“I’m going to kill him.” Her voice was hoarse from screaming, but the power behind her words wasn’t diluted. He knew she’d tear Roag’s heart out of his chest if she had the chance.
His chest expanded with a great breath, with a rush of blood that filled his heart. Love filled him, so warm, so wonderfully right that his eyes threatened to overflow with wussy-ass tears.
“Shade. Fuck.” Eidolon jumped to his feet.
Runa cried out. “Oh, no. Shade, no.”
He looked down and felt the ground fall from beneath him. He could barely see his body. He was fading, and at this rate, he had only minutes left to exist.
Kynan, Gem, and Tay stood next to the Harrowgate in UG’s ER. Tayla had eaten up valuable hours as she searched the area surrounding the Irish Harrowgates, but once she found the right gate and neutralized the demon guarding it, she’d zapped back to the hospital to grab Ky and Gem.
Gem still hadn’t said a word to him since leaving Vamp.
“Did you contact an Irish Aegis chapter for backup?” Gem asked.
“I wish I could,” Tay said, “but I can’t trust them to kill the bad demons and stop there.”
Ky nodded. “Agreed. As helpful as they’d be, we’d have way too much to explain, especially if you two shift form. Besides, we have help.”
There was a muffled consensus of agreement from the semicircle of demons surrounding them, hospital staff who insisted on going along. Nearly everyone on duty had volunteered to help rescue E and his brothers, which spoke volumes about their loyalty, when demons were notoriously self-serving.
Tayla smiled as she pulled her red hair into a high ponytail. “Who’d have thought, huh?” She wore her usual red leather fighting clothes—many demons were blind to the color, making it more invisible than black to them.
“Yeah. Demons who aren’t all bad. Who knew?” He slid a glance at Gem but looked back at Tay quickly. “Ready to roll?”
“Lock and load.” Tay held out her hand, and he pressed one of two syringes he’d prepared into her hand. The contents would knock him out for about five minutes, long enough to get his human ass through the Harrowgate. He’d been generous with the dose—he didn’t want to be out longer than necessary, but he definitely didn’t want to wake up midjump. If he was going to die, he’d rather go in battle than inside a Harrowgate.
“You all know how this works, right?” she began, addressing everyone. “Once we’re out of the gate, I’m going ahead. I’m sure the bastards will be expecting me, so I’m going to get captured. You guys follow, and once I’m inside the castle, you attack while they’re busy with me. Got it?”
Ky didn’t like the idea of Tay sacrificing herself, but they had little choice, and murmurs of assent rose above the dim hospital noises. Gem hefted a duffel of weapons onto her shoulder. Tay had various weapons stashed on her body, as Roag would expect. Ky was weighed down, as well, the tug of his full weapons harness a familiar comfort. In addition, he carried a medic kit.
Ky grabbed Tay’s wrist before she could dose him. “If I don’t regain consciousness within four minutes after arriving in Ireland, have Gem stick me with the episol in my kit.”
It was a risk, taking the epinephrine-based stimulant Eidolon had developed for use in human-demon hybrid patients, but Kynan needed to be on his feet immediately.
“You got it.”
Abasi, a huge male lion shapeshifter, stepped behind Ky as Tay injected the syringe into Ky’s arm. Instantly, Ky’s vision went black, and the last thing he was aware of was Abasi catching him as he fell.
Chapter 21
Shade was almost lost to her. Runa couldn’t take her eyes off him, couldn’t keep the tears from spilling down her cheeks. Eidolon told Shade not to look at her, because doing so seemed to make his transparency worse, but he kept stealing glances anyway. The pain in his eyes sliced at her, and God, she wanted to scream until she lost her voice and her mind.
“It’s ti-ime.” Roag’s singsong sent a shiver down Runa’s spine. He led his zombified girlfriend into the dungeon and sat her on one of the autopsy tables he’d set up after he’d tortured Shade and Eidolon. “And I have a present for you.”
The sounds of struggle and chains came from within the stairwell, and as Runa watched, three demons dragged a bloody humanoid female into the dungeon. The devastation on Eidolon’s face said this was Tayla.
She must have been extremely strong, because the three demons, though twice her size, were struggling to keep her under control.
“I’m so glad you could join us,” Roag said. “Took you long enough. I was beginning to think you didn’t care.”
“If you touch one hair on her head, you won’t get what you want from me,” Eidolon swore, and Roag snorted.
“You’ll change your mind when my minions are raping her.” He pointed to the corner, where a hulking thing with tusks jutting out of its mouth watched, a look of pure evil—and lust—in its eyes. “He goes first.” Roag walked over to Runa and released her from her bonds. “Of course, I don’t want this one to feel left out.”
