“No, I—”
“Rule Number Two. Designated safe zone.” His green eyes filled with anger and something hotter. “Now.”
“How?!” I gestured wildly. “We’re surrounded!”
“Stay behind me.” He pushed me behind him with one arm while continuing to fend off the creatures with his other, and I noticed that the marshmallow had burned through his coveralls to the armor underneath.
“Your arm—”
“It’s fine. Focus on staying safe.”
“This is the stupidest thing we’ve fought in weeks!” Zane was now armed with two branches, whirling them like twin swords through the flying marshmallows. “I love it!”
Koa had taken a different approach, herding groups of them together before dispatching them with broad sweeps of his blade.
“Something’s not right,” he rumbled. “These things aren’t attacking with any strategy.”
“I told you, they’re a distraction!” I repeated, louder than before.
“From what?” Casimir demanded, eyes scanning even as he shielded me.
“I don’t know, but something bad.”
Heart hammering, I peeked around Casimir’s shoulder. The marshmallows were still coming, leaving trails of melted sugar as the boys diced them up. My gaze dropped to the fire pit, to the stones that ringed it, and I felt it again. That unsettling warning, only stronger now, spreading like spiderwebs under my skin. Drawing tighter. Pulling. Demanding to be felt.
“The fire pit,” I called. “There’s something wrong with—”
A flaming marshmallow sailed past my head, missing me by inches, but I barely noticed, too focused on the terrible certainty that we’d just stumbled into something much worse than sugar kamikazes.
“Simmy, we need to leave.Now.”
His eyes met mine, but before he could respond, everything changed.
Slashing at the barrage, Koa kicked one of the stones surrounding the fire pit, and something clicked. Not as a sound, but a sensation, and shadows suddenly swarmed to swallow the world.
#
It should have been funny. The boys versus burning fluffs. The perfect story to tell over breakfast tomorrow with Zane embellishing wildly and Casimir correcting every exaggeration. And itwouldhave been funny. If Koa hadn’t activated the portal.
The second his boot kicked the misaligned stone into place, I felt magic snap like a rubber band pulled too tight. The marshmallows dissolved into wisps of sugar-scented smoke as shadows roared out of the fire pit, darker than night despite the noon sun. Sliding across the ground like spilled ink, they rose up, forming twisted figures with hollow faces and vague hands.
“We seemed to have stumbled into a grade-A clusterfuck.” Zane’s voice lost its earlier playfulness.
They weren’t just shadows. There was something inside them, burning with black flame, and they stank of the same Dark fume that always trailed the Harrows.
My heart pounded like a wild thing. I wanted to run, to pull my mates away from this place, but there was nowhere to go. The shadows had encircled us.
“Back to back,” Casimir instructed, and they instantly formed a triangle around me, weapons raised. “Seri, stay in the center.”
I couldn’t follow some of the rules because it was impossible to now, but I clung to Rule Number One: Seri stays behind at least one Cimmerian brother at all times. I had no idea how to fight these things. I didn’t even know what they were!
The boys apparently didn’t, either, because Koa snapped, “Now what arethesefang-rotted fuckers?”
“Dunno, but something Diabolical,” Zane called back. “I can see it. Bet Seri can, too, can’t you, treasure?”
“You mean the purplish-black fire inside them?”
“Yep. Erebean fire.”
