Many of us will die tonight. He knows it just as well as I do.
From the corner of my eye, a ghost of pale movement catches my attention.
Ereshkygall.
She moves like a wraith; here one moment, gone the next. Her spectral apparition, silver hair crowning her head and white leathers blending in the snowy terrain, raises goosebumps on my flesh.
I choose to believe that having such an ancient vampire in our midst will tip the scales of this war in our favor. Her and the combined efforts of all our kinds.
For the first time in Imiryion history, all races united to defeat the greater evil. Vampires, humans, and Fae with a moral compass.
We even have a motherfucking dragon. That’s got to count for something.
A faint rumble in the soil beneath my fingertips betrays the approaching calamity. I lock gazes with Killian, poised low on the other side of the road, stance mirroring my own.
A minuscule nod of his head, eyes solemn and weary.
A sharp inhale of breath. My own.
My hand clenches on my scimitar, blade polished and thirsty for onpyr blood.
It’s time.
Our reckoning is here.
A low thumping sound crawls up my spine, increasing tenfold the buzz of adrenaline coursing through my veins. Thousands of feet stomping the forest floor at full speed. They appear all at once, like a monstrous beast made of innumerable wet, festering red eye sockets. Hissing cackles and guttural snarls pierce the night sky; the sounds of utter madness.
“Wait, let them come closer,” I whisper to no one in particular, knowing that the heightened hearing of our warriors will catch my command.
Two heartbeats later, the horde is upon us, sniffing their surroundings as if they sense a wrongness in the air.
“Now.”
The word comes as a harsh rumble from my chest, and all at once, the trees move.
Not branches in the wind. Hundreds of tiny dove wing bones carrying the sleep concoction, their sharpened tips puncturing flesh. Creatures fall like broken puppets, and a small victory pours through my limbs, snapping me into motion.
We move as one. Shadows in the darkness.
Warriors rain down on the onpyrs from above, slicing necks and chomping limbs. Soren strikes first, landing effortlessly atop a creature with a crack that echoes in the chaos. He tears through its neck like wet parchment. The onpyr’s dying wail snaps the horde from its moment of confusion, and they push back viciously. We jump from our hiding places, blades drawn, slicing right and left, hungry for retaliation.
We’re a deadly storm coming from all sides, giving them no inch to retreat.
I drive my scimitar through necks and jaws, blackened blood spraying in violent arcs.
The Dark Umbras move like flashes of unforgiving steel, cutting everything in their path. Throats split open, heads slipping free from bodies, tumbling down to the blood-soaked earth.
Onpyrs rage in unison, fangs bared, deafening roars shaking the surrounding forest. They swing and clash with our forces, sinking claws and teeth and steel into vampires, humans, and Fae alike. A mindless beast drives a sword deep into Axel’s shoulder, and he punches the creature square in the chest, wrenching the blade from his flesh and using it to behead his assailant. He jumps into the next kill without a single glance back.
A crazed female with rotten sockets lunges at me as my eyes keep searching for Sariah in the battle’s thick. My hand drives through its throat with clinical precision, fingers slashing through muscle and sinew, bursting through the back of its throat in a shower of gore. I grab its mangled hair with my other hand, ripping the head off its shoulders and throwing it into the undergrowth below, where it lands with a sickening thud. Another two attack at once, jaws snapping at me, and I slice the air with my scimitar, steel meeting flesh with brutal force. Their heads slide off their bodies like rotten petals falling from a dead plant, forgotten and decayed. The thrill of the kill sings in my veins, and I push my way through the horde, husks of dismembered onpyrs falling all around me.
As I drive my blade through countless throats, vengeance roaring in my ears, movement catches my eye in the upper branches.
Pale braids flutter in the darkness as Sariah leaps from trunk to trunk, barely touching the ground, slicing creatures that fall in her aftermath like thrown rocks at the bottom of a well. She’s a featherless bird, or better yet, a mountain lion, impossibly light and graceful. My breath catches in my throat in steadfast awe as she drops onto a burly onpyr’s shoulders, driving twin blades into its crimson bleeding eyes. Its putrid orbs burst from the pressure, ooze pouring out as she tears them out, impaled on the tip of her blades like skewered meat. The creature bellows, thick-clawed handsgrabbing her thighs and throwing her above his head. She spins mid-air and drives her daggers in a criss-cross motion through the beast’s throat, only ribbons of gnarled flesh remaining in her wake.
She lands on her feet, wiping the gore on her leather-covered legs and throwing me a playful wink before disappearing into the fray.
Fucking hell. I think I came in my pants a little.