A burning sensation seared her shoulder, and through the spots in her vision she saw why. Roag had impaled her with something that resembled a silver knitting needle, obviously to keep her from changing form. It also left her too weak to fight, and she hated how limp she was as he dragged her beside his zombie girlfriend.
Clamping Runa’s wrist to a massive stone table, Roag wheeled away to grab a wicked, serrated scimitar off the wall. Smiling, he tested the edge.
“This is going to hurt, Runa. It doesn’t have to, but where’s the fun in that?” He licked the blade, tasted it almost lovingly before speaking again. “See, my darling Sheryen needs your blood, but she also needs your heart. While it’s still beating, of course.” Roag lovingly stroked Sheryen’s cheek.
He returned his gaze to Runa, and in that moment, Roag encompassed everything she’d grown up believing about demons. Evil madness raged in his eyes, a deep hatred for everything good, a love for everything unholy and wrong.
“Master!” A green, antlered thing stumbled out of the stairwell, clutching a bloody stump of an arm. “We’re under attack!”
From above, the sound of metal on metal and fists on flesh joined screeches of pain. All hell broke loose as a flash of light nearly blinded Runa, and then, standing where Tayla had been, was some sort of creature. Something that resembled Tayla, but was bigger, with batlike wings and scaly skin.
Not to mention huge teeth and claws. The chains holding the beast disintegrated, and it leaped for Roag.
For a moment, it looked as if the Tayla-thing was going to kick major ass, but as Roag’s minions joined in, Tayla began to fall beneath their pounding. Roag, bleeding from a gaping shoulder wound, snarled as he brought his blade down with both hands. Tayla screamed and flashed back to her human form, the blade buried in her abdomen.
Eidolon let loose a keening cry that echoed through the dungeon. A tomblike cold draft accompanied the sound of his anguish, both carrying on long after they should have faded away.
The battle drew closer, but Runa couldn’t look away from the sight of Eidolon’s mate writhing in pain on the floor.
“See what’s going on up there!” Roag barked at one of his demons.
The male who’d been waiting for his turn with Tayla hoofed it—literally—to the stairwell opening as dozens of demons spilled out. Runa watched helplessly as Kynan, Gem, and an assortment of demons, some wearing hospital scrubs, engaged in bloody, violent combat. When Gem took a blow to the head and collapsed to the floor, Kynan whipped a pistol from his leather jacket and blew a fist-sized hole through the chest of the demon that had struck Gem.
Still, even with Kynan’s impressive arsenal of weapons, Roag’s minions gained the upper hand and were slowly but surely beating down the good guys. Roag stood on the sidelines, hovering protectively over Sheryen.
Time slowed, and Runa felt a punch to the gut each time a friendly demon went down. Her pulse pounded in her ears, muting the screams of pain and the clank of metal on metal. In the cages, Shade and his brothers threw themselves against the bars and kicked at the doors.
“Runa!”
She barely heard the voice, was too engaged in a downward spiral of despair. Roag was winning. She was going to die a horrible death, and Shade was going to suffer for an eternity.
“Runa! The curse …” Kynan swung an odd-looking weapon, a double-ended S-curved blade, at one of the demons he was fighting, cutting a deep gouge in the creature’s side. He worked his way toward her, fierce concentration in his expression.
But whatever he intended to tell her would have to wait, because the sharp bite of a blade bit into her breast, and Roag loomed over her, evil intent burning in his gaze.
“No more stalling,” he snarled. “It’s time to take your heart.”
“No!” Shade slammed his entire body against the door of his cage, terror and adrenaline fueling his strength.
The door bowed, but it held. The cages had been made to hold the strongest of demons, and the spaces between the bars were too narrow to squeeze through no matter what species he shifted into.
Roag looked up from where he loomed over Runa and gave Shade a bone-chilling smile.
Kynan elbowed aside a Darquethoth, getting close enough to Runa to backhand Roag. Roag’s head snapped back and blood sprayed from his shriveled nose. The Darquethoth leaped onto Kynan’s back, but the human bared his teeth and lunged forward. Shade held his breath, praying to any god who would listen to let Kynan help Runa.
But the Darquethoth seized Kynan by the arm and dragged Kynan away. He shouted at Runa, his words muffled, but whatever he’d said made her eyes go wide. With one last, monumental effort, Kynan leaped, arm outstretched, his blade coming down so close to Runa’s wrist that Shade expected to see her hand separate from her arm.
Instead, the chain fell away, and she was free. The silver rod in her shoulder crippled her, but she rolled to the side, catching Roag with her legs. Snarling, she kicked, propelling Roag toward Shade.