Apparently, Douglas has a bone to pick with my incubus.
My senses prickle, and I jump aside just before a wave of fire sears a path in the spot where I was just standing. The fire elemental tries again, but a wave of snow, like a sideways avalanche, crashes into the fire to smother it and the elemental.
Thanks, I tell Everett through the bond as I throw myself into the fray.Does everyone remember the plan?
Leave no soul alive,Crypt supplies chipperly, still somewhere in Limbo.
No, you fucking sociopath,Silas retorts as he goes toe to toe with three casters at once.The plan is to escape quickly, even if we must leave the fight behind.
Meanwhile,youare supposed to avoid killing so you don’t go all revenant on us,Everett adds.
And Crypt?I prompt meaningfully.
He sighs through the bond.Yes, yes. I’m also babysitting our dragon.
I can't see Baelfire in the raucous fight anymore, but the fact that he hasn't shifted into a dragon to rain fire down tells me he's fighting to maintain control. As helpful as a dragon could be in a fight, I don’t want to lose him to his curse when we need to make a getaway.
I dodge one of the wolf shifters, vaguely aware of a stray bullet grazing my thigh. Rolling to one side, I slice through a fae bounty hunter’s Achilles tendons to cut off her brutal magical attack aimed at Baelfire. She falls with a cry before I finish her off quickly, purely out of habit.
I guess you can take the bitch out of the arena, but you can’t take the arena out of the bitch.
A delicious, intoxicating buzz starts to pump through my system.
Crypt laughs from wherever he is in Limbo.I saw that.
Oops.
As the fight intensifies, so does the twisted urge that always overshadows me as I make my way deeper into a battle. Though I'm supposed to be looking for a way to leave all of this behind, I kill another opponent in self-defense.
Then another.
And another.
Dark magic pulses through me, and that exhilarating nothingness starts to gain a foothold as I kick away another shifter. Death hangs thick in the air all around me, a tantalizing cadence of endings and screams that sinks into my very being as a smile grows on my face.
I’ve been fighting my entire life. Through all the broken bones, blood loss, and agony, the thrill of dancing with death became an integral part of me. I wipe someone else's blood off my face as the killing urge starts to pound through my muscles and head.
This is what I was made for.
And I want more.
More blood. More buzz. More.
Maven,Silas's voice warns.
Where is she?Everett demands.
I'm fine,I insist.I was just?—
I cut off when, all at once, my senses go haywire, honing in on something nearby. A shadow fiend is quickly approaching.
No, not just some shadow fiend…one that makes my nerves itch.
Him. He found us.
I'm so distracted by the approaching terror that I don't see the attack in time. Douglas lands a brutal blow to the back of my head with the butt of his gun. The world goes topsy-turvy as I fall to the snow, hot moisture already dripping from somewhere on my throbbing head.
He takes aim to shoot my chest, but I snap back to my senses, roll sideways, and leap from the ground to take him down. Knocking the gun from his hands, I pin him.
