Page 21 of Devoted

I wrapped my shadows around its throat and twisted, snapping its neck. Another came, then another. Gabriel knocked me off, then lunged forward, driving his blade through its hardened chest and out through its spine, those deadly, snapping teeth an inch from his face.

“We can’t kill them by ourselves,” I gasped, pulling my shirt over my mouth against the dust. “And there’s something far worse we have to…”

Whoosh.

With a heated roar, all the air was sucked out of the space when Dante arrived in an explosion of fire. Flames swept across the dock, devouring Ashbound like cordwood, leaving nothing but crumbling piles of ash and the piles of bone behind.

Two guards fell, screaming as they were burned alive. Then a third.

Good fucking riddance.

“Where is my wife?” Dante’s thunderous growl rolled across the carnage, then he turned his attention our way and that knot of fear in my chest tightened. There was nothing of my friend left in that fiery gaze, nothing even remotely mortal.

“She’s with Luca.” Not technically a lie, but there was no telling what fire-Dante might do if I told him I had no earthly idea where Emberline was. Chances were, he’d burn this entire building down, and while I wasn’t opposed to burying our enemies under a metric shit ton of stone, we had to get the fuck out of here.

The two remaining guards reformed their line, and a creeping dread took hold of my bones, my fingers shaking too badly to even pull the trigger, chest compressing down until I saw spots.

We were going to die down here.

Gods. I had to get my shit together. I couldn’t fall apart now, but fear had already settled into my marrow, paralyzing me from the inside out. Gasping out a final warning, the edges of my vision began to fade to black.

“Gabriel, I have never run from a fight in my life, but I swear, we have to leave this place. Right the fuck now. I used too much of my magic, so you’ll have to carry Rocco…”

“If we dematerialize, it’ll kill him.”

“There are some things worse than death, trust me.”

“How did they get the boat out of here? How can you be so sure they escaped?” he demanded, surveying our enemies like he was formulating a defense. Like we weren’t running out of fucking time.

“We need to search this entire dock. We’re not leaving them here.”

“They’re gone, they have to be gone,” I babbled, scanning the area again, the black sticky marks, the shadows, panic clawing up my throat until I could barely get the words out. “They’re not here, Gabriel.”

“I’m not leaving Emberline behind. Or Luca. What the fuck is wrong with you, Nico? Dante will take out the rest of the Ashbound, then you and I will handle the guards. They’re just vampires, for fuck’s sake.”

I didn’t have the right words to explain they weren’t just vampires.

That their magic wasn’t like any other.

I couldn’t fucking think around this paralyzing fear, stealing my nerve and turning me into a spineless coward. Above our heads, the ceiling rumbled. Reinforcements were on their way.

Faster than I could track, glistening black ooze dripped down the wall. Five. There were five nests, and I’d never fought that many at once before.

We’d never survive this.

My terror became a living thing, consuming my ability to think. To function.

“Gabriel… please listen to me.”

A leg stepped out of one of those sticky black pools, thin and long and jointed in too many places, followed by another, dragging an articulated body the size of a small horse out of the pool with a wet, sucking sound. The glossy black chitin shell was smooth, like its eyeless face, but the mouth had two rows of sharp, black teeth and a pair of razor-sharp mandibles.

“What. The. Fuck. Is. That.”

“They’re called Drax. Don’t let them touch you, or you’re dead. They suck the soul right out of your body.”

All the blood drained from Gabriel’s face, horror written all over his features in stark, white lines.

“I’ll distract them. Get out of here,” I urged. “Use the cipher, take Rocco with you, but if one of those things touches any of us, we are done.”