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This time, three masked men charged toward us, their hooded forms seeming to have manifested from the Mist itself.
With a roar, I bent my body and swerved just as the one closest to me lifted a crudely fashioned blade. Through gritted teeth, I hissed as I spun, raising my dagger before cleaving it into the man’s meaty back, the sound of squishing flesh making its way to my ears.
Yanking the blade free, I didn’t hesitate to strike again, right between his ribs.
My attacker wailed and collapsed to his knees, black blood trickling from his wounds. To be safe, I stabbed him a third time and kicked him to the ground.
One could never be too safe.
Jude was grunting behind me, fighting two men at once. He dodged every attack, moving like a wraith dancing in a nightmare. His leg shot out and sent one of them flying several feet back, allowing Jude a fraction of a heartbeat to twist and drive his sword deep into the belly of the second man.
By the time the first attacker righted himself, a battle cry on his exposed, chapped lips, Jude was ready for him, swinging his blade and slicing cleanly into the man’s neck—
The man’s head rolled off his stout shoulders a moment later, his mouth gaping as viscous black ooze spilled free.
Jude’s breathing was even and calm, his sword raised and eager for the next contender. The fluid way he moved was inhuman, skilled in ways I could only dream to be. The way he swung his blade with ease and sensed the moves of his foes was extraordinary.
Jude was magnificent.
I didn’t even have the chance to respond when a gray silhouette lunged our way, but Jude effortlessly drove the tip of his sword into the heart of our masked enemy. The man never stood a chance.
Two more silhouettes approached, and two more men fell, their bodies practically hitting the ground at the same time. Wiping his brow, Jude turned to face me, a hard look contorting his sharp features—a look without emotion or thought. Soulless.
“We need to find the others!” I rasped out, my pathetic dagger raised. I would have to petition Jude for a better weapon once we got out of this mess.
Nodding, Jude’s fingers seized my hand, holding firmly as he navigated through the thick blue fog. Only when we heard the grunts of a fight did we slow, following the guttural noises until we came across a wounded Isiah and a pair of masked attackers.
By the looks of it, Isiah had not only taken an arrow to the shoulder, but he’d been stabbed in the chest, crimson blood pooling from his injuries. But his wounds weren’t enough to slow him. Driving down his sword with a roar, Isiah slashed through the meaty flesh of his foe.
The other attacker, the stockier of the two, lunged, aiming to propel his crude blade into Isiah’s heart. But he never made it that far. Jude cleaved his head clean off his shoulders in the time it took me to exhale.
Grabbing hold of Isiah, Jude made quick work of scanning his friend’s injuries as Isiah groaned, his icy-gray eyes fluttering as he fought to stay conscious.
“Help me lift him!” Jude brushed his hand through Isiah’s hair, black blood and dirt coating the strands. Hoisting one of Isiah’s arms over my shoulder, Jude doing the same, we struggled through the suffocating white, our ears straining for the voices of our friends. For anything at all.
We heard nothing.
“We need to get him to safety,” Jude ground out between his teeth, heaving most of the weight onto his shoulder so I didn’t have to carry it. “I need to stop the bleeding.”
Before he bled out. Before we lost another soul to this suicide mission.
There were no more sounds as we stumbled through the fog and trees. Not even the cries of the dying or injured.
And that’s what terrified me the most.
I prayed that we weren’t the only ones left alive. That Alec, Patrick, and Jake had been lucky enough to locate shelter.
But for now, we were on our own, and I shocked myself when I silently prayed to the lost Goddess of the Sun, begging for her to spare my new friends.
Foolish.
Raina had long ago ceased to listen.
We were all alone.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jude
