The ground shook as the monster made chase, its roars causing my ears to ring and covering us in more toxic drool.
There was an open gateway just ahead. We were almost there. Lothar was right behind me.
Another roar followed, so close my drool-soaked hair was blasted over one shoulder.
Lothar barked a curse—then he was slamming into my back, knocking me to the ground.
My body crashed down onto severed limbs and blood and guts, and we slid along the path at break-neck speed as if we were on some gruesome slip ’n slide.
I turned back, and now that there was light spilling in from the gateway, I could finally see the monster clearly. It was huge, like a wingless pterodactyl with razor-sharp teeth, vicious claws, and a shorter beak, and all around it, bodies, corpses of all shapes and sizes, hung from spindly trees.
The monster was gaining on us, mouth opened, roaring. Lothar threw a hand out behind us and, with a roar, blasted it with a steady stream of hellfire. It shrieked and flailed but kept coming.
Lothar wrapped himself around me then, forcing me into a tight ball as we hurtled toward the gateway, and whatever fresh horrors waited for us on the other side.
Chapter
Eighteen
Lothar
* * *
The monster slammed its now singed and blackened foot down, narrowly missing us as we hurtled toward who the fuck knew what, but whatever it was, I would not let it hurt Roxy.
Wrapping my arms around her bent knees, I lifted mine, cocooning her smaller frame with my own as we flew through the gateway, leaving the oppressive darkness and its gore-loving monster behind, and burst into blinding light.
I braced, tightening every muscle a moment before we crashed down on what felt like wood. We rolled, crashing against a wall with force. Still surrounded by me, Roxy cursed and turned her head in an effort to see where we were, to see if there was danger, and I did the same.
We appeared to be on our own. For now, anyway.
A bird squawked overhead, and I realized the ground beneath us was rocking slowly. I breathed deep and got a lungful of sea air. “We’re on a ship.”
“What?” Roxy pulled away from me, and I forced myself not to drag her back.
She bounded to her feet, a knife already in her blood- and gore-covered hand.
I listened intently for anything or anyone that might be nearby. The ship creaked, swaying, an enormous black sail puffed out catching the breeze, sailing us toward the setting sun. “Do you know what realm we’re in?”
Roxy had her back to me, and I watched as she lifted her face to the sky and breathed in the sea air. “We’re on the Night Sea,” she said. “There are demons close by, can you feel them?”
I focused, and she was right. I could definitely sense them. “They feel different.”
She pointed across the ocean. “That way is the Night Realm. Home of the goddess Nox, the personification of night, and also Death and Somnus’s mother.” She pointed toward the horizon, where we were headed. Black clouds had gathered in the distance, and forked lightning flashed through the sky. “We’re sailing toward the Outer Realm.”
I’d been alive a very long time, but I’d never traveled so far from home. I’d also never doubted my instincts before, but I was struggling with that now. So far from Hell, from my brothers and, fuck, so far from the beast—the part of me that had always steered me in the right direction. I couldn’t trust what my gut was telling me anymore. I had this sensation of being untethered, as if the beast, who until recently had been one with me since my creation, was drifting farther and farther from me with every day that passed.
“Lothar?”
I shook off the unease. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know anything about it.” She stood to my side, the wind whipping her thick, wavy black hair around her face.
“It borders Limbo and should be a kind of no-man’s-land between Death’s realm and Nox’s, but she’s been stealing Outer Realm territory for herself over the centuries. There were demons and other creatures living there a short time ago, before Death and his mother finally had it out. Most of the demons are rogue, escapees from Hell, and I’m not sure how many are still there, or how much sway either of us will have over them once we reach land.”
I rubbed my forehead, and my fingers slid in the blood covering me. “So Drake just decided to send us back home?”
She gripped the railing, staring out at the ocean. “I’m not sure. Nothing is ever simple with Drake.”
“Let’s search the ship.” The ship’s wheel held steady, the vessel appeared to be steering itself. “There wasn’t a welcoming committee, and this ship doesn’t seem to need a crew, but we might not be alone.”
