Before I can rise, more of his metal comes at me, this time forming two ropes that lash around my chest like vines. Thorns form along their edges, piercing my outer arms and my chest. My arms are pinned to my chest, but with my new strength, all I have to do is open them to snap the metal.
I take the cuts across my torso as I rip the ropes apart.
Before Malak can retract them all, I snatch at the end of one, pulling the strand sharply toward me.
Malak is wrenched forward, nearly impaling himself on the spikes that remain across the courtyard between him and me before he’s forced to let the vine go.
With a grunt, I snap off a portion of the rope’s tip, keeping a length of jagged black metal in my hand. A makeshift dagger with a sharp tip.
My father’s command echoes back to me:“Let Erik do the cutting.”
An eerie calm fills my heart while Malak regains his balance opposite me, his wide eyes meeting mine across the sharp, waist-height forest of metal that lies between us.
“My father trained me to hunt monsters,” I say.
He taught me to navigate danger and strike when it’s time to strike.
Malak is now the beast that has the taste of my blood, and I must end him.
I crouch again to gain momentum and use the new strength in my legs to easily leap over the spikes and land lightly on the other side.
He backs away from me, plucking more medallions off his arms and stepping to my right.
I prowl after him, suddenly aware of an influx of shimmering power around me—not from Malak but within the air.
A moment later, a cold raindrop falls on my cheek. I don’t need to swipe at it to know that it will be blood-red like the other droplets that have fallen from the sky.
Malak fixates on the liquid that’s sliding down my cheek as he continues to back away from me.
“I am not the only monster,” he says. “There will be more.”
“There are already more,” I say, thinking of the other Blacksmiths.
“Not my people.” A sneer rests on his lips. “We created our own doom.”
His answer makes me pause because I’m not sure what he means, but even so, his statement rings of truth.
“What are you talking about?”
“Our creation magic has seeped into the soil beneath our feet,” he says. “All the dead creatures, the failed manipulations, the experiments, we buried them in the northern field and thought nothing of it, but power now gathers within the wasteland we created.” He nods. “Monsters will rise. You will see.”
He isn’t making a lot of sense, but the pitch of his voice and his heartbeat tell me he believes what he’s saying.
A flash of lightning sparks across the sky and a patter of rain falls across the courtyard, stopping again just as suddenly as it started, but not before Malak holds out his hand and catches some of the droplets.
“Do you know what’s wonderful about blood, Vandawolf?” he asks, letting the crimson liquid seep through his fingers.
I give a shake of my head.
“It has iron in it.” He smiles softly as he turns his gaze upward. “A storm of iron.”
At that moment, sharp needles of rain fall where we stand.
He snatches them from the air and flings them at me.
Chains of blood-red rain extend from his palm, each one with a dagger at the end, and at first I think they will remain liquid, but then they solidify, cutting through the air as they shoot toward me.
I dart left and right to avoid each one, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rising as the liquid streams around me, its sharp edges gleaming.
