And then a flying leg.
Lukain goes down in an arc of blood. He stood in front of the girl he turned, to shield her, perhaps sensing some bloodbond at the last. Now he’s toppling over wordlessly as Aramastun cleaved his left leg sheer off at the thigh.
“AHH!” I scream, horrified, mortified.
Palacia uses the momentary distraction and does something with her fingers, placing one on her forehead. She’s still on her ass like a crab.
Aramastun lurches forward toward her—
And jerks. Quite abruptly. I see him furrowing his brow as I run up on him from the side, as if something has suddenly confused him.
Some kind of mind power?!I wonder about Pala.
It’s a split-second hesitation from Aramastun, and I pray to the True it’s all we need.
I raise my swords to get at Aramastun—
But Vallan is quicker. He’s already there on the other side. And rather than try to behead the distracted vampire lordbecause the wing is in the way of his neck, Vall digs his axe blade into the Night Judge’s back and forces a howl out of him.
My blades swing at air again as he lifts into the sky, getting himself out of danger—
But Vallan isattachedto him now. Holding onto the axe wedged in the bastard’s shoulder blade. Climbing up it, wrapping his arms and legs around Aramastun as the demon tailspins through the air on one holey wing, corkscrewing on the wind.
“FUCK YOU!” Vallan roars. “Stop”—he punches Aramastun in the face, further confusing the Night Judge as the wind blows through his beard—“maiming”—he pulls something out of his tunic, small and spherical—“my family!”
Vallan shoves the thing against his lodged axe blade, cracking the shell of the pot, and I gasp. He holds it right there as a hiss wrenches through the air.
I wail, “Vallan,no!”—
An explosion of fire and brimstone brightens the sky. The heatwave slams me to the ground, and slides Palacia further back. Vallan and Aramastun are lost to the bright white light, the coruscating embers that arc in every direction like a cannonball slamming against a stone fortress during a siege.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!” I scream when I sit up from my back, dazed and confused.
I catch Vallan’s smoking body billowing through the sky and plummeting like a heavy lead weight. He lands hard—on the rooftop, thankfully, rather than hundreds of feet downoffthe roof—doesn’t move, and continues to smoke.
Aramastun side-angles and crashes to the rooftop on the other side, separating the two by fifty feet. His wings are in smoky tatters, rips and tears and holes now singed through them.
I see my opportunity.
Run for the bastard, reaching into my tunic and tossing my shortsword away so I have a free hand.
I notch a Silverblood vial in my palm, pop the cork, and down it in one go.
When in Olhav, right? I’ve never hadmy own blood, so I don’t figure it can hurt. If anything, I’ve always wondered if it would do something extraordinary.
Turns out, it sort of does.
Maybe it’s the silver mixed in the tincture of my diluted Loreblood. Maybe it’s a placebo and I’m just very pissed off and feeling scorned after watching each of my mates meet a terrible, grisly fate.
I come up on Aramastun feeling elevated, likeI’mthe one with wings. My senses are enhanced, and the sharp reek of sulfur and burning flesh ripples through my nose.
I see the one shot I have, and my legs are churning faster than ever, even though I’m more tired than I thought possible.
Aramastun Wyvox struggles to rise from his stomach, onto his knees, and flounders to get to his feet with his ruined wings wafting a black halo of smoke around him.
I leap into the air—
His face twists suddenly, hearing me coming silently on him. His wings instinctively fold in on him to protect his back, to barricade him like a cocoon.