“Demon-core shadows,” Casimir suggested. “Controlled or created by Dark magic.”
Then there was no more time for theory. The shadows charged forward, and my boys traded blows with them in a dizzying dance. I could only parse pieces of it: Casimir’s grace as his sword swung in blurred arcs, Zane manic laughter as he moved like quicksilver, and Koa battering through them with his gloved fists and blade. They were a storm of deadly force, my beautiful monsters. Savagery and skill twined into art. But for every shadow they dispatched, another rose to take its place. The horde was relentless, unending, and I pressed my back against the cold remains of a camp log, trying to make myself as small as possible while scanning for any weakness, any pattern to exploit, but the shadows moved unnaturally, sometimes solid enough to land blows, other times insubstantial as smoke when my husbands tried to strike them.
And I could feel their hunger. Not for flesh or blood, but for something deeper.
Souls, I realized.They want to consume souls.
One caught Koa by surprise, sweeping his legs and sending him crashing to the ground. In the same moment, Casimir was driven back by a flurry of strikes, forcing him to give ground. The protective triangle around me was breaking apart. Casimir recovered quickly, positioning himself back between me and his shadow, but Koa was now several yards away, and Zane was surrounded by the ones still pouring out of the fire pit, blocking his escape route with elongated limbs that stretched like taffy.
Everything was happening too fast, the shadows moving with a speed that blurred my vision.
Casimir couldn’t break away without leaving me exposed, Koa was hidden behind a wall of shadows, and one had Zane cornered, looming over him as a mouth opened in its featureless face, a gaping void that seemed to know nothing buthunger.
And Iknew. Knew with absolute certainty that if I didn’t act, these shadows would take my husbands one by one.
And when I finally stood alone, they’d take me, too.
Something inside me snapped. Rule Number Four shattered into glittering shards as I stopped thinking and went with pure adrenaline-fueled instinct. Even at noon, the moon was still there, and I reached for its energy like an old friend.
The shadows around us might have been raised by Dark magic and have something Diabolical inside them, but they were still shadows. And that meant they were doorways for those of us who knew how to walk through them.
I dove into the nearest shadow as if it were a pool of water, letting it envelop me completely. The world turned inside out, cold and weightless, like being suspended in the space between heartbeats.
It wasn’t the smooth journey I was used to while shadow walking. This darkness felt thicker, more resistant, like swimming through molasses. The moon’s guiding thread was faint and harder to grasp. Still, I pushed forward with desperate determination, following Zane’s heartbeat until I found him. Reaching through the shadow trying todrinkmy mate, I grabbed my Zoodle and yanked him with me.
We burst back into reality behind Casimir, right where I’d been standing less than ten seconds ago, tumbling onto the ground in a tangle of limbs. My first real intentional use of combat teleportation. For a split second, pride swelled my chest. I’d done it. I’d saved him.
“That was Rule Number Four! And Five! And Twenty!” Casimir bellowed, slashing furiously at the shadows that were crowding forward.
Ignoring him, I scrambled to Zane, cupping his face in my palms.
“Zoodle? Okay?”
“Fang-tastic.” His gingerbread eyes were wide, shock and something like glee dancing across his face. “Ten out of ten, would get yanked by my wife’s shadow hands again.”
The shadow grew more erratic now, like sharks during a feeding frenzy. They seemed agitated by my interference, as if I’d broken some rule of their game.
As Casimir fussed at me, I looked for Koa and found him fighting with everything he had, but there were too many shadows around him now. And worse, I could see what he couldn’t: The fire pit right behind him rippled, like the surface of a pond disturbed by a stone. Something was waiting there to pull him under.
“Koko!” I called out, taking a step forward only to have Casimir’s arm block my path.
“Stay. Put.”
I ducked under his arm and dove back into the shadow he was fighting. This time, the journey was excruciating. The darkness clung to me like tar, fighting my passage every inch of the way. The silver thread was a fading whisper, hardly enough to guide me, but I found Koa, his deep heartbeat a beacon, and wrapped myself around him and pulled, fighting against the resistance.
We tumbled out of the darkness beside the others, Koa landing with a grunt as I collapsed against him, my legs suddenly unable to support my weight.
“What the—” Koa started, then his eyes found mine, understanding dawning. “Seri, you shouldn’t—”
“Yell at her later,” Zane cut in, grabbing my arm to haul me up. “Right now, we need to move.”
“Wish my containment orbs weren’t all in the SUV.” Koa leapt to his feet. “Should have listened to the?aumakua.”
As my boys fought, they brainstormed ideas to get us out of here, and I just tried to stay on my feet. Each shadow walk had drained me more than I expected, like running a sprint while holding my breath. My lungs burned, my vision swam at the edges, and the crawling sensation under my skin had turned to pins and needles.
The cost of walking through corrupted shadows.
Then the shadows converged into several roiling masses of darkness flowing toward us. They darted in to attack the guys, who met the attack with battle cries and flashes of steel, but my eyes were on one shadow who’d stayed singular. It crept across the ground, its form elongating into something with too many limbs, too many mouths. It reached for Casimir’s ankle, tendrils of darkness wrapping around his boot.
