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Because the fire came to life.
Chapter Ten
THE FLAMES ROARED SKYWARD, FORMING A thick, columnar mass more than six feet tall. Fingers of fire shot out from its center, forming trunk-like arms and legs. There was no head, just a seething mass of flame. In the center was a gaping maw, from which came a low growl that crawled ominously across the silence, stirring fear deep inside me.
It tore itself free from the main mass of the fire and stepped onto the damp ground, dripping molten globules. The ground sizzled but didn’t burn, and the wariness in the air increased, the energy of it crawling across my skin.
It was as if this place did not welcome the fire demon. And if that were the case, would it do anything to protect the woman who had raised it?
I guessed I’d have my answer soon enough. I backed away from the fire and drew the ash stake. It seemed woefully inadequate as a weapon.
“Selwin, call off your creature.” But even as I spoke, it moved. Its steps were ponderous, as if its flaming trunk-like legs were a weight it could barely lift. I watched it warily and continued to back away. It might not have eyes, but it seemed to have an uncanny sense of my location, shifting direction every time I did. “It’s not too late to take the sensible course.”
She snorted softly. “There is no sensible course when it comes to revenge.”
“If this was just about revenge, you would not have been able to call the Maniae.”
The creature raised a massive paw and swiped at me. I jumped away and the blow missed, but the heat of it rolled over me, furnace-like in its intensity. Sweat beaded across my brow and began to roll down my spine—although I couldn’t honestly say it was all due to the heat. Some of it—most of it—was fear.
“This is about justice, not revenge. Closely related, but different enough. They stole my future, so it is only fair that I steal theirs.” Her gaze rested on me—a contem
plative weight. “You actually sympathize with my plight, so why go through this charade? Why not save yourself?”
“Because it’s either bring you in, or die myself.”
The creature swiped again. Fire sprayed across the darkness, splashing the ground around me, sizzling where it landed. I let the blow skim past my chest, the heat of it singeing my clothes and scorching the fine hairs on my arms, then raised the stake and slashed it across the creature’s body. The sharp point hit the creature’s fiery essence, slicing through it as easily as a hot knife through butter, cutting its trunk in half. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, like a great tree that had been sawed in two, it split asunder and fell, each half hissing and screaming in pain.
But instead of being extinguished, the two halves began to dance, to grow, until what stood before me was not one fiery being with limbs and no face, but two.
The stake didn’t kill them. It just created more of them.
Fuck.
I shoved the stake back into my belt, ducked under a blow from the nearer creature, and reached for one of the bottles of holy water. Another fiery limb whistled toward me, its flames trailing behind it like a whip. I ducked, trying to undo the bottle’s top as I did so. But this time, the blow didn’t whistle past. With a sharp cracking sound, the trailing tendril snapped forward, roping itself around my body, wrapping me in a ring of fire that set my clothes alight. I screamed, but somehow managed to get the top off, splashing water over my skin as I poured it over the fiery leash that held me.
The water extinguished the flaming cord around my waist, and a good part of the creature’s limb. It roared—a sound of anger and pain combined—and staggered backward, leaving my clothes smoldering and skin burning. I dropped and rolled on the damp ground, extinguishing the flames but not the pain. Then I noticed that where the droplets of holy water had splashed, my skin was already beginning to heal.
I grabbed another bottle and poured it over the bigger areas of raw, exposed flesh. My skin hissed and the pain sharpened abruptly, bringing tears to my eyes and sending a rush of agony through every nerve ending. Yet even as I clamped down on another scream, the fiery sensation turned to ice, and the twisted mass of burned flesh began to disappear.
But I had no time for relief, and no time to wonder at the healing properties of the holy water. I scrambled to my feet, barely avoiding one club-like foot as it thumped down where my head had been only moments before. The force of it shook the ground and almost knocked me back off my feet—and the sheer closeness of all that fire threatened to set me alight again. So I turned and ran. Not for safety, because I doubted there was any place in this forest safe from these creatures.
Instead, I ran for Selwin.
It was obvious I wasn’t going to beat the fire demons with the tools I had. The ash stake only created more of them, and while the holy water did work, I needed buckets of it, not the remaining bottle I had. So Selwin herself was my only hope. Short of running for the gates and hoping that Azriel could defeat these things, anyway.
And that might yet be an option.
But before I could get anywhere near the witch, a third creature appeared, stepping out of the fire to stand between us, its massive body flaring outward and upward, creating a huge barrier of fire that appeared all but impenetrable. It also meant I was trapped among the three of them.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I had no choice. I had to keep going. Selwin was the key to getting out of here alive, and if I had to go through one of these creatures to achieve that, then that’s exactly what I would do. So I grabbed the last bottle of holy water and uncapped it as I ran. The creature raised itself up even farther, towering above me—a huge sheet of flame that looked ready to topple down around me and burn me to cinders.
Oh God, this was going to hurt …
But I just kept running. The heat grew more intense the closer I got, until my whole body felt ready to burst into flame. Then I threw the water.
It arced through the air—a thin silver ribbon that seemed to get lost in the fiery maelstrom that was all but enveloping me. Then it hit the creature’s stomach and the flames there retreated, the creature screaming as a hole gaped open in the middle of its body.
