AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lazarus lurched backward, knocking into Cat, reaching for her as he fell. Their fingers barely brushing.
Aidan crossed the space between. Stared down at the bloodied body. Kicked aside the man’s sword with a spat curse before drawing his own.
“Run, Cat.”
That voice. Echoes of another overlaid the rich baritone. Slippery. Discordant. Malevolent.
She shook her head. Saw the glimmer of Lazarus’s gaze. Watching. Waiting. “He’s not dead.”
Aidan’s face flared with a hate-filled ecstasy. “He soon will be.”
“But—”
Lazarus closed his eyes. Breath expended on a sigh. “Go, my lady.”
Two handed, Aidan lifted the sword high. “Or watch me take him apart piece by unholy piece.”
Panic, long held in check, released itself on his snarled threat. She grabbed up her skirts. Began to run for the wood’s edge. Slowing only briefly at the plunge of steel meeting flesh. A raw scream of agony. And again. Repeated.
How many wounds would it take to destroy the soldier of Domnu? How much of Aidan would be lost amid the slick spilling of blood upon the ground?
Another terrible scream burst against her ears.
No way to tell whether it was Lazarus or Aidan whose suffering shredded the night.
Hate hazed his vision. His body crawled with malicious glee. Blood streaked his clothes. Splattered his face. Dark. Sticky. Tasting of iron and salt and offal. His sword arm ached with strain but never faltered. Every downward slice of the cavalry saber another nail in Lazarus’s coffin. His father. The Amhas-draoi. Brendan. Daz. Máelodor. Cat.
Lazarus became the focal point of all Aidan’s anger and despair, grief and rage.
Raising his sword high for the final stroke, he aimed for the neck. Swung.
A bloodied hand caught the sword’s pommel. Yielded but did not collapse. And the death-bringing thrust was turned aside.
Aidan screamed his fury. Found himself staring down into eyes hell bleak. A face as grim and gore soaked as his own. And one as bent on annihilation.
The battle had only now begun.
Cat squatted in the heavy underbrush. She couldn’t move. Frozen to this small patch of earth. Hands over her ears. Eyes squeezed shut. It didn’t work. The battle filtered through her closed senses. The smell of blood and struggle and horror just beyond the trees.
“Cat!”
The tormented shout battered through her pressed hands. Shot her to her feet without thinking.
Aidan was down. Lying amid Lazarus’s blood, spasming against the burn of battle magic. Lazarus stood over him. Shaky. Wavering. But alive and in command.
He leaned to pluck his discarded sword from the ground. Raised it high in a horrible reversal of roles.
“No!”
The scream tore up from her chest. She threw herself from the wood to scramble for the only thing that might delay Lazarus for a life-altering second.
The diary.
She snatched it up. Held it high. “Kill him, and I destroy Kilronan’s diary.”
Would he believe her bluff? Or tear her apart bit by bit with his soul-destroying dark magic? It was now or never.
Glancing at the dry brush and tumbled deadwood by the gatehouse wall, she mumbled the household magic through lips dry and rubbery. Prayed for enough concentration to prove her point.
