AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ozias, summon Jax. Gather the Charmers and protect them within a dome.”
“On it.” Ozias touched the key hanging around his neck as he ran. With a thunderous roar, Jax manifested beside him and was erecting blazing-hot lava walls within seconds. Glittering, ink-black blades shot from Ozias’s hands as he pulled the focus of the monsters, giving Jax a chance to corral the Charmers and usher them to safety.
“I thought…” Gaige mumbled again, his head in his hands.
“Gaige.” I dropped to one knee, tilting my head toward him but keeping my eyes locked on the battle unraveling before me. “Get up. I need you to rein in these monsters.”
“It’s my fault,” he croaked.
“Listen to me.” I dug my fingers into his shoulder, and he finally looked up at me. “This is not your fault. You did not force these creatures to attack.” It took everything in me to hide the raw devastation swirling in my stomach. We’d found a way to control his shadows, but the monsters had still attacked. They’d responded to his magic, and as much as it agonized me to admit that truth, now was not the time to crumble. “We will find a way through this. Together. I promise.”
He clung to my words, offering a single, shaky nod. “Okay.”
“The Charmers need you. Yourfamilyneeds you.” I pulled him to his feet, and something hard set in his expression. With one hand, he summoned Okean, and with the other, he beckoned to the shadows lingering in our peripheral vision.
Instead of snakes, a pack of wolves prowled to his side. Their muzzles were pulled back in a display of sharpened fangs, and Gaige reached down to steady the nearest one with two fingers to the crown of its head.
“Help the others,” he said to Okean, his voice deadly soft. Then, to wolves, “Herd the beasts and push them out.” They tipped their snouts to the sky and howled before taking off, and I didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified, knowing just moments ago he’d wielded shadows and we’d been presented withthis. In the least, if the monsters were agitated by his magic, he could command his dogs to flee and just maybe the beasts would go with them.
Rather than air my concerns, I pressed my lips into a flat line and gripped my rapier tight. Right now, we needed to deal with the monsters. Later, when we had time to evaluate and assess what had happened, it’d be easier to discuss the truth of what we’d unearthed.
Until then, we would fight. My gaze slanted to Gaige. We would fight together, because I wasn’t ever going to let him face anything like this alone again.
TWENTY-ONE
GAIGE
Istrode into the fray with Kost at my side. The clearing was littered with upturned tables, splintered furniture, and scattered food as monsters charged through the new heart of Hireath. Injured Charmers cradled their wounds and barked commands to their beasts when they could, but the sheer number of what we faced was inexplicable. Everything from low-level E-Class Kitska beasts to A-Class predators swarmed the area. Fangs bared and hackles on end, they acted as if we’d encroached on their territory and were bound and determined to eradicate us from their homes. None of it made any sense.
My body was numb, but somehow I moved through the world as if guided by a puppet master. I shouted at my shadow wolves and commanded them with more ease than I could have ever expected, and still, my movements didn’t feel whole. There was a gaping void in me growing larger by the second. It had already devoured my hope. I just needed to put an end to this before anyone else got hurt.
Kost had acted with the calm surety and swiftness of a skilled tactician, and Calem and Ozias were executing their roles to perfection. The Charmers were being safely deposited behind a rock wall, while Calem lunged from creature to creature, sinking his teeth intohides and gouging scaled bodies with his sharpened claws. A few monsters had fled either because of him or my wolves, but a startling number held their ground.
None of this makes sense.
A strangled shriek pulled my focus. Raven was pinned beneath the weight of a Scorpex. Beside her, her Asura had fallen to the ground with all ten of its eyes closed. She no longer had any protective dome shielding her from the monster’s unrelenting attacks, and her other beasts were surrounded. Eight tongues slipped past the Scorpex’s mandibles and thrashed against her body. Angling its scorpion tail high, it prepared to impale her with its barb.
“Okean!” I shouted, and he responded by unleashing a powerful torrent of water that knocked the monster off-balance. Raven scooched out from beneath it and launched to her feet. With a nod of thanks, she pressed a finger to her bestiary and prepared to summon more beasts.
Raven was far from the only one in trouble, though. Kaori’s Asura only had one eye left open. One more attack and the beast’s protective magic would fade, leaving Kaori exposed. She pushed on, though, urging her beasts to chase the monsters out.
Beside me, Kost jolted as his body was lifted several feet in the air. His rapier fell to the ground, and he wrenched his fingers around an invisible hold over his neck. Countless holes the sizes of pinpricks appeared across his throat and rivulets of blood rolled toward his collar. He gave a strangled exhale as his eyes bulged.
“Kost!” I spun in place as I searched for what could be hurting him. I didn’t have my bestiary anymore, but I’d researched beasts long enough to commit their powers to memory—assuming I’d encountered them. He kicked something solid behind him, and his body jostled again.
Invisible.I grabbed the rapier and lunged, lancing the spacebehind Kost, and I was rewarded with a spurt of blood that coated the monster in a red sheen. The Iksass howled and released his grip. Kost crashed to the ground, gasping for air, leaving me to face off with the now-visible creature. Tall, slender, and faceless, the monster shivered as it grew another tentacle-like limb and lashed it against me. Heat bloomed across my side from the hit, but I refused to buckle.
“Leave!” I inched forward to give Kost a chance to recuperate. “Just leave!”
Why?The question burned through my mind as the monster refused to budge. Both in death and in life, Iksass rarely interacted with people, and they had no set territory they guarded. They fled when confronted, and yet here it was, growing another limb and preparing to strike. This time, with serrated spikes protruding from its clear skin.
It struck me and Kost at the same time, thrusting me back and into the ground beside him. Blood flowed with abandon as the serrated barbs raked our tendons and skin when the monster pulled back. Kost glanced at me from his knees, a disastrous, rage-filled glint to his eyes. “Fucking Iksass.”
From across the clearing, Okean howled and spit fury against gods only knew what, but no lifesaving stream of water came our way. He was either pinned or recharging, and I desperately hoped for the latter.
Again, the Iksass reared back, but Kost was already moving. Somehow, he had the foresight to dodge before the Iksass even slid into a striking position. He sliced into the monster, and a network of shallow cuts peeled open across its body. A glimmer of relief sang through me at the sight. The wounds would heal, so long as the monster retreated now. And by all accounts it should have. Except it didn’t. The damned thing only let out an earsplitting shriek and sharpened all its limbs to deadly points. Dark, wispy tendrils floated around the speared tips, and I stilled.
My shadows.A brackish taste flooded my tongue, and my stomach churned. These creatures were being pushed to the extreme because of me. And I didn’t know why. They’d always come to me when I called them, like when I first tamed Boo. It made sense that they were attracted to the same darkness that now lived in my veins. But why the shift to anger? Rage?
