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I screamed.
And still I burned.
Drowning in a sea of agony, I writhed. I couldn’t survive this. There was too much pain. Too much fire, even though I couldn’t find evidence of a single flame. After a few agonizing heartbeats, I couldn’t see anything at all. My vision turned kaleidoscopic, overrun by flares of red and white light all stemming from the torture.
It was an eternity before the pain faded.
And Alaric’s chuckle was the first sound I heard.
Snarling, I struggled to my feet, letting my rage hide any sign of my shock. But I could hardly believe I was still in this world. That much pain felt like it should have reduced me to dust on this grimy dirt floor.
At the entrance to the hovel, he stood watching me, amusement on his face like my pain was nothing but entertainment to him.
Which it was.
But I would endure him no longer.
I lunged, crossing the pathetic shelter in an instant. My hands wrapped around his throat. My fangs went for his vein. He fell back, still chuckling, barely even putting up a fight.
Sunlight poured over us both as we crashed to the ground outside.
I gasped, shoving away from him, but a creaking sound came from behind me. Before I could reach the hovel, the rickety structure collapsed, shoved down by one of the orcs. The green-skinned creature stood watching us, his Voidborn-possessed eyes glowing sickening yellow. No trace of an expression resided on his gruesome face.
Still chuckling to himself, Alaric climbed to his feet. “No place to retreat now.”
I threw a panicked look around me, seeking any shelter at all, when suddenly the truth registered past my instinctive fear.
I wasn’t burning.
“Now you see.” Alaric walked over to me, his human appearance back in place with the continued exception of his black eyes and metal teeth.
“What is this?” I surveyed my hands, my arms, and then patted my face, seeking any smoldering or stinging skin.
“Angel blood.” Alaric idly brushed the dust from his gray jacket. “Or as close to it as this world possesses. Your stepdaughter apparently has discovered one of the last remaining descendants of an angelic line in this world, and he travels with her now. My brethren came upon them at the edge of a mountain range far south of here, and this one managed to draw his blood.” He nodded to the Voidborn currently lying limp on the ground. Even as I watched, the creature’s body was evaporating like mist fading in the light of day. “Seeing as how we need to travel faster and you are vulnerable to daylight, I employed a spell we learned from another realm to use that blood to give you protection against the sun.”
My thoughts reeled. A spell from another realm? Angel blood protecting me from daylight? It was madness. Pure madness.
Yet the fact I stood beneath the sun for the first time in decades spoke for itself.
“What is happening to that one?” I jerked my chin toward the Voidborn on the ground. “Will that happen to me because of this ‘angel blood’?”
Alaric glanced down at the creature, and I would swear a flicker of regret crossed his face. “That is a sacrifice, one willingly made for the cause. Carrying such foul blood through the abyss as this one did is no easy task, to say nothing of the fact there is a reason your kind die in the light of that damnable fireball. A reason the sun too will die when we are done.”
The Voidborn’s body vanished entirely.
I eyed Alaric warily. He would have me believe angel blood poisoned the creature, yet that bastard ingested it without problem. Forced me to ingest it, moreover.
What nonsense was he spinning, hoping I would buy his games?
My gaze turned, sweeping the monsters. Each of them sat in the sunlight. None of them were dying. His lies were so transparent as to be moronic.
But then the truth hit me.
Each Voidborn had sought shelter within a monster from the moment it broke through to this realm. Alaric had stayed in the hovel with me.
Only the Voidborn left exposed to the light had died.
My lips parted with shock. Just as vampires could not survive sunlight for long without burning, neither could the beings who created them. Thus they needed to inhabit dumb beasts such as these in order to hide from the light.
