The dining-room windows burst inwards all at once in a storm of shards and wooden splinters, and my instincts kick in, throwing myself over Sariah, protecting her from the crystals raining down on us with vicious sharpness.
The frigid winter air snuffs out the candles, bathing the room only in the eerie glow of the moon.
I don’t have time to check Sariah for injuries before a dozen onpyrs pour through the ruins of the windows in a blur of fangs, claws, and burning red eye sockets.
“What the…” Sariah breathes against my chest, disoriented, before a howling creature lunges for us. I spin, unsheathing my scimitar and throwing myself against the abomination, slicing its head off its shoulders in one swift movement.
“Morweena’s puppets,” I say over my shoulder, grabbing a pair of daggers from their holsters and throwing them her way. “Beheading is the only way to kill these motherfuckers.”
She grabs the daggers mid-air with agile precision, crouching low like a cat poised to strike.
Two snarling onpyrs attack me at once, and I spin and parry, throwing one off me with a boot to the chest, while impaling the other one with my sword. Sariah’s holding her own, blocking their lunges and cutting through rotten flesh and bone with terrifying ease.
But it’s no use. The two of us can’t face alone the inpour of attackers; more and more rolling in by the minute.
Where the fuck are my warriors?
I kick the dining table, toppling it over as a protective shield against the mindless monsters, and dragging Sariah behind it by her wrist.
A creature leaps over the overturned furniture, sinking its fangs into my shoulder, before I twist, giving Sariah clear aim at his throat. She drives a steel blade up through his jaw and wrenches it free in a spray of gore that splatters both our faces. I lose no time in finishing the job, driving my scimitar through its skull and twisting; the head rolling to the ground with a wet thud.
“Your shoulder,” she breathes, trying to reach out to touch it, but I brush her off, pushing her behind me.
“It’s nothing,” I say, wincing through the burn. “It will fade away.”
We keep fighting in unison, backs brushing, our breaths tangled as we slash through sinew and bone marrow.
By the time my warriors come to our rescue, the room has become a slaughterhouse, with blood and brains splattered everywhere.
I duck to avoid a snarling onpyr aiming for my throat, and he changes course, grabbing fistfuls of Sariah’s blond locks and throwing her against a wall.
Several onpyrs lunge for her at once, and I panic, throwing my scimitar through one’s forehead as I push her out of the way. They’re upon me as one, and I fall to my knees as a handful of daggers find their way through my flesh, and pain erupts in various places. Fangs tear out my skin, taking chunks of my neck, my back, and a gash against my ribs oozes blood in rivulets.
“Blaise!”
Her screaming is fading in my ears as I thrash on the ground, managing to crush one creature’s rotten eye sockets with my thumbs, before another three jump on me, disarming me completely.
The pain is excruciating, taking me back to that ransacked village long ago, where I sat on the ground, all mangled and broken, while Fae soldiers raped and brutalized my mother and sister, my father and brothers’ corpses staring at me with empty eyes, witnessing from the afterlife how I was letting all of them down.
I was useless then, and I am equally useless now.
I stare at the ceiling, unseeing, unmoving, blood draining out of my wounds, staining the floorboards underneath.
Faintly, my ears pick up on the commotion all around me, broken wails of agony and the harsh swoosh of metal through the air. A blade enters my vision, moonlight glinting from its blood-soaked edge as it cuts onpyr throats without mercy. One by one, heads roll like fetid apples on the ground, bodies collapsing like butchered carcasses onto the ruined hardwood.
And then she’s on me, cradling my head, blood, tears and snot dripping from her face and into my eyes.
“You fool! What have you done?”
I don’t know why she’s so undone, and I try to say as much, but all I manage is a garbled cough, choking on my own blood. My movements are heavy and uncoordinated—like fighting to stay afloat in muddied waters—as I try with trembling fingers to wipe away her tears. I only smear more crimson on her cheek, and she looks entirely like a vengeful Goddess, dipped in violence and gore.
“Get healers now. He’s losing so much blood,” she screams at no one in particular before wrenching her sleeve and pressing her soft wrist to my lips.
“Drink,” she urges me between sobs, and I must be delirious because she couldn’t possibly have offered me her life essence.
“Drink, you stubborn male.” She shoves her wrist deeper into my mouth, pushing against my fangs until they sink into her vein and euphoria bursts into my weakening body. My survival instinct kicks in, and I wrap a hand around hers, gulping down mouthfuls of the best damned ichor I have ever tasted.
“That’s it, take it all,” she whispers, and I yank my canines free from her flesh, afraid of depleting her.
