The turn was up ahead, just a little more—
I grabbed Atrius and we took the next corner, gravel sliding beneath our feet, and I could feel movement in the threads above even if I didn’t have the time to focus on it, and we were going to make it—
SNAP.
I was yanked backwards with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.
The slyvik’s roar surrounded me, shaking my bones. A burst of damp, hot air engulfed me.
My shirt. It had grabbed my shirt—
Before I could move, Atrius sprang into action. It was beautiful, the way he moved, with such sudden viciousness—like nothing ever caught him by surprise. His sword was out, and by the time I realized what was happening, his strike had already landed—right into the slyvik’s eye.
A screech of pain rattled the earth. The ground hit me hard, my legs collapsing under me. Atrius fell back, too, rolling and falling back into a clumsy crouch behind me. Before us, the slyvik reared back, blood dripping from its face, wings spreading wall-to-wall. Behind it, other snakelike bodies slithered through the mists as its nest-mates caught up to us, heads of teeth and starving eyes curling through the gaps in the stone to corner us.
This time, I couldn’t keep the fear down.
Atrius froze too, his hands gripping my shoulders, like he was ready to go down fighting for both of us if he had to.
My fingers curled around my weapon.
We’d both go down fighting.
The slyvik before us prepared to strike—
And then a cacophony of animalistic shrieks pierced the air.
Not from in front of us. From behind us.
The flood of relief left my body momentarily limp.
Because we had made it. We had made it.
The slyviks’ heads snapped up, peering into the mists, far beyond us. Their bodies coiled, readying for a fight. The roars lowered to glottal hisses and clicks. Stone screeched with the bite of claws.
Behind us, the same sounds echoed back, as the other nest of slyviks prepared for a fight.
Territorial men—human or vampire or slyvik. The one thing you could always count on.
We were never going to get past the slyviks with our strength or our stealth. The only chance we had was to distract them with something far more interesting than some prey.
And a rival nest? Well. That was interesting.
I’d never felt anything quite like the sensation of those short, endless seconds—like the electricity hanging in the air before a lightning strike, or the quiet in the sea before a tidal wave crests. We were in between two deadly forces of nature about to destroy each other.
It was, in a strange way, beautiful.
Then Atrius’s fingers tightened around my arm, and he whispered in my ear, “Run.”
We dove out of the way just as the slyviks lunged at each other.
The wave crashed. The lightning struck. This fight, of creatures utterly oblivious to any goal other than ripping each other to pieces, was just as powerful.
They collided in an explosion of teeth and wings and scales, and we bolted.
The air was thick with the screams of slyviks, sounds of such range and pitch that I never imagined an animal could make them. We couldn’t speak to each other even if we’d tried. I couldn’t stop to navigate our way through the stone—surely the vampires couldn’t see much of anything either, through the mist and the writhing bodies of the slyviks. But they knew the plan. They knew the signal. When they heard the commotion break out, they knew there was only one thing to do: run for their damned lives.
It was a straight run out, I’d told them. I’d been careful to sound very confident about it, even though, in reality, I wasn’t completely sure—it was so hard to sense the specifics of the rock formations this far away, and through the disruptive presences of the slyviks.
If there were turns or another split in the path… we were done.
We ran, dodging stray claws and flying tails. I felt the soldiers, too, following behind us, moving as fast as they could.
Weaver, there were so many of these things—my upper estimation of fifty had to have been right, even if I couldn’t stop to count. The claws and teeth and scaly bodies seemed to go on forever, the wails growing louder as the clash between the two nests escalated, more and more of them rising to the front of the pack for their attempt at asserting dominance.
My sword slashed wildly at whatever got in our path, without any time to look or judge. Blood spattered my face—my own or slyvik, I couldn’t stop to tell.
When I sensed a change in the threads ahead, at first I thought I was imagining it.
But after several more stumbling steps, dodging a stray talon that nearly claimed the left side of my face, the truth of it dawned: