Chapter 36

CHAPTER36

Iscramble to the medical suite, taking a handful of vials and syringes off the shelves before Ashen grabs my arm and pulls me toward the corridor. I hear glass doors opening behind us and running footsteps. We follow the others down the hallway, running as fast as we can go to catch up.

When Ediye makes it to the far end she turns to face us, a wind picking up around to lift her black hair from her shoulders. She raises her palms and starts to chant. I glance over my shoulder as we run, stones falling behind us to block the path to the chamber. By the time we reach the end, the roof of the corridor collapses, sending chips of rock skittering against our heels as we come to a stop.

“Is there another way out of their chamber?” Ediye asks as Ashen pulls some of the vials and syringes from my hand to put them in his shirt pocket. I stuff the rest in my jeans.

“Yes,” Valentina says. “There’s another door on the far side. It leads to the woods.”

“Then let’s go, before we’re surrounded.”

We run up the stairs by twos, our weapons in our hands and our hearts raging. Eryx is the first to burst through the door and into the library, but he comes to a halt as he bends backwards, forcing the rest of us to stop on the landing. A sword of fire sweeps over his chest, narrowly missing his skin. A Reaper stands on the other side of the door, his sword swinging around for a return strike.

Eryx rights himself and meets the next blow with a flash of light across his own silver sword. The angel strikes back hard, pushing the demon further into the room. The clash of metal echoes through the library, crashing up to the stained glass windows and the high ceiling. Eryx’s wings spread wide and he draws them back before sweeping them to his front, knocking the sword from the demon’s hand. He slices the Reaper across the chest and neck with his feathers. The demon is already falling to his knees when Eryx plunges his sword into his heart, hot blood spilling onto the tapestry that lies beneath their feet.

“Your boyfriend is a badass,” I say.

“I know,” Ediye and Cole answer in unison.

I raise my eyebrows at them as they share a brief but wicked smile. “Oh, so it’s like that now, is it?”

Ediye’s smile grows wide. “Yeah, it’s like that.”

“You’ve been holding out on details.”

“Maybe another day,” she says as a second demon enters the room with her sword drawn. She rushes toward us, meeting Cole’s blade this time. I recognize this one just as I did the last. They were both with Ember in the resurrection room in my vision of Ashen in the Shadow Realm.

Ediye adds her gifts to the fight, hitting the demon with an orb of energy that the Reaper manages to deflect with her sword, but it gives Cole the distraction he needs to land a blow to her shoulder. Cole and Ediye fight together in a fluid dance of spells and fire, blasts of black spheres illuminated with bright flame. They push the Reaper back into the hallway and together they give her an everlasting death of magic and metal.

As soon as the demon falls, Cole and Ediye look at one another for a heartbeat before diving into a passionate kiss. My heart nearly bursts with love watching my soulmate as she’s swept up into Cole’s arms, Eryx joining them to wrap his embrace around them both. I look at Ashen and he smiles down at me, and I know he feels the love that illuminates my soul through our bond.

“Come on, vampire. Let’s get out of here so you can get all those highly descriptive details that I am sure you are eager to hear from Ediye.”

I let out a laugh as he lays his arm across my shoulder, pulling me in to press a warm kiss to my cheek. Life is everything in this brief moment. Love and fear and hope. Happiness on the edge of death. I feel… enriched. If I could just make this one moment last forever, I’d have all the magic of life right in my hand.

Ashen’s palm drifts down to my back and he pushes me along, Davina and Valentina following behind us. Eryx leads the way down the hall after the trio breaks apart, and we head toward the main entrance of the house. Valentina explains the layout of the catacombs as we go, where the hybrids will come out in the woods, where the strongest and weakest points are in the land that surrounds us.

“I don’t think it’s worth trying the roads,” she says. “With this snowstorm, we’re just as likely to get stuck or slide off the road in our urgency to get away. Chances are strong that either Semyon or the demons already have it covered, unless they’re too busy fighting one another.”

“I recognized the two that we killed in the library. It looks like the ones that are after us are those that were loyal to Ember. How many did she have in her Mean Girls club?” I ask Ashen.

“I’m not entirely sure. Twelve that I know of, but there could be more.”

“And we’ve killed five in total now over the last two days. That’s not great.” I look up at Ashen as we stop in the foyer. Valentina pulls a pair of swords from a hidden cupboard and hands her borrowed blade back to Cole.

“If we can make it through the woods and over the mountain, there’s a coven of witches with a stronghold on the other side,” Valentina says as she runs her gaze across the silver gladius in her hand. She smiles fondly at it as though she’s looking at an old friend. “I have a good relationship with them. They are powerful and would give us the numbers to fight back. The hybrids will be coming out on the far side of the house, further down the hill. We have a small time advantage if we go now.”

I nod and turn to the angel among us. “Eryx, can you fly ahead to warn them?”

His gaze darts to Cole and Ediye. I know he doesn’t want to leave them, but he sheathes his sword and gives me a troubled smile. “Yeah. I can do that.”

“Then let’s get out of here. We won’t have much time. And whatever happens,” I say, holding Valentina’s gaze so there can’t be any doubt, “Semyon Abdulov is mine.”

Valentina nods and we file out the front door, sticking close to the house before crossing the snow-covered lawn to a small side entrance in the stone wall. The snow is thick and whipped into deep drifts where the wind has scraped across the land, but we keep a fast pace, running wherever we can. We barely make it to the treeline before a wretched howling drifts toward us from the forests on the far side of the house. It sounds more like a wraith than a wolf, like a soul being torn apart to make something new.

“Hybrids,” Valentina says when I glance at her with a questioning look. “They’re free of the catacombs.”

I take a deep breath and we surge ahead through the woods, climbing over rocks and fallen trees and pushing through deep drifts of snow. Sometimes there are clearings and sometimes the forest is so thick that we have to break the branches with our swords to keep moving forward. Though the blowing snow is quickly filling in our footprints, we’ll still be easy to follow.

Not that we need to worry about that.

The first attack comes from the werewolves that pour down the hill in front of us like a wave of fur and teeth. Their mist flows ahead of them through the trees, coating the landscape and obscuring the drifts of snow beneath our feet. I ready my sword and look for Semyon.

Valentina stalks ahead to meet them. She spins with her blades and cuts the first down with a sweep across the wolf’s neck. She’s already killed her second wolf by the time Ashen and Cole each slay their first.

“She’s great,” I say as Ediye steps to my side and we watch Valentina eviscerate another werewolf. She hisses into its face as she drags her blade through its abdomen, spilling steaming guts onto the snow.

Davina joins my other side and readies her pike as Ediye forms a ball of magic in her palm and fires it off into the pack. Two werewolves are knocked off course by the orb and only one gets up.

We press ahead and join the others in the fight, forming a loose circle as the wolves close in around us. The smell of blood and bile and piss and spilled guts and all the other scents of battle whip in the wind. I hiss and cut and stab. I steal glances at Ashen, his face stern with concentration as he swings his sword in graceful arcs. I look at Davina who’s surprisingly pretty handy with that pike. She’s got a great aim for eyeballs. Cole and Ediye fight together in their seamless, elegant dance, just like they did in the house. And normally, I’d be all over this shit. Killing werewolves, battling with my friends, hissing… but the unknown of the hybrids and the absence of Semyon and the whereabouts of the other Reapers are problems that have me too anxious to enjoy the fun.

Turns out, those become the least of my worries.

Another player is ready to enter the game.