Chapter 36

Chapter Thirty-Six

PIPER

She hadn’t considered herself claustrophobic before getting buried alive, but after their near death, the mere thought of going underground again made her break out in a sweat.

The tunnel’s exit—now a pile of rubble—had released them into the woods about a hundred feet from the old Consulate. Ash led the way through the trees, pushing through thorny bushes and detouring around fallen logs. He moved quickly, and Piper’s legs burned as she struggled to keep up, but she didn’t ask him to slow down. She was in a hurry too.

How long had they been underground? Where were Uncle Calder, Lyre, and her mother? Had anyone else been inside the building when it exploded?

Lights shone through the foliage, an unsettling blend of flickering orange firelight and a harsh white glare. Ash slowed to a more cautious pace, his steps near silent, and Piper followed as quietly as she could manage.

Voices drifted to their ears on the breeze, the words unintelligible.

Ash reached the edge of the trees and sank into a crouch. Piper scooted close to his side, peering through the long grass. Their path had taken them close to the front of the former Consulate, where the Gaians’ vehicles had been parked. All that remained of their fleet was a pickup truck with its engine on fire and that big steel box on a flatbed trailer.

The house was a heap of rubble. Flames roared across the broken wood framing, belching orange-tinted smoke into the sky. Nausea roiled in Piper’s stomach at the sight. She and Ash had been buried under all that. She was triply thankful they’d reached the tunnel, because blasting their way upward would never have worked.

It looked like the Gaians had fled, but their vehicles had been replaced by a new assortment—several trucks and jeeps with shitty camo paint jobs. Prefects.

Their vehicles’ headlights illuminated the destruction, while the prefects were dark silhouettes against the glare. Two of them were pulling stuff from the burning pickup truck, half a dozen more were circling the abandoned trailer with their rifles at the ready, and the rest were inspecting the rubble of the house.

“We should head to the back,” Ash whispered. “The daemon group is?—”

A loud clank of metal interrupted him. Three prefects were messing with the container door.

“It’s stuck,” one of them said.

“Put some muscle into it, Wilhelm,” his buddy barked impatiently.

The first guy wrenched on the handle. With a squeal of grinding metal, the large door swung open. Something whipped out of the container, latched on to Wilhelm, and yanked him inside. His scream reverberated off the steel walls.

The remaining prefects backpedaled. The container rocked on its trailer. Dark shapes slithered out like fat snakes. A prefect’s flashlight beam whipped across glistening, blood-red flesh.

Piper’s stomach dropped. Not snakes. Tentacles .

The container rocked more violently, and a creature dragged itself out onto the grass. Shaped like a massive, scaly octopus, it writhed its thick tentacles too fast to count them. Piper had seen a tentacle just like that drag Ash into the secret passageway in her Consulate.

It was a choronzon. The Gaians had a second one.

The beast, its tentacles performing nonstop contortions, seemed to be thinking, or maybe just taking in its surroundings. The prefects were creeping backward, as though hoping it wouldn’t attack if they didn’t make any sudden movements.

Ash’s fingers closed around Piper’s wrist. He slowly drew her up.

The choronzon undulated its tentacles one more time—then its slimy arms shot toward the prefects, stretching to twice their original length and snatching two men. The others opened fire on the monster, but it didn’t seem to notice the bullets as it reared up to reveal a gaping, fang-lined mouth large enough to engulf its victims’ heads and torsos in a single bite.

Its skin rippled, and the choronzon swelled until its bulbous body and writhing tentacles were larger than the ten-foot-long shipping container it’d crawled out of. Its wet maw pulsed hungrily, and it shoved both prefects into the cavernous opening. They disappeared with muffled screams. The beast slumped back down, pulling its tentacles from its mouth sans victims.

All at once, the surviving prefects realized their rifles wouldn’t save them. They bolted.

The choronzon’s tentacles lashed out with terrifying speed, smashing two men into the ground with enough force to pulverize their bones. A terrified prefect dove behind the pickup truck. The choronzon slid a pair of tentacles under the vehicle, lifted it off the ground, and tossed it aside like a plastic toy. The truck landed on its roof with a horrible crash.

Ash drew Piper away from the choronzon and the collapsed house. She let him lead her, unable to look away as the creature captured and consumed another screaming man.

She and Ash moved along the edge of the trees until they reached the cracked sidewalk of the residential street. The black, broken windows of the decrepit houses seemed to stare at them with condemnation.

The earth trembled. With its boneless limbs rippling, the choronzon pivoted toward Piper and Ash. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

“Run,” Ash said.

The word had scarcely penetrated Piper’s panicked brain when the choronzon launched forward, its tentacles slamming into the ground and pulling it across the earth in a swirl of red flesh.

Ash shoved her ahead of him, and Piper sprinted down the sidewalk. The thudding of the choronzon’s tentacles and the crunching of the pavement beneath its weight grew louder and more violent.

“Faster!” Ash yelled.

Piper glanced back. The choronzon had already closed half the distance, its speed unbelievable for its mass. It stretched a tentacle toward her and Ash as they ran—but she couldn’t go any faster.

Ash seized her around the waist from behind, pulling her off her feet as he sprang upward. Magic sizzled across his body, buzzing against her skin—and the air whooshed as his wings shimmered out of nothing on either side of them.

He swept his wings downward, and the ground fell away. Piper clutched his scale-plated arm, not caring that he was crushing her diaphragm. She didn’t need to breathe. She just needed him not to drop her.

Its red skin glistening in the moonlight, the choronzon came to a halt and stretched its tentacles skyward, but she and Ash were already out of reach, rising twenty feet, then twenty-five, then thirty, until they’d cleared the tops of the two-story houses on either side of the street. Jittery relief swept through Piper. Ash was flying them to safety, and even though she’d known he had wings, it felt like a miracle.

