The voices of these Furies sounding within my mind confirm that all three of them are alive. Just like Hunter claimed. She didn’t kill them.
Their voices whisper like a hive mind inside my head, their thoughts becoming my thoughts:
Be careful of this one.
But be even more careful of the hellhound.
Use your claws and your snakes, not your whip.
Be safe, sister, and come home to us.
In the next instant, I leap backward. Hadrix’s blades slice across the front of my chest, one after the other, but again, the wounds heal instantly. I don’t lose a single drop of blood.
“I know what you are…Berserker,” I say to him, my voice impossibly serene despite the way he keeps trying to cut me—and I keep evading him.
As part of my power, I can discern the true nature of any being. Hadrix’s supernatural status was uncertain to me until right now. He had never accessed his power at the Academy before, to the point where the students had debated whether or not he was supernatural, like his wife, or purely human.
His pumped-up muscles and soulless eyes betray him.
From the hive mind of my sisters, I drag in as much information as I can, as fast as I can. Berserkers were a group ofmen who split off from the original Einherjar, a race of humans who revered the Valkyrie and sought glory in battle and death.
The Einherjar had honor, but Berserkers wanted only violence. To cause as much pain as they could before they killed their victims.
Veering to the left and levitating upward, I dart from side to side, avoiding every cut of Hadrix’s blades until I see an opening to dart forward instead.
My change of direction is so sudden that it appears to take him off-guard, his assault pausing for the seconds it takes me to declare, “Today, you will answer for your crimes and the crimes of your ancestors.”
He recovers quickly, swiping at me again with one of the axes.
This time, when the blade lodges in my side, I grab his arm, raking my claws across his forearm.
He roars in pain and attempts to leap back from me, but before he can get away, one of my snakes darts out, sinking her red fangs into his biceps.
One bite won’t be enough to kill him now that he’s accessing his full strength, but it will slow his movements.
Hadrix gives another shout, stumbling a little as my snake’s black poison slithers through his veins, spreading visibly beneath the surface of his skin.
Near the Academy’s front steps, the monsters watch on with blank faces, still under the thrall of the White Wand. The gunmen follow my movements with their weapons, but they must have learned their lesson from taking shots at me before. They won’t want to hit their master—especially with Vulture shaking with rage nearby. She swings the White Wand back and forth, its tip following my movements.
The hellhound has, surprisingly, dragged himself along the ground, as if he’s trying to get to me. Maybe he wants to protectme. I’m not sure, but even as he moves in increments of mere inches, groaning with pain, his fiery gaze doesn’t leave me.
My attention was away from Hadrix for all of a single second, but I’m fully aware of his next stumbling step back from me, as my snake’s poison must be making him dizzy.
I don’t intend to squander his vulnerability.
Launching myself forward, I rip my claws across his shoulder before I pull them outward again. If I thought I could reach directly into his chest and rip out his heart, I would, but I have to tear through the thickness of his muscles first.
He screams, but like me, he won’t feel pain. Not in his berserker form. I’ve simply made him mad.
He throws his second axe at my neck, and this time, it sticks, the damn thing distracting me enough that I’m not able to follow through with my intention to rip off his arm.
I pull the axe from my neck instead and fling it off to the side.
At lightning speed, I dart forward again so that my second and third snakes can sink their fangs into Hadrix’s neck and chest, forcing him to his knees.
They withdraw their fangs, and he collapses to the ground.
I give him another moment of my attention, rapidly considering the way my snakes’ poison streams visibly through his pumped-up veins. The venom hasn’t killed him yet, but I can’t keep ignoring Vulture.
