Page 8 of Dream Reaper

Whoever this human was, he knew what he was doing. How to defend himself against magic.

She hesitated.

She should run, pitch herself headlong into the forest and not look back.

But she couldn’t shake a frustrating sense of obligation. This man was risking himself to fight her enemy: could she really just run away and leave him to face Talos alone?

Growling under her breath, she darted forward as Talos drew back a fist, which glowed blue with an imminent blow of magic. She smashed into him, head ducked to protect her face. She drove her thin shoulder into the tender area around his stomach. She felt his muffled “oof” as he staggered backward.

A hand grabbed her by the hair, and she shrieked, trying to punch his thighs with her elbows, her hands uselessly bound. Pain lanced across her scalp as he yanked. Flames bite him, he was going to scalp her.

She dropped her head and bit him in the thigh as hard as she could, using the only weapon she had.

Her own teeth.

He cursed and released his grip on her hair to shove her away and free himself. But at the same moment, the human dove toward them, tackling Talos more successfully than Ava. As the two males tumbled, someone caught her on the side of the head with a knee or elbow.

Pain and bright lights speckled Ava’s vision as she face-planted against the forest floor. She clawed her way back to her knees, spitting out a mouthful of brittle, foul-tasting leaves.

“Run!” a voice bellowed, the r rolling from the human’s thick Haldorian accent. “Run, lass!”

She tried to get to her feet, but everything spun around her. Nothing came into focus, the forest a blur of shadows and stabbing speckles of hot white light.

Her head still thundered from the painful blow. It vaguely occurred to her that she’d been knocked senseless before she tipped sideways and collapsed into a prickly bush.

Thorns snatched at her clothing as she fell, scratching her face and exposed arms, but she rolled free of the thornbush and bit out a pained, “Flames!”

She took a ragged breath, blinking wildly to try to clear her vision and come out on top of her reeling senses. Somehow, in spite of the pain and dizziness, she needed to find the strength to do as she was told. Get off the ground. Find her footing.

Run.

But as she turned to face the darkness of the ancient forest, something froze her in place. That feeling that she wasn’t alone. That they weren’t alone. That something else lurked out there, watching and waiting.

Something otherly and wrong.

Something worse than even Talos and his anger and hatred.

Her breath caught in the back of her throat, her chest tightening as she held that breath and strained to listen, to see. What was it, this dark and horrifying thing hiding just beyond the scope of her senses? And why did it feel…familiar somehow? As if she knew who it was? What it was?

As if it knew her.

Something pressed against her temple and forced its way deeper, deeper into her thoughts, into her mind…

“Run, you fool!” The human’s angry voice tore through her ears and brought her back to her senses.

She spun from the horrifying darkness to face Talos and the human. They were a mere two yards away, Talos grasping toward her with one hand. The blue heat of his building magic illuminated the forest around them, glimmering over rough tree bark, the smooth curve of ferns, the sharp angles of jutting branches and thorns.

He meant to kill her.

She read it in his eyes, in his angry, spiteful gaze. Whatever plans he originally had for her withered away as he formed a fireball in his free hand.

She took a step backward, a cry latched in the back of her throat.

The human grappled for Talos’s arm, trying to wrench it to the side, to deflect the trajectory of the magic about to hurl straight at Ava. Blue fire flickered on the stranger’s face, dancing over a spattering of freckles, enhancing the broad angle of his nose, deepening the hollows of his eyes.

Something sprang to life in his eyes, in those two dark hollows—a spark of bright red and orange flames. Her chest tightened, and she took a step backward, confused by the contrasting clash of blue and orange fire.

By the flames…