Slaying the Vampire Conqueror(83)

We walked for hours. The one benefit of the pass’s brutal environment was that it shielded us so well from the sun that we didn’t need to stop to take shelter from it. There was little difference between night and day. As a result, time blurred. The vampires had far better stamina than humans. They didn’t need to rest as often.

But eventually, I was suffering. My head pounded. The ache of my injuries from the recent attack, still not fully healed, nagged at me, and the constant focus was exhausting.

“You need to rest,” Atrius said after a while.

I didn’t even dignify that with an answer. I just kept pushing forward.

There wasn’t enough time.

Atrius did, eventually, command that everyone rest, though I’d long lost track of the hours by then. I couldn’t even sense the fall or rise of the sun through the mists. By now, even the vampires were exhausted, gratefully sliding to the ground at the order, reaching for their canteens of deer blood.

I couldn’t make myself move from the rock, my fingers still curled against the stone.

After a moment, Atrius gently took my hand. The moment he pulled me away from the stability of the wall, my knees buckled.

He caught me and the two of us sank to the ground together. My head was spinning. I felt, for the second time in my life, truly blind—my exhaustion so deep that, in this dead place, I couldn’t grip any of the threads around me.

Except for Atrius’s. His presence, solid and unshakable, was a single stable harbor.

He didn’t say anything, but his worry radiated through me like a trembling string.

“Drink,” he muttered, pressing a canteen to my mouth—tilting my chin up when I struggled to hold it myself. The liquid inside was sweet and thicker than water. Whatever it was, my body screamed for more of it from the first drop.

“A tonic,” he said. “It’s better for you.”

He’d prepared for me. Gotten human-specific tonics to help me make the journey. I knew him well enough by now that I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, and yet... my heart clenched a little.

He pulled away the canteen, and my head sagged against his shoulder. I wouldn’t admit it aloud, but I needed this, to be cradled against his body. His aura grounded me after so many hours throwing myself far away in the threads.

“I need to stay awake.” My voice slurred. “There could be slyviks—”

“You need to rest,” he snapped. “Here.”

Something touched my lips—a little piece of jerky. I took it and chewed, or did my best to.

“I’ll watch,” he said.

I swallowed the jerky, with significant effort.

“But you won’t be able to see—”

“Enough.” His hand reached out to caress my cheek. Something about the harshness of the word combined with the softness of the touch made all further protests fade.

He laid his sword beside him, and I settled deeper into his hold, my head sliding down into his lap.

The last thing I remembered before sleep took me was my hand curling around his—a mindless impulse, like a compass drifting north.





I slept so deeply that when the warm liquid spattered over my face, it took me several long seconds to realize that it was blood.

But once I did, I knew it was Atrius’s immediately.

His pain was a sharp twang to the threads, loud enough to snap me back to awareness. At first I couldn’t grip anything else, jerking upright only to fall against the uneven rocks, the mists and darkness and all-consuming lifelessness of the pass surrounding me.

The sound that cut through the air was a high-pitched scream, not unlike a child’s terrified wail, starting bone-chillingly high and then falling into a guttural chatter.

My grip on my surroundings snapped into place. I jumped to my feet.

A slyvik.

A slyvik that had Atrius.





39





Everyone had heard stories about the slyviks—they were, after all, the sort of creatures that lent themselves particularly well to childhood ghost stories and nightmares. But not even the wildest of those tales could match the reality of witnessing one in front of you. It wasn’t their appearance that made them terrifying—it was their entire presence. Legend said that they were no natural beasts, that they had been created by Sagtra, the god of animals, to be the ultimate hunting opponent. Gods, I could believe that.

The slyvik moved in fits and starts, its slender, scaled body contorting eerily around the craggy stone. Its arms—webbed—allowed it to glide, hurling itself from wall to wall, so quickly that neither vampire eyes nor my magic could fully track it. It had a long, serpentine neck and a face that seemed shaped specifically to accommodate its massive jaws.

Jaws that were currently closed around Atrius’s arm, as he slashed and fought fiercely.

I took this in just in time for the slyvik to drag him up like a rag doll, spread its wings, and leap into the mists.

I bit down on his name, a scream that bubbled up in a burst of panic.

Behind me, the other warriors had jumped to their feet, a ripple effect of awareness spreading down the line as they realized what happened. Erekkus pushed past me, starting to shout, when I said, “Sh!”

If there were more of them, the last thing we wanted was to bring the others down on us—or down on Atrius. I leaned against the stone, my heart beating wildly.