My heart was bleeding, watching him fight some internal battle in a place where I couldn’t reach him.Where I couldn’t help him.
“We’re too far from the water for drowning,” Nico grunted, with a shake of his head, “And I don’t happen to know an unbinding spell, do you?” Nobody bothered answering. “So, I guess we break them apart. And figure out some way to kill the spirits, whatever the fuck that means. And,here we go.”
The closest one lunged, and Nico met it head-on, blade flashing. The thing shrieked as steel carved through its throat, dark blood spraying—but it didn’t drop. It kept coming, clawing at Nico with talon-like fingers, broken teeth snapping mindlessly?—
Nico drove his blade up through its skull.
The creature went still. He yanked the blade out, and the body dropped to the ground with the thud… then it pushed slowly back up, cracked skin glowing brighter, eyes burning like twin flames, ichor—blacker than night—flowing down the smooth chest.
“Okay,” he panted, retreating. “This is definitely a problem.” He raised his gun as it attacked again, emptied a full clip into the place where a heart should be, and the thing didn’t so much as twitch.
“What the…” Gabriel elbowed me aside, flying past me as the other three descended and chaos erupted.
The air heated up as I ducked under deadly swiping, sharp claws, slamming my hand into a rock-hard chest. “Fuck.” Agony burst through my palm with a sizzle of heat, blisters rising, the reek of burned skin filling the air.
“Don’t touch them,” I gasped, “or you’ll get burned.”
Now that I saw them clearly, I noticed what I hadn’t before. Two had familiar bulky builds, and their faces bore not only those strange cracks, but familiar marks seared into their cheeks. The brand of intertwined chains.
The mark of the Fossa.
“Two of them were Fossa guards,” I shouted, spinning out of reach of the biggest one. If they touched me, if they wrapped me in those long arms…would they burn me to death?
Yeah, that seemed on brand and a totally shit way to go out.
I dodged away, stumbling straight into the path of another, and the transformed Fossa guard hit me like a tank, slamming me to the ground. Air exploded from my lungs as a heavy foot landed between my shoulders. Pressed down until I couldn’t breathe at all. I thrashed and kicked, but there was no leverage, no way to escape. Nothing but a wall of heat above me. The back of my coat ignited. I smelled fabric and hair burning,and my skin would be next, and…
“Emberline.”
The ground bounced up and down beneath me, vibrations rocking me to the bones. “Get the fuck off her.” Dante’s panicked shout was all I heard before the pressure on my spine disappeared and the world turned to fire.
I covered my head as flames exploded, scorching the ground around me, rending the air apart with a shrieking scream. One second, the creatures were there—the next, they were gone, ripped away by a force that burned bright enough to sear my retinas.
I pressed my face into the dirt and held my breath, an inferno crackling all around me. This was like being bakedin an oven, cooked on all sides, and just when I thought I was a goner… everything stopped.
I was…alive?
The ground was still on fire when I lifted my head, then rolled over on my side, hacking up a lungful of smoke, blinking away spots as I surveyed the absolute carnage my husband inflicted.
Chunks of ash and glowing firebrands fell from the sky, and the ruins were bare, not a hint of vegetation left, not even a blade of grass.
Twenty feet away, Nico and Gabriel were sprawled on their backs, faces red, clothing still smoking, and… ice trickled down my spine.
Dante was the only one left standing in the center of a circle of destruction, legs braced apart, clothes gone.
Except this wasn’t Dante.
I didn’t knowwhatI was looking at, but he wasn’t vampire. Flames curled over his skin in a mesmerizing display, not burning him butbecominghim. His eyes blazed the same molten gold as our attackers, his physical form flickering, shifting—becoming larger, broader, as if he was transforming into something else.
“What the actual fuck?” Nico’s frantic gaze met mine across the clearing, both of us realizing the same thing at the same time.
Dante stood between me… and him and Gabriel.
And my husband’s fiery eyes—if he was still my husband—were wholly focused on me with an unnatural hunger, as though he meant to consume me alive.
“Ember, listen to me.” Gabriel’s voice was the calm in a storm, and I latched onto it with both hands. “Scoot backward. Move slowly, keep eye contact, don’t speak or make a sound. When you get some distance, Nico and I will drawhis attention. I need you to get to the shoreline and dematerialize back to the safehouse.”
“No!” The word boomed out of Dante’s mouth, something ancient echoing behind it. Power, the kind that shouldn’t exist on this plane.
