I barely had time to react. Crossing my arms in front of me, I braced for the hit. But it never came. Instead, a harsh scraping, like metal on stone, reverberated through the air. The blade had crashed into a rocky wall with fiery veins of lava. I tossed a quick glance behind me to see Oz frozen with his bronze key in hand. Beside him, Jax roared. His young Laharock wouldn’t let anything happen to me. Calem and Kost were next to me seconds later, shadows streaming from their fingers and waiting to whisk me away into the shadow realm.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Yazmin said. I peered around the wall just as she thrust her hand forward, and a ruddy-red light exploded from her symbol. A heady groaning rolled through the throne room. Mist hissed along the floor, covering the area and bringing with it a wet chill. It billowed upward, blanketing the entire throne room from floor to ceiling, and something massive thudded beside her. An outline of a paw with claws that clicked along the stone. A low, rattling growl shook the air. Something more monster than beast had emerged from the realm, and a chuckle sounded from Yazmin’s direction.
Somewhere through the fog, Gaige’s voice rose above the rest. “Run!”
At once, the Charmers scrambled for the exit in a fit of panic. Raven shouted above their screams, directing them to the open lawns and toward safety. She summoned a number of beasts to help guide them out, and then turned back to face us as the last of the stragglers escaped.
“Go!” I shouted. “Protect them, no matter what!”
She nodded and took off, calling to her beasts and pushing the Charmers as far away from the throne room as she could. And that was a good thing, because the creature looming behind us was more terrifying, more powerful, than all my legendary beasts combined. And with Yazmin commanding it, there was no chance we’d make it out of this alive.
Thirty-One
Leena
Thrusting my hand outward, I opened the beast realm door and immediately sent Onyx and Quilla home. If I was right about the creature we were facing, they wouldn’t stand a chance. None of us would. Burning white eyes targeted us from the thick of the fog. A faint outline began to form. Pinned-back ears and a fox-like head. A lithe, monstrous body. It was larger than a Laharock with the build of a wolf and three massive tails. Paws the size of boulders. Claws the length of our bodies.
“Holy gods.” Calem stared slack-mouthed at the beast. Oz and Gaige rushed to join us, and Jax threw up more walls between us and the emerging beast.
Gaige swallowed. “That is an S-Class beast—a Vrees.”
My stomach plummeted to the floor. Suspicions confirmed. Some of the fog thinned around its body, revealing the haunting reality of what we faced. Instead of a dense mass and solid form, negative space created cutouts within his white fur, and fog drifted through him like a sieve. That was what made him so difficult to defend against—weapons slid through without leaving a mark. Claws left him unscathed. Only the right kind of magic would work.
Sparking blue electrical currents snapped and crackled to life in his rib cage. They spiderwebbed outward through the fog in a dangerous electrical storm that sent the hairs on the back of my neck skyward.
My mind reeled. A-Class beasts were strong, and the ten legendary felines reigned over them with ease. But this? There were maybe five S-Class beasts in existence, and I knew nothing about them. How to approach them, how to fight them, how to tame them. They were nearly untouchable and existed in an echelon all their own. A tremor of acknowledgment raced through me. Yazmin was powerful. If she could tame a Vrees, then she just might have the power to tame Ocnolog like she claimed.
As we backed toward the courtyard, I refused to drop the creature’s unnerving gaze. “What do we do?” My beasts ran through my mind.
Iky—not feasible.
Onyx—fast and powerful, but his fire was mental and not corporeal. Nothing that would scathe the Vrees.
Dominus—fast and also powerful, but again, claws couldn’t damage this beast’s hide.
“We have to take out Yazmin.” Gaige’s head swiveled to me. “My legendary feline’s power is water, which will only act as a conduit. Maybe—”
Oz suddenly straightened. Inky blades formed between his knuckles, and he shoved me behind him. “Incoming.”
Noc appeared on our left and lunged, blade already in hand. I wasn’t sure who was more terrifying: him or the Vrees. He aimed right for my throat, but Oz parried him and cracked his fist into Noc’s jaw. Blood coated the stone, and he laughed before lunging again. Calem leapt to Oz’s aid. With blades of his own, he countered Noc’s wild blows. Noc’s grin faltered, and he snarled as he tried relentlessly to break through his brothers and get to me.
All thoughts of Yazmin faded. I needed to save him. I needed him to survive.
“Noc!” I reached for him.
Noc appeared before me and raised a long blade. Aiming for my neck, he drove down with a clean sweep, but not before Oz caught up and pushed me back, causing the blade to burry its tip into the stone so hard the floor fractured. “Stay away!”
Calem then crashed into Noc, momentarily pinning him to the ground.
Kost grabbed me before I could move. “Don’t even think about it.”
Before Oz returned to Calem’s side, he glanced at his beast. “No matter what, protect yourself first, understand? Stay out of harm’s way, in the clearing away from the Vrees. But if you can…” He indicated to us with a quick nod. “Shield them with your walls. But donotgo inside. Okay?” Jax let out a throaty warble as he rushed toward the exit where the mist hadn’t reached, and Oz took off to help Calem just as Noc threw him into a wall. I wasn’t sure Jax’s walls could really stop the Vrees’s attacks, but at least they’d offer some reprieve in case Noc sent another blood blade flying in my direction.
Panic clawed at my throat. “What do we do?”
Yazmin sauntered forward through the fog. “Time’s up.”
The static charge that had been building in the room reached a breaking point. The Vrees had been charging up his attack, and now he was poised to strike. A bolt of lightning streaked through the air and cracked into the floor, right where we’d been standing. Kost had yanked me off my feet in record time, along with Gaige. We all landed a few feet away, wreathed in shadows.
