City of Spells (Into the Crooked Place #2) - Alexandra Christo Page 0,44

leaped from the ground and drove a knife through the man’s throat.

“To the death!” Arjun yelled.

The Kin screamed in unison, echoing his cries with swords and magic raised high in the air.

Karam pulled someone’s head back by their hair and plunged her knife into their heart.

She ran across the shores, sand splashing up to her thighs, and launched herself into the air until her legs were wrapped around a man’s throat and he tried to hit and punch at her calves.

This would be their mourning.

Killing these people would be their solace. It didn’t matter if they were outnumbered two to one. These Crafters were already dead.

Karam squeezed tighter, angled her body to the right, and felt the snap of the man’s neck.

The beach was alight with magic. It filled the air, so thick that Karam could taste it, almost choke on it. She coughed it up like it was sand. Bright gold swirls of fire and the roll of thunder. Bodies were dropping everywhere.

There was blood all over her and Karam didn’t know what was hers and what had been their enemy’s.

It didn’t matter.

She didn’t feel pain, just thirst.

The unholy need to destroy each and every one of these monsters.

The Kingpin knew they would come for Wesley.

His people had been waiting, hidden like hunters in the forest.

Nolan.

Karam would be damned if she died on this beach without making it back to Saxony. She made her way through the army in blood and death.

These infected soldiers could not be saved, the Loj was too far in their veins, and even if they could, Karam would not give them that chance.

Now that Asees was dead, Karam would make each of them pay for it with their souls.

If they still even had souls.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out one of Tavia’s trick bags. She threw it at a nearby Crafter and he froze in place, turned to ice on the balmy shores.

Karam threw a knife at him and he shattered into the sand.

These people were not warriors.

They were just the dead waiting to find graves.

She reached for another charm.

Tavia had been trying to teach her how to read them—to know what they could do and to let their magic flow through her like a melody—but Karam could sense nothing but her own rage and so she just threw the charm high above her and watched it flutter back down like a bird.

And then explode.

Four Crafters flew into the air, crashing through the glass headstones until finally landing back on the shores with a bone-crunching thud.

Dead. Gone.

She ran over to Arjun, who was clutching at his side with one hand and cradling Asees’s body with the other. Asees was still, but the blood kept coming. From her mouth and her stomach and by the spirits Karam didn’t know how to make it stop.

Arjun put a hand over Asees’s wound and closed his eyes, muttering desperately. Some kind of a spell, Karam assumed, and she felt a spark that maybe it was a healing spell and everything would be all right.

Arjun’s hands were shaking, alight in the gold magic of their people. His eyes were squeezed shut so tight that his nose wrinkled.

And then Karam turned, just as a man charged at them. His blackened eyes were like that of a wild animal and the mark of the Loj elixir was thick and gleaming on his neck.

He launched a shard of light at Karam and she leaped to avoid it, then swung her foot out and swept the man’s legs out from under him.

“We will be saved,” he said, pulling out a gun. “We must protect the magic.”

Karam did not hesitate.

She cut her knife clean across his neck, before he even had the chance to raise his weapon, pressing her lips together tightly so she didn’t have to taste the victory.

“Come on,” Arjun said.

He was still focused on Asees, his hands aglow and hovering over the hole in her stomach.

“This has to work,” he said. “Come on, Asees. Wake up.”

The magic flickered weakly under his palms, like a light trying to stay on in a storm. Only Asees didn’t move and the blood didn’t crawl from the sand and back into her still body.

Arjun sobbed, the cry of agony so sharp that Karam felt it stab into her heart.

He dropped his hands and the lights went out.

“Please wake up,” he said.

He buried his head in Asees’s shoulder.

“Arjun,” Karam said.

She knelt down beside him and looked at the gash on his side. The sand