Then the arrow struck.

It whipped out of the darkness with the faintest whistle of wind across its fletching, flashed past Piper’s left side, and hit with a gruesome thud. Ash’s flight faltered, and they plunged six feet, spinning in the air as his left wing beat hard. His right wing barely moved.

Their attackers appeared from the darkness in the next instant, sweeping in from every side. They collided with Piper and Ash in a tangle of wings, feathers, and claws.

Ash flung his free arm out, casting a band of black flames into the nearest attackers, but he and Piper were dropping fast, his wings hemmed in, one not working.

A crackle of magic, a thud, and pain raked across Piper’s middle. She was ripped away from Ash. Two daemons had her by the arms, and their feathered wings flapped loudly as they carried her higher. Below, the others broke away from Ash—a dark shape with curved dragon wings and a long, whiplike tail.

His wings beat once, twice, and then the injured wing buckled like an umbrella in the wind. He plummeted—straight into the writhing mass of the choronzon’s waiting tentacles.

“Ash!” she screamed.

The daemons around her laughed, their voices competing with the thunderous beats of their wings as they lifted Piper higher and higher. They were all female, with short, tangled silver hair and bird wings in different shades of gray. Harpies, if Piper was guessing correctly. An Underworld caste.

“He’s a goner, girly,” the one holding Piper’s left wrist said. “The choronzon will swallow him whole.”

The other harpies cackled. Piper hung helplessly in their grip, craning her neck to look downward. Either the ground was too dark or something else was blocking her view, but she couldn’t make out the choronzon or Ash. The burning wreckage of the Consulate was visible off to her left—and judging by the angle, she was well above the ground.

“Now tell me, little lady,” a harpy said, hovering in front of Piper with big sweeps of her powerful wings. “Where is the Sahar Stone?”

“The Sahar Stone?” Piper said, breathless with terror. The Stone was like a thousand-pound weight in her pocket. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“Don’t bother pretending. Ash wouldn’t be following you around like a big mean guard dog unless you were his ticket to getting the Sahar.”

“I’m not?—”

The harpy made a commanding gesture, and the two daemons holding Piper let go.

She screamed as she dropped. The harpies grabbed her wrists. Claws tore into her skin, bringing her up short. She screamed again as pain exploded through her arms and shoulders. The harpies stretched her between them.

“Now, you don’t need me to explain what will happen if you don’t cooperate, do you?”

“I don’t know anything,” Piper gasped. “Ash was helping me find my father.”

“Ash follows Samael’s orders.”

How did these daemons know that Ash answered to Samael? Had Samael sent them, just like he’d sent Cottus to eliminate Ash?

“Tell me,” the harpy ordered. “Where is the Sahar Stone?”

“I don’t know!”

“You were carrying Ash’s fake, the one that fool incubus Micah stole,” the woman snarled.

“Ash has it!” Piper gasped. “Take me down—back to Ash—he has?—”

The harpy’s hand flashed out. Her strike slammed into Piper’s cheek, wrenching her head sideways, and she swung by her wrists, the harpies’ talons digging in deeper and deeper.

“Useless.” The harpy back-winged away from Piper. “Search her. Tear off her clothes. She could have the Stone anywhere.”

Two more harpies swooped in. As one reached for Piper’s ankle, she kicked the harpy in the face. The woman yelped as she careened backward. Piper aimed another kick at a different harpy, but the daemon caught her foot. Another one grabbed her other ankle. Piper writhed, trying to twist free as they ripped at her bootlaces.

Piper screamed as the harpies pulled her between them, tearing at her clothes—and her skin—with their talons. One of her boots came free. Another harpy ripped her shirt from the hem to the neckline. Taloned fingers scraped across her hip, grasping for her pockets.

The moment they found the Sahar, they would drop her—or they’d take their time killing her.

She was going to die. The realization slammed the air from her lungs, but as the first rush of terror spilled through her like ice, another feeling swept in after it: bitter fury. She hadn’t asked for this. She didn’t deserve this. She’d done her best, but she was going to die anyway.

Piper twisted violently and kicked out, catching one harpy in the jaw. She jammed her other foot down on a woman’s shoulder like a stepping block, and with that brief moment of leverage, she wrenched her left arm free. Her right arm snapped painfully taut, her weight jerking the last harpy holding her off balance. As they spun wildly through the air, Piper shoved her hand into her pocket and seized the Stone.

The harpy leader screeched triumphantly and dove at Piper. Locking stares with the daemon, Piper pulled her hand from her pocket and cocked her arm back. The harpy closed in with sweeping wings.

Burning with spiteful rage, Piper let her fist fly at the harpy’s face.

The Sahar blazed white-hot against her palm.

Piper’s thoughts splintered, and her fury doubled as though reflected back into her. Pale light burst from between her clenched fingers and thunder split the air, rending the world all around her.

The harpy’s skull burst apart in a spray of gore. The band of light from the Sahar flashed outward from Piper in a perfect half circle. Harpy bodies exploded. Bloody feathers flew in every direction. Torn limbs and broken wings arced through the darkness before falling silently toward the ground.

The only daemon left was the one holding Piper’s right wrist.

The harpy hauled Piper closer, grabbed her left arm, and tore at her fist. An agonized scream burst from Piper as the harpy’s talons raked across her fingers, trying to pry them open. She clenched her hand around the Sahar as hard as she could.

The air crackled with magic, then a tearing force ripped into Piper’s hand. Pain worse than anything she’d ever felt before swamped her like a tidal wave.

Then she was falling.

The harpy swooped away, a dark shadow flying off into the night with frantic wing beats. Piper plunged toward the ground, her scream lost to the wind howling in her ears.