Page 11 of The Darkest Night

And there’s this thing too.

The Witch Queen’s weapon had protected him from the brunt of his brother’s attacks before he’d escaped the high-rise. How, Nikolai still wasn’t sure. It was as if it’d known that it needed to keep him alive so it could reach its mistress. Nikolai shivered.

In all his time in the world of magic, he had never heard of a sentient magic tool.

The witch’s eyes shrank to slits at the sight of the radiance over his chest. She knew what it was that he’d stolen from his father’s vault.

“Give it back, traitor!”

She hurled her magic at him. Nikolai spun out of the way of the destructive spell and threw his spear.

The witch grunted and froze. Her eyes rounded. She grappled frantically with the weapon that had pierced her throat, gurgling sounds choking her breath. Her python hissed in alarm.

The pale glow of Nikolai’s magic fluttered across his skin as he flexed his fingers.

The spear left the witch’s flesh with a sickening sound and returned to his grasp, wood striking his palm with a clap. Horror leached the color from the woman’s face as she clamped her hands to the gaping hole in her neck. Blood streamed thickly through the gaps between her fingers and fell on the swaying snake wrapped around her body.

The bond between a familiar and a witch or sorcerer was such that if the human died, so did the creature bound to them.

The witch’s legs gave way. She thudded to the ground in an expanding, crimson pool.

Nikolai didn’t even spare her a glance as he walked past her body and that of her dying familiar. He had no pity for the Dark Council. Even if most weren’t born evil, they were soon corrupted by their master, the Sorcerer King, and they reveled in the brutal acts he ordered them to carry out on his behalf.

Nikolai reached the end of the passage without encountering more magic users, turned the corner, and halted in his tracks.

A demon squatted on the ground some twenty feet ahead of him, claws and jaws dripping with gore as he ripped out the intestines of the male nurse he had killed.

Two women in scrubs and an old man in a dressing gown cowered under the nurses’ station just beyond the creature, knuckles white as they clung to one another in abject terror.

The demon straightened when he sensed Nikolai’s presence. He turned his head and fixed him with ochre-lit eyes. There was a nametag on his bloodied scrub top. It read ‘Dr. Chavez.’

Tension knotted Nikolai’s limbs. His hand strayed to the weapon that lay against his heart.

Please. Lend me your strength a little while more, so I may help these people!

The artifact thrummed under his fingers. Magic filled Nikolai, a red river of fire that replenished his reserves. Alastair flapped his wings, his eyes flashing orange as his powers recharged.

They headed toward the demon.

* * *

Mae slippedunder a set of talons, kicked the demon’s left leg out from under her, and drove a pair of scissors into her left temple as she fell to the ground.

The creature went rigid before slumping to the floor. Her eyes dulled and her claws shrank as her body slowly took on a human form once more. Mae bit her lip when she saw the woman’s face.

It was a surgical nurse who worked with Rose.

“Go!” she shouted at the patients and staff who’d taken refuge inside a janitor’s closet.

They darted out of the cupboard and headed for the nearest emergency exit, stumbling and whimpering in horror. Mae wrenched the scissors out of the dead woman’s head and climbed to her feet. Unlike the creature who’d possessed Antonovich, these ones died as long as she pierced their brain or the base of their neck. She dropped the blades in her pocket and headed in the direction of the stairs that would get her to the roof.

Her hands curled into fists as she observed the bodies littering the bays and side rooms she passed, rage a heavy weight in the pit of her stomach. She’d counted over fifty dead as she’d made her way through the hospital and up the floors of the surgical block. Many more had been wounded and were being moved to safety by those who’d managed to escape the savage attack by the sinister creatures who’d appeared in their midst.

Hodge had stayed behind to help with the evacuation. He’d begged Mae not to go farther inside the hospital. His pleas had fallen on deaf ears. There was no way she was walking out of Grandview without Rose.

The fire door that would take her to the rooftop finally came into view. Mae was twelve feet from it when the hairs lifted on the back of her neck. She spun around, saw a dark sphere whooshing toward her, and dove to the side.

Chapter 7

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