Another check of the skies showed her cloud cover was thinning, and my nerves skyrocketed.
“Brute, I think we’ve got a problem.”
“Just one? Good for us.”
“I’m not joking. Fi’s starting to tire.”
He beat back a snow leopard with an aggressive parry and then used the spare second to look up. “I think you’re right. If she starts to tumble, give me a heads-up.”
What the hell would we do if shedidstart to tumble? The attackers had begun to thin, but there was still an enemy to replace each one that fell. And I knew wolves had fallen too. I was trying not to check faces as I stumbled past. It wasn’t time for that yet. I couldn’t let myself go to that place until this battle ended. Distraction was death on the field.
I stuck close to Valens’s back, keeping my eyes on the sky every spare second. The cloud surrounding Fiona had thinned to the point I could see her dark blue outline, when a magical bolt from the enemy side streaked up, up, up, and landed.
I watched her wobble under the force of it, heard the thunder stop as my breath caught in my lungs. Her body lurched backward, head tipping toward the ground, feet toward the sky.
“Valens, she’s falling.”
“Turn and switch!” he bellowed, leaping to the side and sheathing his broadsword as I turned to take on the fuckinglionhe had been fighting with. I dove in, delivering a spinning kick to the beast’s snout to hopefully stun it.
It was built like a brick shithouse, and all it did was roar its indignation and charge me for my troubles. Normally, I’d run and flip over it, take a few whacks at its flank before it could turn, but Fiona was falling and Valens had sheathed his weapon. I couldn’t give up an inch of ground, no matter what.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” I taunted as it eyed Valens behind me, a temptingly disarmed target. “Pussy wussy thinks he can’t take on a maiden, huh?”
The cat hissed, sending hot, sour breath over my face.
“Blech, why do you guys always smell like piss and rotten meat?” I tossed out an insult, needing to enrage it so it left Valens alone.
It leapt, all six hundred or so pounds of him coming at me, dead center.
Fuck.
If I shifted, my weapons would scatter. So I did the unthinkable, standing to brace for the blow. Until the last damned second, when I dropped like a sack of rocks, turning the grip of my staff so it separated into two short swords, which I lifted overhead.
The lion made an ungodly sound as it died, hot blood and intestines raining down and soaking me in the world’s worst shower.
The only saving grace to the whole awful ordeal was that its momentum and sheer bulk carried him over my head, where he hit the ground in a boneless heap.
I stood, my boots squelching in things I preferred not to think about as I jogged back to Valens’s side, and saw Fiona as limp and lifeless in his arms as the lion shifter I’d just gutted.
“Shit! Did she hit the ground?”
“No, I caught her. She’s going to have some bruises, though. That was a hell of a fall. She’s breathing, but whatever hit her is not good.”
His hands were full, so he used his chin to point at her stomach, where a burning hole smoked in her shirt, the rotten stench of sulfur emanating from the wound.
“Shit, we need Brielle or Olivia,now.”
“Brielle’s busy.”
I followed the line of his gaze as I batted away a water nymph with one of my short swords. Brielle was indeed busy, fighting for her life at Kane’s side. Her snowy fur was tinged pink all over with blood, some of it hers, some of it not.
“Olivia’s in the bunker, leading the team of healers from all the other packs. We have to get her back there.”
“Agreed. You good?” he asked, concern etching his face as he took in my blood-drenched state.
“Not a scratch. Let’s roll.” I spun the short swords with grim relish as I turned back toward the castle. I ran in front of them, creating a wedge of empty space as I cut through the enemies we crossed with all the speed I could.
We were halfway there when I heard a scream I’d remember in my nightmares forever.
