He wasn’t dead yet?
The thought gave me hope that when this was over, he might not be lost forever.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t bore me with a monologue of your exploits?”
Melanie, wearing my father’s face, lowered her brows.
She was too prideful for her own good.
Like mother, like daughter.
“I’m not a blood-witch,” I said. “I’m the key.”
My Glory erupted from my body, melting her ice, and with every shred of will I had left, I drove myself onto the dagger.
Ronen
I whirled across the battlefield, decapitating souls left and right. Alexei and MJ were at my sides, their lightning and flame flashing in my periphery. I gutted one infected, turned, and split through the stomach of another. MJ cleaned up the messes I left behind and sent flames toward the Spinewalkers. Alexei struck them with his lightning, their bark burning and portals closing. As a team, we recycled an unnamable number of infected. We downed at least ten Spinewalkers.
But it was never enough.
The infected kept spilling from the Spinewalkers, and my reserves were fading.
Come on, Hellion,I begged silently.
Swinging toward my next kill, a sharp pain split my collarbone, and I missed. Warmth that shouldn’t have been there dripped into my uniform from a wound that hadn’t come from my surroundings.
My consequence to bear.
An infected swiped its claws across my chest, grazing off my leathers, only for another to stab me in the arm. Alexei’s lightning speared through them, and they collapsed into the mud.
“Are you almost drained?” he shouted over the melee.
“Not yet,” I snarled, unleashing another surge of shadows and stripping them of any chance to survive.
A thousand fell in the hellion’s wake before my power thinned, dispersing into pale wisps that vanished, unable to remain outside my body for long.
I’d only be able to do that a couple more times.
Alexei and MJ shot me sharp looks.
“Lucille,” I barked, wrath fuming through my veins and dulling our pain as I luscelered down the path I’d carved, singular in my focus on reaching her.
Then the swarm closed again.
“After the next wave, lightning, then fire,” I ordered, pointing toward the tree line.
If I could reach her, get close enough to her position, my shadows might stretch far enough to matter.
I forced my shadows out, struggling to dig into the infecteds’ minds, barely managing to tear open another path.
Lightning rained down a second later, a tunnel of fire following.
Before we luscelered, I felt her.
All of her.
Her soul touched mine—gentle, unwavering, breathtaking.
