Page 104 of Wraithwound

Lena didn’t have a plan; all she knew was that she needed to get those creatures away from Cross. She turned her mare and rode east, away from Cross and the others who’d been just north of her. Lena urged her onward, aware that speed was the only thing that might save them. A flare of green light appeared in the distance, and she knew immediately what she had to do.

Taryk’s sword was a beacon in the dark. But would it amount to safety or death? Given her severely limited options, she rode for him. A screech from the sky had Lena looking up to see the eleuth soaring above her, one of its wings tucked closer than the other. It had been injured then, but it was alive and alert. Her gaze met Taryk’s across the distance. He seemed to be making some sort of assessment. When his gaze flicked to the monsters behind her, dread grew in her stomach.

He seemed to be discerning whether those were her monsters, attacking on her command, or whether she was fleeing from them. His gaze flicked back to her, and she let him see the pleading in her eyes, the terror there.

“Taryk! Help!” she screamed, hoping her plea would reach him above the pounding of the horse’s hooves and the snarling of the animals that gave chase.

For a long moment, he didn’t react, riding towards her with his sword ablaze, face unreadable. Lena wondered briefly if she’d made the wrong choice and sent a prayer to the Goddess that the soldier would arrive at the right conclusion and offer his aid. Just before their paths were about to cross, he nodded and shifted his attention to the monsters.

Vince had fallen to the back of the pack. True to the man he’d once been, he seemed to be hoping others would do most of the work for him. Even as a monster, he was still a gods damned coward. Taryk sliced through several monsters with ease, delivering blows to their limbs with swift efficiency, but the monsters did not slow. Confusion flitted across his face, and it was Laney who answered the unspoken question there. Lena turned to see the maiden had followed her.

“Go for the head!” Laney screamed at him as he dismounted, but Lena was no longer watching Taryk; she was scanning the area for Cross. Taya and Riley had been engaged with some of the human soldiers who hadn’t fled, but luckily, it hadn’t been many. The last time she’d seen Taya she was riding toward Cross as Lena raced away.

Apparently, Taryk had received Laney’s message because when she turned back, he was divesting the monsters of their heads, the trailing green flames of his sword telling the story of where it had just delivered the gift of death. He’d felled three of them and turned to face Vince, walking toward him. But Vince wasn’t interested in Taryk. A cold chill ran up Lena’s spine as she met the evil that shone in the black pits of his eyes.

He leapt into the air, attempting to bypass the soulbound. Lena’s heart jumped into her throat, and she felt the wraith lurking in the back of her mind. But then a swirling mass of air appeared behind Taryk. A tearing noise accompanied the appearance of a vortex as a howling wind began sucking in everything around it. Taryk ducked to the ground, embedding his sword in halfway to the hilt, but his legs were swiftly pulled out from under him. Vince flew over the soulbound, limbs flailing as he clawed the air for purchase. Lena was horrified to see that he found it, having gotten hold of Taryk’s ankle and reducing the grip on his sword to one hand.

A vast desert with golden sand dunes materialized on the other side, the air rippling with heat as the sun beat down on the scorching sands. The world around Lena lit up, and the blazing suns in the blue sky beyond illuminated the area with a piercing brightness. Lena raised her arm to shield her face as she urged her mare out of the vortex’s pull. She felt the wraith pull back and relief swept over Lena as she remembered the creature couldn’t tolerate heat or fire.

Taryk gritted his teeth as he struggled to hold on, the force pulling on his body exacerbated by the dead weight that was Vince. Grunting, Taryk strained to pull his gauntlet up to his face, using it to push a yellow-green vial into the metal contraption there.

Chartreuse. She saw when the potion took effect as the soldier was able to pull his other arm up and grip the hilt of his sword. Once his grip was secured, he peered down toward the creature clutching his ankle and sent forth a fierce kick, but Vince didn’t budge.

Relinquishing the secure hold he’d established on his sword, Taryk reached into his belt, retrieving a dagger, and flung it at the creature’s wrist. She knew it’d hit its mark when Vince roared, but it did nothing to loosen the monster’s grip.

Lena didn’t think twice before she dismounted.

