Page 45 of Power of Five
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Leralynn
Tye pulls up beside me, grabbing Sprite’s reins again. “We need to run, Lilac Girl,” he says, his voice icy calm. “Very fast. Hold on.”
“No!” I jerk the reins from him, my hands shaking. My pulse races so hard that the world blurs, and Sprite dances beneath me as she senses my fear. “We aren’t splitting up. You can’t leave them.Ican’t leave them.”
River is off his horse now, standing with his feet wide apart, his shoulders open to the piling beasts. And they are piling—five, a dozen, two dozen, too many to count. The breeze carries their rotten-egg stench to me and ruffles River’s dark hair as the male holds his hand out toward the worms. An energy that makes my tongue tingle crackles in the air.
Then the very earth shifts. A crater two paces wide and twenty paces long opens between the worms and us, the creatures falling over its edge almost as quickly as new ones follow them from the Gloom.
Sprite’s eyes roll in her head, the dancing and bucking beneath me all too familiar. Thanks to bloody Coal, I know exactly when I’m about to get thrown.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tye demands as I slide from the saddle to the ground a moment before Sprite starts on her next bucking spree.
“Avoiding breaking my neck,” I breathe.
Tye curses and swings down from his saddle, pushing me roughly behind his wide back while the horses run free and away, like the bright creatures they are. Ahead of us, the worms—piranhas, Klarissa’s voice explains in my memory—continue to fill the crater, the vanguard building the foundation for others to fall upon.
“They will spill over shortly,” River says. “I don’t have enough energy to deepen the chasm.” Calm. Matter of fact. As if a hundred man-eating worms fall out of the air every day.
Tye looks over his shoulder at me, his eyes drinking me in. “Your job is to stay alive,” he says, the air around his hands swarming with lapping orange and yellow flames. “Don’t get heroic. All right?”
“No danger of that,” I say, my mouth dry. “Do what you need to do.”
A short nod and Tye turns to step up beside River, his arms extended toward the crater. The smell of burnt rot hits me a few moments later as Tye’s fire magic attacks the worms.
The creatures sizzle and steam but seem disinclined to catch fire.
“We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way,” Tye calls, drawing his sword, his body moving with a dancer’s grace as he splits the first escaped piranha in half. A second worm is already following, the never-ending pile of them refusing to slow.
I twist about, my own helplessness pounding me. Coal and Shade are still in the Gloom; River and Tye barely hold a school of piranhas at bay. The once-crisp air is thick with bile, rotten eggs, and the mute sizzling of the worms.
“If you want to help them, you need to stay alive,” a voice says behind me. An arm in leather armor wraps around my waist, an unfamiliar bitter scent filling my nostrils. Pyker. The male bends his body protectively over mine as he turns to point toward the foothills a few hundred paces to our left. “There is a cave close by,” Pyker says into my ear. “One with an entrance narrow enough that I can hold it myself. Can you run?”
I swallow. “The others—”
“The others need to be a full, real quint, not this perverted version of it,” Pyker says bluntly, his arm pressing me into motion. “But they need to be worrying about protecting a bystander even less. If you can’t be an asset, then at least stop being a liability. Unless you want to die and drain what power they have.”
Pyker’s cold words wash through me, the truth of them stinging my nerves. The cave. Yes. Close and protected so no one need worry for my sake.
“All right,” I breathe, letting the male pull me along as I focus on my feet, willing them to move faster toward the cave. “Where is it exactly?”
Pyker points with his sword at something still a hundred paces off. Maybe more.
“We’ve different definitions of ‘close by,’” I pant, my lungs burning.
“Move, human,” Pyker yells, slowing to match my shorter strides. Behind us, the sounds of battle—cracking earth, the spit and crackle of flames, the thick, wet thuds of swords slicing worms—are deafening for their quiet rhythm. “Faster. Run for your life—and your quint’s life too.”
I do. I focus on the pounding of my feet, begging my muscles and lungs to work through the pain, willing myself to reach the cave mouth growing before us.
“Bloody stars.” The change of tone in Pyker’s curse jerks me from my survival trance.
I look up to see a dark-clad figure with a sword rushing at us from the very opening Pyker and I are headed for. The dark fae warrior’s steel flashes in the bright sun, Pyker’s own blade coming up to meet it with a deafening clash that has me screaming in spite of myself.
The new male pulls back, spinning with his next blow. The blade cuts so quickly that I hear the whistle of air along the steel as it swings for Pyker’s side.
Pyker’s blade snaps down and he grunts as he parries the blow. His other hand sweeps out to grab me, pulling me behind him. Protecting me with his body the way Tye did.
