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Not, she said. One.
I shivered. The one thing I’d feared from the moment I’d plunged her steel into my flesh and felt the surge of her power was that she would somehow gain a foothold in my mind and make me more like her. And now she was asking me to grant her the freedom to leave the sword and fully become one with me.
Every instinct I had suggested it would be a very bad move.
But if my only chance of survival was to do what I feared the most, then do it I would. That determination was what had driven me to confront Jak and ask for his help, and it still drove me now.
I just had to hope that once I’d given her freedom, Amaya would step back into steel when all this was over.
And that was one thought to which she didn’t reply.
The air stirred to my left. I swung around, stabbing Amaya in front of me. The exotic Rakshasa laughed softly—from the right, not the left. Something hard and cold hit my back and I jumped away, swearing as I swung around. Again, I hit nothing but air.
Blood was now running freely down the back of my legs, and every drop that hit the stone seemed to make the heartbeat stronger.
“The sleep of our god ends,” she whispered, this time in front of me. “Soon he will awaken fully, and then we will bleed you out.”
“Not if I can help it.” To Amaya, I said, Let’s do it.
Invite, she whispered, excitement in her tone.
Trepidation shivered through me, but it wasn’t like I had a lot of options left. I took a deep breath, then silently said, Amaya, become one with me.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then power exploded, thick and heavy, surging through steel and flesh with equal ferocity. It was a storm that tore my core apart, fiber by fiber, then pieced me back together, all within a matter of heartbeats.
Only it was no longer me, but we.
Because I wasn’t alone. Someone else was in here with me, sharing my body and my thoughts, even as she shared her powers and abilities. It was a strange, unsettling sensation.
We opened my eyes. The darkness fell away, and the Rakshasa appeared. Or rather, the blue shimmer of her energy appeared. She was standing five feet away, and there was a pool of seething, sinewy flesh at her feet. She flicked a finger to the left, and several snakes instantly slithered away. Looping around to get behind me.
Amaya hissed. It sounded weird coming out of my mouth. We didn’t move, just held the sword as we studied our surroundings.
The cavern itself was vast and roughly triangular in shape. Blue bolts of energy shot across the walls, the rhythm matching the beat of the heart. It seemed to be originating from a shadowed enclave at the very tip of the triangle, and I suddenly remembered what Azriel had said: Smash the god’s power, and the Rakshasa will be fixed in flesh and more easily killed.
That was our way out of here.
Fight, Amaya growled and raised the sword, sweeping it from left to right so fast that the steel sang as it cut through the air.
No, I bit back. We stop the dark god rising first.
The snakes swept in. We moved, the sword little more than a blur as we struck, killing the snakes in one deadly sweep. The Rakshasa sent more snakes at us, but I had no intention of hanging around, waiting for them to get close.
My one chance of getting out of here alive might lie in reaching that enclave and destroying whatever lay within it, and I wasn’t about to waste it.
I forced my limbs into a run, battling Amaya’s desire to stand and fight as much as the weakness in my limbs. The Rakshasa’s reaction was swift and deadly. She lunged after me, her sharp nails flashing. I twisted away, but she raked my back and a scream tore out of my throat. Not just from the pain, but also from frustration. Her nails were poisonous and I had no idea how quickly it would take effect and render me immobile once again.
Then I thrust that thought aside. All that mattered was reaching the enclave, and right now I could still run. My feet slapped quickly against the cold stone, but there was little sound to be heard other than the harsh rasp of my breathing.
Something hit the back of my legs and I stumbled. I flung out my arms to steady myself, and somehow retained balance. Again something struck at me, this time tearing into flesh. Snake. Fuck. The sword swung and there was no more snake, just clear ground between us and the enclave.
The exotic Rakshasa came at us. I heard the wind of her approach, felt the burn of her energy against my skin. We twisted away and swung the sword, the dark point slicing across perfect features, splitting flesh and cutting down to the bone. Her skin from cheek to chin peeled away, the flap hanging loose and giving her a half-skeletal look. She screamed, but it was a sound of fury rather than pain. We twisted again, and lashed out with a heel. It hit her high in the neck, hard enough to crush her larynx. Whether it did or not I had no idea, but the force behind the blow was enough to send her flailing backward.>The Rakshasa came at me as one, a hideous mass of flesh that cut and tore. I blocked blows, ducked teeth and claws, and attacked as best I could, until the nearby walls were coated and it was hard to know what blood was mine and what belonged to the Rakshasa. But there was no stopping them, no matter how much flesh I hacked from their bodies, because they didn’t die. They just regenerated.
This wasn’t going to end prettily. Not for me, anyway.
And that meant I had to try something else. Anything else.
The fissure was several feet away to my left. It was big and dark, and air stirred sluggishly around it, hinting at a possible escape route. Or, at the very least, another chamber.
