They helped us…Her eyes begged, and she turned to do the first thing the king told us not to do.
“Vanessa Dracul!” she shouted her own name before taking the biggest breath.
The action confused the majority of the Vampiri who turned to face us, rage flaring in their eyes as they began to run toward us.
Still, the right ones understood.
All Dracul soldiers dropped to the ground, covering their ears a second before her bat shriek cut through the air at an extreme potency. Her lethal soundwaves boomed along the battleground, extending above our allies, but crashed against the incoming Vampiri and shifters. The impact physically blew them back from the force.
Several heads exploded on contact, while others began to convulse, blood spewing from their ears, eyes, and mouths until they collapsed—turned to mush inside.
“Delightful.”
Vanessa looked at me and shrugged. “I aimed to kill.”
“No shit.” Dante nodded, impressed.
Rising from their feet and finishing the monsters still writhing on the sand, the Dracul soldiers flashed towards us, joining our cause.
“That was surprisingly easy.”
Gustav growled, glaring at Alyce. “I swear to the Goddess, Alyce. I love you to pieces, but if you just jinxed us?—”
A sound I wished never to hear again cut him off, and we all faced the vast desert before us to find the multileveled dunes shifting.
That wasn’t good.
Crawlers began to, well, crawl out of the dunes, sand falling from their deformed bodies like rain when they rose to their feet. Hundreds, and hundreds,and fuckinghundreds of the ugly creatures had been hiding under the sand, waiting for us.
“Get ready, here comes the second wave,” Hannes announced, and everyone took their fighting positions.
This was the fucking blockade where they would try to take me. To quote the great Countess Dariah Dracul,over my dead fucking body.
The Iron Knights and the Iron King were supposed to take over now so the rest of us could move forward but seeing row after unending row of crawlers come out of the ground told us it was going to take all of us to survive this.
If they weren’t so big, I would say they looked like a cockroach infestation. Gross.
“Now, we fight.” Cocky as always, Dante smirked, walking toward them.
Opening his arms, he called the shadows to him.
Normally, they would extend from the dark corners of any space we were in, but I watched them exude from his suit instead, curling and slithering around the length of him like pet snakes, waiting for an order from their master to strike.
His hands shot forward, making the shadows soar—more exuded from him, replacing them.
TheTwilightswept over the first row of crawlers, decimating them on contact and triggering the rest.
Letting out tattered screams of mindless rage, they lunged for us, a thirst for blood and death seeping from their crazed eyes.
King Will and his knights dashed forward. Moving as fast as a Vampiri they spread along the next row of crawlers, intercepting them. Their silver swords gleamed under the sun again, flashing with each strike.
Black blood dripped clear off Zelin’s sword before she plunged it into the next creature, and whirled around, ending the one after that too. Her movements were smooth and flawless like a perfect dance the rest of the knights performed in unison.
Taking on two at once, the king cut through the one in front of him, swiftly twirling the sword back and plunging it intothe one coming at him from behind and yanking it sideways. Without even checking to see if they were dead, he jumped clear over the next one, his sword slicing into the top of the creature’s head before he pulled it out and ran forward.
All the halves of his victims slid to the ground, black blood seeping from them and staining the golden sand.
Eager to help, the Dracul Army rushed past us, joining Dante, King Will, and his knights just as Alyce and Isis were suddenly airborne, shifting mid-air. Almost in unison, they spun, their jaws clamping around two crawlers’ heads from above and ripping them off their bodies as they turned again. Their wolves landed on the sand, the severed heads dropping and rolling beside them while they attacked more monsters.
