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With both hands, he ripped the creature in half, disembowelling it from right shoulder to left hip.
And then he whirled around, intercepting another winged demon before it could get to Dallas, who was panting from the effort it took to wield the sword of black adamant. This one, he sliced open from throat to navel, dagger dripping with black, fizzing blood.
With a roar, Max grabbed another fell creature, whipping it into the wall so hard its skull cracked open, blood misting the air.
Something with brute strength crashed into him from behind, and suddenly he was on the floor. He flipped over, blocking claws that swept for his throat—
And saw a pulsing stone in a translucent forehead. A stone shining black, the sight of it hypnotic.
The demon sprayed acid, the droplets melting holes in Max’s bodysuit.
He shouted in pain as the acid burned his skin, blistering it—
With a scream of fury, Dallas punched the sword through the monster’s head, skewering it. Max shoved its corpse aside with an upward push of his knees—
Piercing, otherworldly screams sliced through the air, followed by a blast of heat that had Max instantly sweating. He risked a glance through the doors of the elevator to see fire engulfing the tunnels, burning through the hundreds of monsters swarming the area until not even bones remained.
And Max couldn’t breathe, a single word blaring in his head like an alarm.
Fire. Fire. That was fire choking the tunnels from floor to ceiling, swelling and roaring and blasting through everything in its path—
And then Dallas was there, hovering over him where he lay on the ground, her wings fanning out above him like an angel’s embrace.
“I got you,” Dallas was saying. Just behind her, the inferno roared, suffusing her grimy, freckled skin with an orange-and-red glow. “I got you, Max.” She cupped his cheek, the glove of her bodysuit warm with heat. “I’m right here—I’m not leaving.”
Max forced himself to breathe. Kept looking into Dallas’s eyes, praying for that fire to stop. Blocking out the memory of Maya screaming, the flames that had singed his hair and skin, the smell of burning flesh.
A few minutes that felt like a lifetime passed, and then the fire vanished, and so did the memory, leaving the tunnels dark once more.
“I got you,” Dallas said again.
And then she eased back onto her haunches, helped Max sit up. Together, they looked toward the tunnels beyond the warped elevator doors—
And saw a young woman standing there in the dark. Fire given life.
Max stared. And stared and stared in disbelief.
It was Maya. Little Maya Jane, all grown up. Flanking her were more Elementals, all of them glowing with the colors of their magic.
Their souls.
Darien led the way deeper into the tunnels, toward the Well replica he could sense somewhere up ahead. No light was in these parts, no bioluminescent insects. Just the tactical lights on the firearms the others held, and the veins of the anima mundi lighting up under the soles of their feet. The blackness here held a likeness to the swirling mass above the Basilisk’s habitat, almost oily in feel, glomming onto their skin as if it were alive.
The tunnels snaked on for miles. And just as they reached a sharp bend, Darien saw a light glowing beyond.
The lack of armed guards alerted Darien to the magnitude of the problem at hand before he saw it—the Well replica glowing in the very center of an underground chamber even bigger than the last, the walls and ceiling shining black with a thick crust of adamant. This replica, to Darien’s horror, was far more advanced than the one on Kalendae, as if nurtured for longer, like some kind of pet.
It had sunk into the floor like a manmade lake, carving out a permanent place for itself in the earth. The waters glowed teal, and floating about were tiny balls of light the same shade. Fireflies.
The Well’s first call of magic nearly brought them all to their knees. It ripped through the tunnels, a sound only immortal ears could hear, making them grit their teeth, their blood vibrating with the sheer force of it.
Just like Darien predicted, there were no guards here—none of the imperator’s men in sight. No one but them.
As soon as the magic took its claws out of them, Tanner straightened out of his crouch. Staggered in place. Panted, “We need to get out of here.” With a shaking hand, he pointed at the veins of the anima mundi below their feet, constantly pulsing with every shade of the rainbow. “We’re too late—they’ve already activated it. Look.”
Those veins were channels. They ran from the chambers at Caliginous on Silverway…all the way into the Well replica.
And Loren—the Skeleton Key—had used those chambers. Her magic had been running through these channels since Darien had brought her to Yveswich, feeding the replica. Nurturing it. And with the imperator’s men nowhere in sight, the blacked out cameras stopping anyone from seeing that they had left—
