Luther, and his insufferably handsome face, sharpened into a hellbent sort of calculation. Jaw tight, muscles taut, battling empowered demons with nothing more than his fists and wits.
I was his, and he was mine, and we might lose one another before our story truly had a chance to begin.
His hand lost purchase on the fistful of feathers he was dragging away from me.
A stolas lashed out, claws like meat hooks swiping, and struck his arm. His sleeve shredded. Bright red gashes blinked open, weeping red tears that soaked into his white shirt.
In the fire, Moloch’s beak parted. He was massive, towering almost as tall as a house and still fucking growing. The sound of his hellish baying vibrated through my teeth and jarred my skeleton.
Missed among the turmoil, Luther and I locked eyes across the frenzy of demons churning like a feathered sea between us. His eyes were the ocean, a cooling balm against the smothering terror and heat of the underground sanctum.
The bond that tied my ribs to his tethered me to a sense of purpose. It kept me afloat and buoyed me against the danger of drowning in the grisly tide of my would-be fate.
Ocean-blue and stern, his gaze demanded my attention when he cut his eyes to the dagger sitting precariously at the lip of the fire pit. Then back to me, conveying an unspoken plan. Understanding settled between us, but I shook my head, feeling tears flowing hotter and faster down my face.
But that small voice of courage and resolution in my head returned, louder than before.
“We don’t have much longer now.”That was Grandpa Hunter’s voice.“You’re an Ashcroft, girl. Get my knife and gut the bastard!”His shout moved me as if he’d yelled directly into my ear.
Luther nodded as if he’d also heard the command.
I shook my head, realizing what he intended to do.
Misery roiled in my gut, and a scream parted my lips. Too late—he was already falling. Creating a distraction. Talons clawed at him, beaks full of needle-sharp teeth stabbed down. Amass of hooting growls and blood-dappled feathers swallowed Luther whole.
“Luther, no!”
He vanished into the center of a savage frenzy. I bullied down the hiccupping sob at the base of my throat.
A violent impulse washed through me and cascaded through my limbs. Perhaps an adrenaline rush, or some survival instinct inherited from primal ancestors, it didn’t matter. That energy fueled me into action.
I stirred against the stolas entrapping me. I kicked back and twisted harder than before, using the sticky, wet blood on my arm as a lubricant to escape their grasp. The talons slipped, and I yanked free. I turned and shoved at the demon’s downy chest, creating enough distance to haul ass away from the stolas, and past the tangled frenzy where Luther fell.
The stolas cried out, alerting the others to my escape. The freakish sounds were muffled in my ears, and my blood thundered in my veins. Each breath punched hot and smoky through my lungs, but I catapulted myself into a race for life or death.
Wings, beaks, and talons all swiped at me. Stolas scrambled to barricade me from the fire.
Riding the wave of energy exploding through my system, I dipped and ducked out of their gnarled grasp. A steel blade blinked into my field of vision. Urgency sparked in my core. I vaulted myself in a hectic dive.
The distorted phantom of Moloch bellowed and flared, almost a living thing growing consistently larger. A dark, unsightly shape wreathed in unholy gold. He made a foreboding outline with a crown of twisted horns, a fang-filled beak, and six spreading wings sailing larger by the second as if my nearness gave it life.
Arms of fire surged up as if to gobble up the dagger and swallow it into the owl god’s molten center.
I crashed to the ground, grunting, and my fingers closed around the dagger’s hilt, palm sizzling against the scalding handle. Agony laced my hand, and a cry breached me. But I was the remaining variable between Moloch’s rebirth and the fate of everything I held dear.
I couldn’t hesitate. Forcing myself up on shaky legs, I barely bypassed the stolas.
It swept out a hideous wing.
I pivoted, almost sliding on the gravel while holding the burning hilt with all the strength left in my body. Charging forward, I rushed with the singular thought of protecting everything I loved—fighting back at last.
And I jammed the blade into the flaming center of the ancient god.
The dagger plunged through smoke-calcified bone, and shredded through fiery viscera, stabbing home with a sickly obscene squelching crack. Fire spewed, malevolent and hungry. Heat licked my skin and singed the ends of my hair. A horrifying rumble poured from the sanctum’s pit, thundering as if the center of the world were erupting underfoot. The keening howl of a dying beast, pouring from the hissing flames.
Scorching pain rippled up my arm.
The blistering force of an eldritch god’s annihilation rocked through the sanctum. The divine fire of Moloch’s demise detonated in a boom that nearly shattered my eardrums. Blinding light erupted alongside a burgeoning cacophony of screams.
