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A hundred scarabeo met their end in a burst of fire and ice, and she bared her teeth in a victorious grin.
Another surge of power and a scarabeo shattered directly above them, raining glittering black shards. Alessa didn’t flinch or brush the fragments from her bare arms. Let the detritus of demons dust her skin. Let her sparkle with it. Let it be a warning to the rest:
Here she stands, slayer of demons.
Her power purred with satisfaction. Dante had been right all along. Alessa bared her teeth in a grin, savoring the rush of adrenaline through her veins. She had her team, and her power rejoiced. Together, they fought to win.
The Fontes took turns letting go of Alessa, picking up weapons when they weren’tbeingweapons. No rest for the weary, but a different kind of effort.
War was deafening. Rattling metal, the twang of bows, booming cannons, shouts and screams, and everywhere, the bone-deep vibration of thousands of wings.
Pacing. Control.
If she pushed too hard, or they weren’t careful to keep at least two Fontes in contact at all times, any one of them might snap.
The scarabeo screamed, a thousand fingernails screeching across slate, and the next wave fell, frozen.
Alessa tried to pace herself, gathering and holding their gifts, trying new combinations. Nina’s gift still left her queasy, but everyone whooped with glee when Alessa used it to burst scarabeo into grotesquely beautiful sprays of blue ichor.
The guards protecting them were fierce and willing to die for their saviors. Alessa loved them for it, forgave them for every time they’d flinched away from her. Now, when she needed them most, they did their duty.
Wings, sharp as knives, slashed the air before her, and for a second, Alessa saw her own reflection multiplied in the facets of gleaming red eyes.
Shewasterrifying. And for the first time, she reveled in it.
Soldiers shouted, dodging frozen scarabeo, which crashed down as solid and brittle as glass. Soon, their shattered remains made the entire hillside resemble the black rock beach.
Dante swung and slashed, keeping the air around them open. He didn’t fight out of duty. He fought for her. And he was spectacular.
Kaleb and Josef made a formidable pairing, Alessa discovered when she tried to throw electrified water at the swarm. Dozens of scarabeo fell toward the sea, writhing in agony as electricity raced through bands of water wrapped around them, lightning dancing across their carapace.
“Mama always said to stay out of the water when it’s storming,” Kaleb said. Despite his forced humor, he was white as snow, his grip so tight she wondered if her power would suffer from the lack of blood flow to her hands.
Every few minutes, the Fontes moved in tandem, swapping places whenever someone grew fatigued, coordinating their movements so no one was ever left to bear the full brunt of Alessa’s power.
The army was besieged, but a growing segment of the swarm ignored the ripe pickings of a field littered with casualties, circling the peak instead, closer and closer. Darting in and zipping by, they whizzed past as if taunting her.
The creatures had begun to realize that the small group on the cliff, especially the girl in the middle, was the main source of their problems.
The wind buffeted her from every side. Warm surges from the shore met cold gusts from the sea, churned by wings into torrents. Each breath she took was wet and sharp with salt.
A scarabeo shattered above her. She dodged its frozen wingtip, but it sliced the end of her braid. A few inches of hair seemed a fair sacrifice to battle, but now her hair was loose, whipping around her face, obscuring her vision, and she didn’t have a hand free.
Tossing her head like an irritated horse, she struggled to see past the tangled strands.
Aim. Fire. Breathe.
Something brushed her neck, and she jumped, but it was only Kamaria, gathering the damp tresses, pulling loose tendrils off her face to tie back.
“I always carry extra,” Kamaria shouted over the whine of wings and clatter of weapons.
Alessa laughed. “You don’t even have enough hair to tie back.”
Kamaria nudged Nina aside to take her spot at Alessa’s side. “No, but my friends do.”
As the battle raged on, the Fontes began to falter, their power waning and stuttering, but the scarabeo didn’t stop.
Her mouth went dry, her eyes gritty with sea salt. Only a faded gleam behind the leaden cloud cover told her it hadn’t been days, and for all she knew, it wasn’t the sun but the moon.
