Their willingness to bleed and die for each other.
To sacrifice.
“We can’t hold them back forever.” Paden sliced at one demon who came too close and forced the creature back. “I can carry him out for you.”
Cameron hesitated as she caught his loophole in those words. And harkened back to some of Paden’s more dire childhood pranksthat still resonated deep within her soul and psyche. Ofttimes, it wasn’t so much what her brother said, but rather what the rascal meant, and wordplay was what this particular devil did best. “Aye, butwillyou, brother?”
He tsked at her serious question. “Tell me the truth, Cammy. Do you love him?”
There was no hesitation in her answer. Just as there was none in her heart. “I do. Scary though it is. And hopeless, even more so. I would never have him harmed.”
“Then I’ll die before I let them have him. I swear that to you on me life, me precious bit. None shall have him. In that you can trust.”
A single tear fell down her cheek as she stared at her big brother in his pale Seraph form. Never had she loved him more. “You better not get hurt, either. I’ve taken enough trips into hell to spank your rotten arse, Paden Jack. Don’t you be making me take another.”
He scoffed at her. “You were ever a bossy one, bit. From the moment you came out and first demanded I give up me bed for you.”
Smirking, Paden swung Kalder up in his arms and flew off to safety so that she could turn her attention to fighting the demons with the other members of her crew.
All around, her friends battled with everything they had, but it wasn’t looking good for the crew. These were some of the fiercest demons they’d ever faced. Never let it be said that the Malachai didn’t choose among the best for his army.
Cameron moved to cover the Dark-Huntress, Janice, as one of the nastier beasts came at her back. “Have you ever seen the like?”
“Nay!” Janice hissed as a twisted blue demon caught her wristwith a tentacle and snatched it hard enough to make it snap with a horrendous sound.
Suddenly, Chthamalus Morro was there with a number of his Barnak soldiers. They shot out dozens of small, bright blue gelatinous blobs toward the demons. Blobs that seemed to have the consistency of snot, and when they landed on their targets, they spread out and began to smoke—something that caused the demons to scream and recoil as if they’d been struck by fire.
Or worse.
Flaming snot.
Shocked, she gaped at Chthamalus.
He grinned. “Don’t ask how we make them or where they come from. Just be glad we’re not shooting them atyou.” He aimed a tentacle at another set of advancing enemies and began lobbing more blobs to stop them.
She clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for the cover.”
“No worries. My lord prince would have me nethers of both genders if I let anything happen to his lady.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. While she wanted to believe that Kalder cared, she found it hard to believe at times. Especially right now, when he wasn’t here to help when she needed him most. But then she was used to being abandoned whenever she needed someone.
It was something she’d grown used to the moment her parents had orphaned her as a child—that sick feeling whenever she looked around at the worst times of her life only to find that the only thing she had at her back was four solid walls.
Ifshe was lucky.
I came into this world alone and sure as I’ve lived, ’tis how I shall leave it.
Seldom had any hour in between been any different. In spite of all his good intentions and protestations otherwise, Paden headed out to sea every time she needed a shoulder to lean on, and left her behind to wait for his return.
I’m making a better future for us, Cammy.Those were always Paden’s excuses. But she’d have rather had him home, to make a better present, as the future was often too hard to see past the misery and drudgery of what she had to get through minute by minute of every single day. She couldn’t stand waiting for that nebulous date that never seemed to arrive, and being forced to stand strong on her own two legs that were getting more and more tired every furlough they carried her.
Truth be told, Cameron again had that desolate hole in her stomach that she’d had most of her life. The first time she’d felt it had been right after the deaths of her parents. When she and Paden had arrived in Williamsburg, among the bustling crowd of noonday people. They’d jostled her about as if she were a piece of driftwood in the ocean with no land in sight, and but for Paden’s ever firm hand on hers, she’d have been lost to their tidal, hostile current as they cursed her for being in their way. Rudely, they had elbowed her if she got too close to any.
Oh how she remembered the bright patterned clothes and cloaks coming at her from every direction in an overwhelming sea of color. The stampeding sound of shoes and boot heels striking the cobblestones and boards while her fear welled up that they’d run her over without care or compassion should she fall.
Though she made no external sound whatsoever, inside she’d been screaming in terror. Screaming out for someone to see them and help them.
No one had noticed.
