons, no partial shift.
I handed them each a dagger.
The graynites landed, and the ground shook with the impact. The goyle cadets closed ranks, creating a barrier between us and them, but I caught a glimpse anyway, and my heart dropped into my stomach.
The fuckers were huge—uglier and meaner-looking than in the pictures Mirrowind had shown us. Spikes jutted up from their backs and shoulders, and their chins were pointed, eyes as black as night fixed on us.
Moonlight rippled over their gray, bumpy skin, highlighting every lethal, muscular dip and plane.
They weren’t hunched over like in the pictures we’d been shown.
They stood tall, broad, and thick-waisted with lashing barbed tails and powerful thighs.
I had no doubt that any one of them could crush me without any effort at all.
The cadets were all a head shorter, even in their goyle forms.
We looked like children playing war.
There were five graynites, but there might as well have been fifty.
The odds were against us.
How could they be here? How had they bypassed the wards? None of this made sense, but it was happening, and my body was flooded with adrenaline, my beast alive and ready to fight.
“The girl,” a gruff voice demanded. “We take. You live.”
“Fuck you,” Curi growled. “You want her, you’ll have to go through us.”
All the males growled and snarled in agreement.
“Then. You. Die.” The graynite threw back his head and let out a roar that turned my legs to jelly and my bowels to water. “Attack!”
The world blew up with the sound of battle cries and the thunder of footfalls as the goyles and graynites clashed.
A golden sword cut through the night.
Hawke!
Curi fought alongside him, taking on the same graynite, but a moment later, a swipe of its tail sent Curi flying through the air.
I rushed toward him. “Curi!”
Shar grabbed my arm and dragged me back. “No!”
The wall of cadets was already down to five. How had that happened?
Dark eyes locked on me. “Kill the females.”
A graynite leapt over the cadets, his talons aimed for me and Shar but was knocked out of the air by a stony blur.
Touron!
The graynite hit the ground with Touron on top, but my buddy barely had time to land a punch before the beast had him by the throat.
Touron bucked and clawed, attempting to get free. The graynite stood slowly, lifting Touron into the air and squeezing.
He was killing him. The bastard was killing him.
I broke free of Shar and sprinted toward the creature with a blood-curdling scream.
Its head whipped my way in surprise, and I buried my talons in its thigh.
It let out a screech and released Touron.
I yanked my talons free and rolled away, coming up in a run, hoping to the gods that Touron had managed to get clear of the beast.
The ground behind me shook.
It was on my tail.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I was headed toward Willowman. Shit, shit, shit. “Watch out!”
He turned at the sound of my warning, golden eyes lighting up like flames before he hit the ground.
The tree line behind him ripped open, and a huge gargoyle burst into the clearing, wings spread wide, dark hair whipping back, husky eyes bright with rage.
Serath!
His gaze skimmed over my head, mouth turning down with rage as he flew at the beast.
Selas and Orix were close behind him, followed by several goyles in alpha uniform.
I hit the ground with my knees, a sob of relief clawing at my throat.
“I’ve got you,” Willowman said. “Hurry, get through the—”
He was torn away from me and hit the ground with a large male on top of him.
“Prasan! No!”
Prasan punched Willowman in the head, knocking the witch out cold. “This is your fault,” he snarled at me.
I turned to run, but smoke clouded my vision and poured down my throat. My knees buckled, and my head went woozy, and the next moment I was in Prasan’s arms, my back to his chest, his forearm pressed to my throat.
“Look!” he hissed. “Look at the death you’ve caused simply by existing.”
Serath fought for his life against two graynites. Selas was on the ground with Curi leaning over her, his hands on her chest as he screamed for help.
“They can’t shift to chimera here,” Prasan said. “I made sure of that.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You think I’m a fool?” I felt the bite of a blade against my throat. “I’m not about to monologue and waste time.”
He was about to kill me. This was it. Oh fuck, this was it.
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