Page 98 of A Fury Of Shadows

The fiend’s skull rolled and bumped into Tom’s boot.

The super soldier shuddered. “Ugh! I hate these things!”

Lou grabbed the throat of the fiend coming at him and shot him in the eye. The creature slumped in his grasp, the holy-water-impregnated and divine-power-coated bullet melting its brain.

Serena removed her dagger from a demon’s heart and rose. “Looks like he’s hiding back there.”

Vlad followed her gaze to the iron-clad door some fifty feet away, at the end of a tunnel.

Dietrich had evidently been clued-in on the attack on the keep. He’d closed himself off in his lab, but not before releasing a bunch of demons first.

There were ten left. They stood between them and the door.

Mae’s magic brushed Vlad’s skin, raising goosebumps on his flesh. He looked up, his pulse quickening. He could tell she was fighting someone powerful.

I need to get to her!

Incubus energy flooded his veins and lit the air with a crimson glow. He ground his teeth and opened himself up to the darkness that always lived within him. Tarang’s muscles bunched, hackles rising and redness flashing in his eyes.

It had gotten easier for them to wield the devastating power they rarely unleashed, lest they lose control and go on a rampage.

That’s probably because of Mae.

Serena squinted at him. “Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but things are pretty tight down here, so you should probably—”

“Let’s do this, Tarang!” Vlad bit out.

They swept across the corridor, a storm of blades, fangs, and claws glinting in a macabre dance as they dispatched the demons in their path. They twisted, jumped, bolted up walls, and ducked beneath talons, their aim true and their movements lightning quick.

Dark blood painted the walls and floor in the passage.

Vlad and Tarang landed in front of the door seconds later, their chests heaving.

“Or they could do that,” Lou told Serena dully.

She sighed.

Vlad tried to cut the lock with his diamond-edged swords. Something buffered the attack. He flinched as a wall of black magic and demonic energy glimmered into view.

“What the hell is this?!”

Serena approached, frowning. “Let me try.”

A light caught Vlad’s gaze. A golden glow fluttered on the super soldier’s daggers. He blinked. Her skin was shining with the same radiance.

Is that the divine power Mae was talking about?!

He stepped aside to make way for her. Serena stabbed the weapons in the invisible barrier. It resisted her.

Her pupils brightened, the divine energy within her lighting up the nanorobots at the back of her retinae. She clenched her jaw, dug her heels into the ground, and tried to power through.

Sparks exploded when the blades punctured the shield.

Vlad sucked in air as the door’s defenses tried to blast her off, the force of the recoil making his hair flutter.

“You’d better stand back,” Serena warned in a deadly voice.

He retreated to Lou’s side, Tarang following.

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