The dark eyes flared with anger. “Rushing into danger might make you feel better, but it’s putting your female at risk.”
The damned leech was probably right, but Azh was in no mood to listen. The past few hours had scraped his nerves raw. In this moment he was prepared to burn down this world and every creature in it to get to Wynn.
“She’s in trouble. I can sense it.”
About to shove the leech aside once again, they both froze as a powerful magic blasted past them.
“What the hell was that?” Saxton turned toward the tunnel wall crisscrossed with thin fractures. As if a bomb had been detonated beneath the bedrock, sending shattering quakes through the earth. “Did you do that?”
Azh shook his head. “Wynn.”
Shock rippled over the vampire’s face. And not a happy shock. He didn’t like the thought he not only had a dragon in his territory but a creature who could knock a castle off its foundation.
With an effort, Saxton smoothed away his unease. “I’m guessing she doesn’t need you rushing to the rescue,” he said dryly.
“That’s not going to stop me.” Azh sprinted toward the arched doorway, feeling Saxton inches behind him.
“I never for a second thought it would,” the leech muttered.
Charging through the opening, Azh’s gaze swept over the dungeon that looked as if it’d been hit by an earthquake. The walls were cracked and stone had been sheared off the ceiling. On the far side of the dungeon there was an empty space that he assumed had once held a line of cells, but there was nothing left. Not unless you counted the gouges in the stone floor where the bars had once been anchored.
With a shake of his head at the amount of power that must have been released, Azh glanced toward the back of the dungeon where Wynn was pressed against the wall, her eyes wide as if she were as stunned as everyone else by the chain reaction she’d set off.
His heart clenched as he headed toward her. She looked exhausted, with her hair released from the braid to frame her pale face and her shoulders slumped with exhaustion.
He had reached the middle of the dungeon before she noticed his arrival. “Azh.” She pointed toward the floor a few feet from him. “Look out.”
He glanced down, belatedly realizing that the lump of rags was actually a demon. The creature looked as if he’d gone through a woodchipper, with deep gashes in his flesh and his face a bloody mess, but that wasn’t the strangest thing. It was the fact that Azh hadn’t noticed the demon’s presence the moment he’d entered the dungeon. And even standing this close, his senses were convinced he was looking at a corpse.
It wasn’t until the head jerked to the side and Azh caught sight of the glowing green eyes that he realized the danger.
“You will pay for this,” the demon hissed, then with an obvious desire to create a dramatic exit, the green glow vanished from the male’s eyes and seeped into the ground.
For a second, it spread toward Azh, forcing him to jump back before it reached a crack in the stone floor and disappeared.
“What the hell was that?” Saxton rasped, his icy calm destroyed as the demon’s body abruptly collapsed into a pile of dust.
It looked as if the creature had been an empty husk for months, no doubt animated by the evil magic. A walking zombie.
“The magic we’re chasing,” Azh rasped, stepping over the second dead demon on the ground. This one was wearing an expensive suit and looked too fresh to have been infected, at least not for very long.
Just a regular corpse, not a zombie.
With a grimace, he pulled Wynn into his arms. She was trembling, but he didn’t smell the terror he’d been expecting. Instead her floral scent was threaded with a fierce determination. As if she were plotting her revenge and nothing was going to stand in her way.
The thought sent a chill down his spine.
“If it’s incorporeal, how are we supposed to destroy it?” Saxton demanded from behind him.
“A good question,” Azh said.
“And the answer?” the leech pressed.
Azh released a low growl. He understood the vampire’s outrage at being confronted with an evil that seemingly had the ability to infect any demon and then disappear when it was cornered. Especially when that magic was preying on the demons living in his territory, but right now Azh was too distracted by his relief at having Wynn alive and well and in his arms to concentrate.
“A work in progress.”
“Seriously? That’s all you have?” An icy blast swirled through the dungeon as Saxton struggled to leash his temper, but before he could do something stupid, the vampire released a string of ancient profanities. “Get out of here, the foundation is going to collapse.”
