Kicking and flailing, I struggled against the onslaught, shaking one loose, then another, but there were too many of them, too demanding, too hungry, and now they were all around me, flipping me onto my back once more, teeth snapping at my neck, claws spilling my blood into the earth, and then…
A surge of blinding red light exploded from my palms, blasting them away and shattering the skeletons into piles of loose bones.
But just as quickly as they’d come apart, the bones were reassembling, ghouls rising once again.
Choking down a few deep breaths, I scrambled back up to my feet and commanded the magick to form a shield around me, sealing me off from their next attack.
Only… the attack never came. The ghouls went as still as statues, staring at me with vacant black holes for eyes, as if someone had flipped a master switch and put them all in sleep mode.
But they weren’t sleeping. I knew it in my gut.
They were merely waiting.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit!
My spell wouldn’t hold much longer. I could already feel it weakening, my body too banged up to handle the strain as the magick sucked away my energy.
The shield flickered. Flickered again.
My muscles quaked, blood running from a dozen gaping wounds. I was beaten and broken. Wasted. And I couldn’t hold out for another second.
With a desperate cry, I dropped to my knees. The magick shield vanished. Blood ran down my face, my chest, my fingers. It soaked the dirt, so much of it I wondered how the hell I was still alive.
The ground trembled once more, making my vision blur.
There, before my weary eyes, a riot of black roses burst from the fissure, filling the air with their sweet, spicy scent.
My head spun.
And without a sound, the skeletons dropped to their knees, bowed their terrifying gray heads, and vanished.
14
HUDSON
Iain’t never flown so fast in my entire fucking life.
One minute I was hanging out with Saint in the common room, cracking two beers open to celebrate his return to consciousness.
And then I felt it. The bond, jackhammering a dire warning at the base of my skull that my girl was in deep shit.
I sucked in a breath, and then it came again. The call. The urgency.
Her fear lanced my heart like a blade.
I didn’t even bother telling Saint what I’d felt. Where the fuck I was going. Just dropped that beer and took off at a run, crashing through the balcony doors and soaring out into the night.
Now, I was picking up the signature of her magick right alongside the unmistakable burn of that fear, but it was coming from outside the wall.
Sonofabitch, I knew I never should’ve let her leave with Keradoc tonight.
Fucking hell.
I tucked my wings in close and dove right over that fucking wall, following the insistent tug of our bond as it grew stronger, so strong my skull felt like it was about to burst.
Right over Beggar’s Moat.
No. No fuckin’ way was she in there. It just wasn’t possible…
