“It’s all right,” he said, heavily, and he’d straightened.She felt him, very close, and his fingertips skated over her cheek.A soft touch, yet she almost flinched.“Forgive me,lirai.”
What the fuck for?But he had her arm now, his fingers sinking in, and she knew what he was going to do a bare moment before it happened.
Erik took a single step to the side, half-turned, and shoved her into the abyss.
Battle-Roar
She screamedas she went in, a hopeless trailing cry yanking on his every nerve.The stone mouth swallowed her without a murmur, and Erik turned back to the door, his free hand blurring for a gun.He’d bottle them, and wait for the Flame to spark in theoneiros, answering hislirai’s need.
You stupid asshole.She’s going to die.
He met the first creature at the opening with a shattering jolt, sweeping the knife under its strike.The blade bit deep, unseaming thelun’nyie’s guts, and its wounded cry was a brazen trumpet stripping his filthy hair back, digging into his staring eyes, striping his cheeks and shoulders with tiny razor cuts.
You killed her.She’ll fall, she’ll hit, the Flame won’t come, you have failed.A gleeful, lipless voice caroled inside his skull, and now Erik understood why his training had been so unforgiving.His body knew what to do even if his mind was cracking under a separate assault, clawed fingers sinking into his head like a metal pick digging the meat from a walnut’s shell, a fraction of attention spared by an old, foul, insanely powerfulthingdraped in ancient jeweled cerements, howling with glee.Just give in.Let go.All you must do is pause, just for a moment.
He was not the only one the Mad God was focusing on, but even a microscopic sliver of that being’s notice was more than mortal sanity could stand.
Good thing I’m crazy then, huh?The gun spoke; he batted aside the firstlun’nyie’s dying-weak strike and found out he was growling, a low buzzing in his chest and another of the tall, pale four-armed things with their wide, horribly beautiful blue eyes looming on the stairs above, its slender body taut-bent backward as it held thin leashes of golden leather in each six-fingered, extra-knuckled hand.
The moon-runners weren’t the biggest danger at the moment.It was the hounds, bigger than thesarnaki’s fellow hunters.These were hulking, slavering, dirty ivory-colored things with golden collars, rubies dripping from their harnesses and their serrated teeth foaming with disease.The spiral staircase rang with activity; these were just the quickest pursuers.
Spray, before the wave.
They had the high ground, but he could stack the dead in the doorway and buy himself a little more time.Aliraiwas only partially immune to the moon-dogs’ bite; the viral venom would drive a Son into killing rage.
Good.Come on, bite me.The growl caged in his ribs spiraled up; he popped two shots into the leash-holder.If he could get it down and tangle the dogs up, he’d have a chance.
Until the next wave came.
The battle-roar filled his throat, but he throttled it.Better he should choke, better that more spear-claws should pincushion his body and the hounds splinter-chew his bones while he denied them the pleasure of screaming.Better he should die than give voice to that massive, world-wrecking howl.
After all, he had no right to speak her name.Not now.
Erik lunged, his right-hand knife finding unclean flesh, and was too busy to prepare himself for the inevitable.
Equally Cliché
Weightless,her hair combed by shrieking wind, Liv tumbled through darkness.The hole wasbig; she was in freefall with no sense of the walls.It was so damn dark she wouldn’t know they were there until she hit, and her stuttering scream trailed into nothingness.
Later, she wondered just how far she fell.She wondered what she thought, if her life flashed before her eyes, or something else equally cliché.The necklace tapped her chin, bumped against her chest as she somersaulted,upanddownchanging places in womblike darkness so quickly she felt, for a bare moment, as if she were flying.
She didn’t remember dreaming of this.
The only thing she could remember later was a burst of ecstatic fear so huge it was painless, and a single thought.
How do I know I’m not dead already?
She had always been falling, she wouldalwaysfall, trapped in this darkness.
Then…
...a spark.
Rising, Inexorable
No time towish Jake was providing fire while Erik and Ignatius took the brunt of the attack, retreating only when forced to.No time for anything other than stabbing the double-lobed eye of the nearest hound—the guns just couldn’t put them down fast enough, knifework was his only hope—wrenching the blade free, kicking another one in the snout as it lunged for him, a quick sharp curse turning into a blood-glittering dart on his lips, splattering on yet another hound’s face and making the monstrous thing squeal.Its falsetto, pain and rage mixed, scraped through his skull, but he didn’t care.
Sanity was overrated, anyway.It was an investment with no return, especially when you’d just thrown a woman into a hole leading to the very veins of the planet without preparation and without warning, betraying her trust and killing her outright.
