Page 186 of Brimstone
I was on my feet and running back up the slope to where I’d left Hayden.
“Banking right! Right, right, right!” a shout came. I recognized the voice. Had no time to process who it was. Suddenly, there were feeders everywhere. The warriors who had been evacuated from Cahlish fought them all around me, but there were more of them than there were of us. A flicker of blistering white-hot light forked across the hillside, landing multiple strikes, and the smell of char and ash hit the back of my nose.
I blocked and I parried, throwing off each feeder as it came for me. I took arms and opened their stomachs. I claimed their heads as quickly as I could in my haste to get back up the fucking hill.
Carnage and screaming, everywhere I looked.
No Hayden to be found.
I barely paid attention as more feeders came for me and fell afoul of my blades.
Angel’s Breath crackled through the air to my right. At least I knew Lorreth was somewhere amid the fray. But where the fuck was Fisher? Why couldn’t I sense him anywhere?
Where are you? Come on, Fisher, tell me where you are!
Deafening silence rang in my ears.
Had he stepped through the shadow gate and run straight into a feeder? Was he already among the fallen, bloodless and dead? No, there was no way. I’d know. Iwould.
“Hayden!”I spun, slicing a gangly feeder open, nearly slipping in its rotting entrails as they spilled like wet, glistening snakes from a tear in its stomach. It lunged for me, trying to rake me with its claws, but I slashed with both swords, carving the monster in two and sending its head rolling back down the slope.
“Saeris!” I nearly eviscerated the blood-soaked figure who came running out of the smoke; I saw the flash of gold in his mouth and stayed my hand. “Thank the gods,” Foley panted. “You’re all right. Where’s Fisher? We need a blanket approach to this, and we need it now.”
“He was with you! Didn’t you come through together?” My heart couldn’t beat any faster, so I stopped it altogether. The thunder in my ears wasn’t helping.
Foley swore in Old Fae, spinning around and peering into the melee. “I thought he might have been with you. He wasrightbehind me. I came through just now and was met with this. Took me a second to get my head on straight. He—”
I didn’t hear what he said next. A feeder barged past him, nearly sending him to the ground in its haste to get to me. It didn’t spare Foley a second glance. Foley was a vampire, after all—he had nothing that a feeder might crave. Me, on the other hand? I was half Fae, and apparently the scent of half-Fae blood was still enough to drive a feeder into a frenzy.
I threw up my hands instinctively, projecting my shield, the white-blue light flaring bright. The quicksilver icon hadalmosttaken shape in the air when the feeder barreled straight through it.
The creature hit me square in the chest, knocking the breath out of me. I didn’t need it anymore, but the impact still shocked me.
My ass hit the ground hard. My feet were up in an instant, preventing it from sinking its teeth into me, forcing it back. “Stop!” The authority that had fallen to me when I’d beencrowned queen of the Blood Court rose up inside me—I felt it there, a tangible thing that I might have been able to take hold of.“STOP!”I repeated, imbuing the words with as much command as I could . . . but the feeder didn’t even flinch. My command held no power over it at all.
Fuck!
I was about to drive the sword in my left hand up through its jaw and into its skull, but suddenly the feeder’s head was gone. Red mist rained down on me, spattering the front of my leathers as Foley came into view over the feeder’s headless shoulders. He held a weapon the likes of which I had never seen before: a length of thick chain with a wooden handle on one end and a heavy metal ball studded with vicious spikes at the other.
The spikes dripped red.
“I only swore fealty to you yesterday, and I’m already saving your life?” he said. If it weren’t for the horror show taking place around us and the fact that neither of us knew where my mate was, I would have thought he was trying to be funny. The decapitated feeder slumped sideways into the grass. Foley went to help me up but then caught sight of the god swords I still held in both hands and thought better of it. Back on my feet, I wiped my face and faced him. “Tellme he came through with you.”
“I thought he had. But when I turned around, he wasn’t there. The shadow gate closed, and . . .”
I knew it before he’d confirmed it. No matter what the circumstances were, Fisher would have answered via our bond if I’d called out to him. He hadn’t come through the gate.
My blood turned to ice in my veins. Foley was still saying something. I shook my head, cutting him off as I walked around him.Hayden!
Renfis.
NowFisherwas gone?
I wasn’t losing my brother, too.
“Hayden! Where the fuckareyou?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t call out.
