“Let’s go!” Mey urged us.
“You three take the front, we’ll hold the back,” Malakai ordered, shoving me towards the side, as a large shadowed hand clawed at the air where I had been standing seconds ago.
We both kicked a foot out simultaneously at the monstrosity, before shooting it. Behind the corpse, a dozen more shadows emerged.
“Well, shit,” I breathed, as Malakai grabbed my hand and tugged me with him into a sprint after the others.
Ashley slowed her steps, then she threw a bomb over our heads, earth shattering mere seconds behind us by the blast. The shockwave made me stumble, almost fall, but the firm grip around my hand forced me up again.
“Ethalyn!” I heard his voice, my eyes snapping up.
“Lionel!” I shouted back, as a wave of relief pushed through me, everyone was here, everyone was saf—
The ground began to quake violently, and Malakai’s eyes wandered, until they finally stopped and widened. I followed his gaze as I saw a massive amount of water pushing up through cracks in the ground, steam rippling around it, like it was scalding hot.
“Hurry!” I shouted at Malakai as we ran. Ashley shoved Nate and Mey past the stone fence that surrounded the church, before she threw herself right after.
The space between us and them cracked, splitting open, a hand made out of water clutched the edge and pulled out from the fissure.
“It’s a water demon,” Malakai snapped, dragging me in another direction.
“But the others—” I muttered, panicked.
“We’ll have to worry about re-grouping later; surviving is our priority.”
We burst into a sprint again, and my eyes locked on the others who began running too, before the large water demon heaved itself up and obscured my vision.
It looked like a living swirl of water, like a tidal wave given legs. Its eyes were searing yellow, a hollow in the water formed a jagged mouth. It leaned and splashed towards the ground, changing its form into a current chasing after us. We ran off the path, darting between trees to try to slow it down using the foliage around us.
“Keep running,” Malakai ordered, and I saw how the others were running further away from us, but towards the same direction. I glanced back and saw black shadow demons joining in on the hunt alongside the water demon.
Suddenly, Malakai stopped, but I was sprinting towards open air. My eyes widened as I saw he had stopped at the edge of a cliff that we hadn’t seen coming, but I was already off. His hand tensed around mine as I spun around and used my arm to protect myself from slamming into the cliffside. Malakai hunched down, grabbing me with both hands, teeth clenched. I looked down and saw a river far beneath.
“Ethalyn!” I heard the squad shouting in the distance, snapping my attention back up. Behind Malakai I saw the water demon forming arms, its hands balling into fists thatslammed the ground. The earth shattered, and we were airborne.
I screamed.
Annoyance spread on Malakai’s face, as he tugged at me, stretching to wrap his arms around me and spun us around.
We struck the surface of the raging river, the impact far less for me than him. The current pulled us along with it, and as Malakai tried to drag our heads above the surface, the water was merciless, forcing us down again.
Then we wereflying… or rather falling down a waterfall. I shut my eyes hard, clinging onto him.
Was this it? Was this how I was going to die?
I waited, and a moment passed, but we never hit the water again.
Slowly, I opened my eyes, and began panting hysterically, finally able to breathe again. Dark red threads swirled around us, pushing the water away as Malakai walked out of it, up on the nearby shore, with me in his arms. He stopped and released a long breath, his blood swirls were slowly disappearing into nothing, before he dropped me like a bag of flour on the ground. I hissed in pain as I rose to my feet, anger boiling inside. When I turned to pick a fight with him, I saw those glowing red eyes, along with the pulsating red markings creeping forth by the edges of his shirt. Our eyes were locked, fear crawling in, as I took in the sight of his true being once again.
His mouth twitched, amusement glimmering in his eyes as he raked his hand through his soaked white hair.
“Oh look, now we’re all wet,” he smirked dangerously.
CHAPTER
17
“We need to find the others!” I panted in between coughing.
