Chapter 37

Chapter Thirty-Seven

ASH

As he fell, the choronzon’s tentacles stretched up to seize him in their crushing grip.

With a quick lash of his tail, Ash twisted in midair, plunged past the reaching limbs, and slammed feet first into the beast’s bulbous body. His knees buckled. He pitched sideways off the choronzon and landed hard on the pavement. Cold numbness radiated from the harpy’s arrow in his wing, weakening all his muscles.

He struggled onto his knees, seized the arrow shaft, and ripped it out of his wing. Dull pain throbbed through the joint, but the poison on the arrowhead was deadening the sensation in his body.

Fucking harpies.

The choronzon’s massive tentacles whipped at him. He cast a shield, but the unstoppable blow obliterated it, hurling him backward. He hit the boarded-up window of an abandoned house and smashed through it.

His injured wing, unable to fold properly, caught on the window frame. The joint wrenched, sending a spear of agony up into his shoulder.

He sprawled on the floor amidst a shower of broken plywood. Dizziness whirled in his head so violently that he felt like he was still moving.

Tentacles slithered through the window—and somewhere outside, a girl screamed. Piper.

“Fuck,” he snarled.

He sat up, one hand pressed to his forehead. With the other he summoned dragon fire and cast it at the nearest tentacle. It retracted, its slimy membrane sizzling like oil in a pan. More tentacles slid through the broken window and curled around the walls.

Ash shoved to his feet, swayed, and almost fell. His left wing dragged on the floor. Even if he got past the choronzon, he wouldn’t be able to reach Piper—or the Sahar Stone. A cold shiver of dread rippled through him. If the harpies got it—if they took it to Samael instead of him?—

With a screech of shattering wood, the choronzon ripped the front wall of the house away. Tentacles swept toward Ash from every direction.

He reached over his shoulder and drew his sword.

Three and a half feet of curved, double-edged steel glided from its sheath, and dragon fire coated the blade. He slashed it across the nearest tentacle and lopped two feet off the end.

More twisting limbs surrounded him. He whirled, blade flashing, flames spilling off it. He opened gashes in every tentacle he could reach, but his legs felt shaky and his sword weighed down his arms.

The choronzon heaved its body into the opening it had created. Its tentacles opened like a giant, many-fingered hand about to close over him all at once and crush his bones to a paste before swallowing him.

Ash bared his teeth. Power surged through his body, and as the tentacles contracted around him, dragon fire exploded out of his body. The inferno engulfed the choronzon’s tentacles, and it recoiled from the house, limbs contorting with pain, dark flames eating into its slimy red flesh. Globs of smoldering fat splattered the ground, and the stench of charred meat hazed the air.

Ash straightened as the heat of his magic flowing through him melted the numbness. His legs steadied.

Zwi . He called her name from within his mind, reaching for their bond.

A flittering presence answered him.

Find Piper and the Sahar , he told her.

A vision of dark tree tops flashing beneath Zwi’s wings filled a corner of his thoughts.

He focused on the choronzon. It was dragging its tentacles over one another, trying to wipe away the flames—but dragon fire wasn’t that easily quenched.

Crunching across the floor to the edge of the broken wall, Ash gathered the power inside him, building it and building it until he burned from within. It was more power than most daemons could hold, let alone cast.

He angled his sword across his body, then swept it out in a horizontal arc.

All the power he’d gathered erupted into a razor-edged scythe of dragon fire. It struck the choronzon, tearing through its flesh. Dismembered tentacles thudded to the pavement, twitching and leaking puddles of blood.

Ash surveyed the damage, then pulled his sword to one side and built up his power again. In a corner of his mind, he shared Zwi’s vision as she raced toward a cluster of dark, winged shadows in the sky.

Another scream rang out.

He unleashed a second blade of power as destructive as the first. It ripped through more tentacles and opened a gaping wound across the choronzon’s body. Shuddering, it shuffled backward.

Running away? It was far too late for that.

Gritting his teeth as pain lanced through his injured wing, he folded both appendages tight against his back. Then he leaped through the shattered wall.

As he charged at the choronzon, Zwi ascended toward the cluster of harpies, Piper suspended between them. The choronzon reared back, exposing its colossal mouth lined with curved fangs. Its remaining tentacles shot at him.

He swung his sword down, the fire-coated blade severing a tentacle as thick as his waist. Pivoting, he hacked through another and angled his weapon at the beast’s face.

Through Zwi’s eyes, he saw Piper hanging by one arm, struggling against the harpies as one let out a malicious shriek.

He cleaved a tentacle down the center, driving his blade toward the choronzon’s fanged mouth. Power seared his veins as he gathered it for a final cast.

White light cleaved through the night sky.

Ash saw it with his own eyes and through Zwi’s vision at the same time. With a deep boom, the band of pale radiance burst across the darkness like a lightning strike.

A tentacle wound around Ash’s leg and jerked him into the air.

He spat a curse as the choronzon hung him upside down over its gaping mouth. Blocking Zwi’s mind from his, he slashed his sword through the tentacle crushing his ankle. He fell toward the choronzon’s waiting maw.

Turning his blade, he dropped steel first into the cavity. His sword plunged through its lower mandible, and he unleashed his cast. Spirals of dragon fire surged out of his blade in an expanding maelstrom, shredding the fangs before they could snap shut on him. His magic tore the choronzon apart as it fanned out, culminating in a final burst of searing flames.

Burning offal rained down on the pavement. Ash stood in the middle of a macabre ring of pulverized red flesh, his sword at his side and his eyes fixed on the dark spot where, for one inconceivable moment, the Sahar Stone’s magic had rent the night sky.