“Go!” she screamed at Laney, throwing off her gloves and cloak, lest the latter catch in the wind and send her flying into the vortex.

She lay flat on the ground and began crawling toward the soldier, doing her best to avoid the wind from getting underneath her body. It ripped at her hair, pulling pieces loose from her braid, and whipped at her face. She moved slowly, working her way toward Taryk. He gaped at her, eyes wide, as she crawled over to him. But it wasn’t until she fully entered the path of the vortex that she realized she’d misjudged the force of the wind. Lena was nearly ripped from the ground, but she managed to drive her fingernails into the earth. To her astonishment, they held her in place.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Taryk shouted at her, eyes wild.

“HOLD ON!” she shouted back, the sound of her voice getting sucked into the world beyond.

Taryk cried out, and she looked up to see that Vince was trying to pull himself up. Lena pulled her nails out of the earth and drove them back in once more, finding that she now clung to stone as she continued working her way towards Vince. The wind blew violently, dragging her sideways, and she had to duck her head to avoid small shrubs and stones that had been ripped from the ground. The heat pouring in from the vortex was brutal, making it difficult to breathe through the heavy air. She’d almost reached Vince when he roared again. Squinting against the burning sun, Lena realized the vortex had begun to creep forward slowly and crossed over his hind legs. The smell hit her first and Lena almost gagged at the reek of burnt flesh, and then, she heard the sizzling.

EverGods. They were going to die. She had to release Vince’s grip on Taryk’s ankle, NOW.

She could only hope the dagger sticking out of his wrist was sharp because she would have to saw through Vince’s elongated limb before they were pulled through.

“DON’T LET GO!” she screamed at Taryk.

“I WON’T!” he shouted back.

Making sure her nails were embedded into the stone as far as her fingertips, Lena reached for the dagger when she felt Taryk’s hand wrap around her other wrist. Feeling reassured by the security his grip offered, she reached forward and pulled the dagger from Vince’s flesh. Summoning all her strength, she drove the dagger into Vince’s limb. She almost wept with relief when it split flesh and bone easily. She began sawing frantically as Vince roared, spittle flying from his open maw. She sawed until the dagger got stuck, the angle in which she was holding it interfering with her ability to cut clean through. Lena yanked the dagger out and brought it up, hoping to drive it back down when they were struck by a fierce wind. She watched helplessly as the dagger was ripped out of her hand. Vince roared again and flexed his limb, trying as he might to pull himself toward her.

Without that dagger, they would die. She was certain the soldier likely had another, but there was no way to access it, and she didn’t have anything else that was sharp enough to cut through bone. Panic began to creep in, stealing her resolve as the wind continued to rip past her, and the vortex inched toward them.

Except, she did.

Lena looked at her hand and then back at Vince’s destroyed flesh. She reached up and plunged her nails in, willing them to grow, to extend. They met no resistance as they sank deep into the tissue there, black blood making her fingers feel slick. She had an immediate flashback of her hand plunging into Eduard’s chest and did her best shove it away.

She worked her fingers, slicing through the flesh there, and was almost done cutting all the way through when a flare of sunlight blinded her momentarily, and intense heat blasted out from the vortex, singeing the exposed flesh of her hand. Lena shut her eyes and gritted her teeth, waiting for the heat to dissipate. When she opened them again, she had to blink away the white spots in her vision. She had just resumed cutting her way through Vince’s flesh when a burst of pain exploded from her hand. Vince had used his free limb to smash it with a rock. He was about to do it again when Taryk kicked at the creature. She didn’t have any time to waste; hand aching, she used her nails to saw back and forth until she felt the flesh rip.

Vince roared as he was pulled through the vortex, his skin blistering and beginning to melt when it disappeared, cutting off the blinding sun and scorching wind. Lena screwed her eyes shut at the pain and pulled her nails out of the stone. When she felt like she could breathe again, she pulled her hand back to inspect it and was relieved to see the skin was intact. Painful as it was, the burn was something she could treat on her own.

She looked over at Taryk, who sat on the ground next to his sword, panting. He reached down and pried Vince’s hand off his ankle. Lena gagged, the reek of burnt flesh still hanging in the air. It was only after a moment that she realized Taryk was staring at her.