Kamaria cried out as a disembodied claw sliced her arm to the bone.
Nina crouched, trying to stanch Kamaria’s wound.
Wings buzzed, too close, then a spray of something wet and sticky struck Alessa’s face.
Dante yelled, stumbled. Blood soaked his shirt, dripping onto the stone. “I’ll be okay,” he said with a wet cough. “Just need a minute.”
A minute they might not get. Alessa turned her fear into rage and fought harder.
The ship had stopped as close to shore as it could get, and one person, then another, dove from the side. Others clambered into a rowboat.
The ocean churned, violently tossing the boat and swimmers. Alessa stopped throwing lightning. Past the bursts of fire and gusting wind, she couldn’t make out who was who, but whoever was rowing was also propelling the craft with gusts of wind, and the others kept the swooping, screaming scarabeo at bay.
Kaleb’s grip was slick; he kept slipping away. But Josef and Nina grasped Alessa like a lifeline.
Alessa gathered their power once more, flinging a blast of cold that tore a massive chunk from the swarm.
Nina cried out in pain, but Alessa couldn’t stop to see what had happened.
She needed to buy them time. Precious minutes for the other Fontes to make it up the peak, for Dante to heal. Time.
She didn’t have any.
The rowboat was drifting back out to sea, and figures ran, high-kneed, through the shallows, bursts of light and swirls of ice blossoming above them. Small and ineffective compared to what she could do with their gifts, but it kept the creatures away.
So close. They were so close.
The first swimmer to reach the shore held up her waterlogged skirts to sprint up the beach. The tall figure behind her looked like Kamaria. It had to be Shomari, the traitorous brother she’d sworn would help them.
As they vanished below the peak, Alessa turned to her weak, wounded Fontes. Trying to choose was a deadly game of roulette.
Ignoring his protest, Alessa seized the sword from Dante’s weak grip, gathering a bit of his fighting gift as she did so.
She glared at the flying creatures above, watching to see which one was next.
One dove, and she arced the blade through the air. The impact rattled through her body, but she’d barely stunned the monster. It swooped back around, and she swung again.
Dante’s fighting skills faded, but the demons kept coming. She screamed in anger and frustration.
A beat without an attack, a moment of reprieve. One breath. That’s all she asked.
Grime and sweat blurred her vision, and the sword wavered in her grasp.
Dea, help me.
Saida, wheezing, pulled it free. “I’m sorry we’re late.”
Shomari slid his fingers through Alessa’s, using his other hand to grip his sister’s shoulder in an unspoken apology. Kamaria punched his arm, but there were tears in her eyes.
Alessa couldn’t look to see how Dante was managing. Didn’t have time. She just had to hope it wasn’t too late for him.
A century, a lifetime, a heartbeat, a breath. She wouldn’t know until later how much time passed while she fought.
Saida’s wind and Shomari’s water drew a waterspout from the sea, sucking scarabeo from the sky, and when the creatures closest were consumed, Alessa let the water fall and twisted the wind toward the shore to scramble the demonic flight patterns.
Wings snapped, demons fell, and her soldiers were ready below, waiting with swords and scythes to finish them.
The creatures seemed to smell a whiff of defeat, and their screams intensified.
Every hair on Alessa’s body rose.
Nina covered her ears, her face screwed up in agony, but Josef was a statue. “Keep going,” he said. “Don’t stop.”
She had no choice.
Blood squelched with every hand she clasped, but when one hand vanished, another took its place.
The world was nothing but a maelstrom of cold and heat, fire and ice, the swell and flux of Nina’s strange gift diverting and warping, ripping swaths through the swarm.
Alessa saw sky, briefly, a glint of sun that told her time was passing, then darkness and wings and claws closed in again. But she’d seen the sky and she’d fight to see it again.
A silver blade slashed past, proof Dante was alive and still fighting.
Across the hillside behind Finestra’s Peak and the beach before it, soldiers battled, stumbling through the waves, stabbing half-submerged scarabeo. The orderly rows of warriors following commands had disintegrated, commanders shouting orders to ranks who couldn’t hear them over the screams, or were too terrified to listen.
And all the while, the swarm above swooped and regrouped, communicating without words, a hive mind that didn’t need directions or plans to work in tandem.