Kade lifts a shoulder, and the hard line of her mouth goes soft. “You were a kid, Aaron. She wouldn’t have?—“
Josiah stops ahead of us.
He’s gone still in the middle of the street, his head cocked, every easy line of him turned to attention at a small storefront tucked between two taller dead buildings. The whole front of it is furred over in webbing—thick gray rope of it strung corner to corner, and dark in the strands, brown-black and crusted, like something bled into the silk a long time ago and dried there.
We come into the market. The stalls stand shuttered and caving in, the awnings rotted down to ribbons. Every door we pass is shut, every window behind it dark.
“Do Carla’s children visit this realm?” Josiah asks, mild as anything, his eyes never leaving the webs.
Kade’s brow pulls down. “No. They never come here.” She follows his stare to the webbing, and her voice drops. “Sometimes they manifest into?—“
The door explodes off its frame. The thing that comes through it lands square on Josiah and takes him down to the ground. Kade barks “oh, shit,” and I hear myself say it too. Mara’s hiss tears out of her loud enough to rattle the glass in the windows. Josiah laughs.
The thing used to be a man. From the waist up it’s a warlock, bare-chested, the gray skin pulled thin over a ladder of ribs. It has the starved look of something that’s eaten everything already and is still hungry. But its eyes are wrong. Too big, and gone solid black edge to edge, no white left anywhere. Its mouth is already opening wider than a mouth is built to open, the skin splitting at the corners to make room for a crowd of teeth like wet needles. And below the waist there is no waist. The torso runs down into the swollen gray bulb of a spider’s body, slick and veined and twitching, riding on a cluster of thin jointed legs that fold and stab at the street, too many of them, far too fast.
So that’s what Kade’s been circling. Whatever’s left in these people, it ends here, in something like this. The cold that drops through me isn’t all for the thing on the street. Some of it’s for me—because I know my own power, how it strains to get out of me, and how little it would take to let it.
Mara grabs a fistful of my shirt and hauls back, trying to drag me with her. I plant my feet and won’t go. The creature rears up off Josiah, all those legs unfolding under it at once, and on them it stands taller than anything that size should. It wheels around and goes straight back for Josiah—who’s already on his feet, brushing grit off his sleeve like none of it touched him.
It hisses—a wet, rattling sound from somewhere deeper than a throat—and that ruined mouth shapes it into a word. “Vampire.” The hiss drops lower. Its legs settle flat against the ground, and the black eyes drink him in.
“I know exactly what it feels like to become something like you.” Josiah says it almost kindly, his red eyes level on the black ones, his hands loose at his sides. “Better than anyone standing in this street. So you’ll forgive me if I’m not afraid.”
It lunges, crossing the gap faster than anything that size should move, legs hammering the pavement. Josiah slides aside so smoothly he barely lifts a foot, and the thing tears throughthe air where he’d been and slams into a boarded-up shopfront hard enough to cave it in. Dust and rotted wood blow out around it. It’s already turning, already coming again, and Josiah lets it chase him, drifting backward down the empty street with a smile like the whole thing’s a dance.
Then it changes its mind. It snaps off Josiah and the whole bulk of it pivots toward Mara on those legs, the mouth peeling open, and a thick rope of gray web shoots out of it straight for my mate.
I throw my hand up and my magic with it. Blue-gold slams into the air in front of her, and the web splatters against it and hangs there dripping. I shove Mara back hard and round on her with my heart trying to climb out of my mouth.
“Do not try to play hero in here, Mara.” I hold her glare with everything I have. “Not in here. Stay behind me.”
She hisses at me, furious, her claws out and her tail lashing, but she stays.
“Shit.” Kade throws out a hand and dark smoke boils up around her feet, the start of a teleport—then it collapses, unraveling into nothing and leaving her right where she stands. “Goddamn teleportation guardrails.” She drops low and goes the only way she’s got left. Vampire speed takes her, a blur tearing across the street straight at the creature’s flank.
It doesn’t even turn its head. One jointed back leg kicks out and catches her square, and Kade leaves her feet and sails sideways through the front window of the shop across the street. Glass goes everywhere, and the boom of her hitting something inside rolls back out through the empty frame.
The creature gets both hands around Josiah before he can drift clear and hauls him up off the ground, roaring into his face. Whatever was holding it back is gone. Its mouth gapes wider, tearing further open at the corners. Deep in its throat that sickgreen-white light kindles and swells. It drags Josiah’s head down toward it.
He hangs there with his feet off the ground and the thing’s teeth almost on his face, and he laughs up at it, low and delighted, like it’s caught him on a good day.
I throw both hands out this time and pour everything I have into it. My magic tears across the street in a wall of blue-gold. It slams into the creature’s side hard enough to double it over and rip Josiah loose. He drops and lands in a crouch, a hand flat to the cracked pavement. Then he tips his head to watch what I do next.
The thing staggers and shakes its head. The dark magic in it knits the wound in its side closed while I watch. Something drops through me, cold and heavy. I hit it hard enough to put down a bull, and it’s shaking the hit off like I tapped it. Then the black eyes swing to me, and something behind them sharpens to a point.
“Blackwood.” The word comes out of it wet and ruined, and it knows exactly what I am.
“We need to run.” Mara’s voice is right against my back, low and shaking. “Aaron. We need to run.”
I don’t move. I plant my feet in the middle of the empty street and call my magic back into my hands. It sparks blue-gold and builds there, dragging at something deep in me the longer I hold it. The creature lowers its front end, legs gathering beneath its body.
Then it comes, pouring toward me over the broken slabs, fast and wrong. The legs are a blur, the mouth peels wide, and the green light swells in its throat until it throws shadows down the street. I get my hands up. Mara presses her face into my shoulder and screams my name.
“AARON—“
It comes apart right in front of me. No warning, no sound but a wet crack, and then it’s raining down on us. Thick black ropes of it slap across my chest and Mara’s. Gobbets of gray flesh hit the street and roll. A fine spray stipples my mouth and stings across my face. The reek of it climbs up the back of my throat and sits there.
I drag my forearm across my eyes to clear them.
