The taste of tar wrapped in winter berries sat on my tongue like a corrupted treat. But that was all it did. My skin didn’t line with black. My teeth didn’t sharpen, nor did my head grow horns. Sam’s shot worked. Not that I thought it wouldn’t, but the confirmation was relieving.
A bellow and a scream sliced through the clashing battle. Both familiar.
I whipped my head toward the hellion first.
She plowed through the infected, beelining for Lucifer, rage filling her features and our bond.
Then Alexei.
He faced Ridigar, a dagger lodged in his wing and suffocating smoke surrounding him. My gut clenched.
Rune slammed me with a warning.
She leaped on one infected, then devoured a blood-banded maleluscelering toward me. Her unhinged jaws snapped back to their natural position after a gruesome swallow.
I twisted and plunged my sword into the chest of another, ripping it free to thrust into the next. My shadows leaped out, unhinged and merciless.
The hellion didn’t need help. She could do this. I had to trust her skill. Trust her plan. My fears were useless here.
And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t know something I needed to.
Rune,I ordered, nodding toward the hellion.
She answered by switching directions and eating any infected in her way, carving a path toward our cordistella.
And I luscelered toward Alexei.
Vicious wind sheared through Ridigar’s smoke, and heavy rain poured on their position. But it wasn’t enough. At least ten other infected attacked him, pushing against his wind, squinting through his rain.
The squad Alexei had led were all dead but one. Even the archers in the sky were thinning.
His lightning rained down in blinding flashes, frying them on contact and keeping them at bay. The booms carried over his screeching wind.
But there were always more.
And they had found his weakness.
An infected Dominion ripped out the dagger lodged in Alexei’s tender membranes, pulling another bellow from him. His pain rang through their satisfied hisses and Ridigar’s laughter.
His wings were too large a target.
It was a death sentence to have them out on the ground. A death sentence to have them soaking in the rain.
But they were still injured, and he’d chosen to keep them, knowing this could happen.
Three flaming arrows sank into the infected Dominion’s chest.
I glanced to my right.
MJ.
She carved another path toward him.
Ridigar noticed us coming and called out an order.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty infected circled him, pushing in like a rabid mob.
Alexei’s wind and lightning kept them at a distance, but he struggled.
