past him while he was dealing with others coming straight at him.
He waited, breathing easily, listening for the first of the pack to arrive. Strangely, other than the powerful stench, the lead hellhound broke silently out of the snow, coming straight at him. He was massive, much like a giant buffalo, running at full speed, eyes glowing like two fiery coals. His massive claws left few tracks in the snow. His fangs dripped with venom. Behind him came the rest, all rushing toward him like one enormous freight train.
Isai moved then, using his preternatural speed and the experience he’d earned over centuries of battle. He fired arrow after arrow, hitting the eyes of the creatures as they came close, some a breath away. As he fired, he ran toward them, slicing down with his sword as often as possible. There were so many, and they kept coming. He knew they were being used to distract him. Julija was going to be in trouble very soon if he couldn’t halt the hellhounds.
The animals were trying to circle around him, to cut Julija off from him. He tried backtracking and they became fiercer, a galloping horde of ferocious beasts, canines like those of a saber-tooth tiger, razor-sharp, their attention completely centered on him. The closest one to him received two arrows straight into his burning eyes. It skidded to a halt and tumbled, headfirst, rolling. Two behind it couldn’t slow down and tried to run over the top of the downed hellhound.
He’s coming.
She never used Barnabas’s name if she could help it. He knew it was Barnabas, not Anatolie using the hellhounds to keep Isai apart from her.
How close are you? He fired four arrows with blurring speed.
It’s dissolving now at a rapid rate.
He could hear the pain in her voice. What is wrong? He fired off four more arrows and followed up with the sword. One hellhound grazed him. The fur was venomous, but he was covered in hyssop oil and the creature screamed as the substance burned through it.
The dragon, scorpion and snake are attempting to free me from the last of its tethers. I am unsure if it is possible.
Isai swore and sliced through the head of the beast turning on him. So close. Everywhere he looked they were too close. He needed to dissolve. To take to the air, but where would that leave her? He was all that kept Barnabas from having a free path straight to her. He needed his brethren. He needed a miracle.
You are high mage, Julija, every bit as powerful as he is. He is dead. In another realm. Take that vile book off you as if it is no more than garbage. He was asking a lot of her, but he knew she was capable.
Isai shot three more beasts with arrows, but he couldn’t get to them to chop off their heads. Another came at him from his right, a huge monster of a hellhound, and he quickly ran backward, leapt up and over its back, shooting arrows into its eyes.
One particularly large hellhound shook its head, the arrow dropping from it. It pawed the ground, looking at Isai with hatred and purpose. Its eye ran with blood, and it was fixed on him. Around him dozens more charged.
20
The pain in Julija’s hand and arm was excruciating, but the little dragon was valiant and refused to give up, breathing fire steadily at the roots protruding from her palm. She felt a second stem drop away. The snow hissed a complaint and melted right through to bare dirt. She was growing weak and the book sensed it, holding on, wrapping the last root around her wrist and trying to stab through her skin to get to her artery.
The snake and scorpion moved together as one unit, rushing down her arm so the snake could slip between the wood and her wrist and the scorpion could use its claws to pry it off her. The pages of the book were gone, but the binding stubbornly held on, desperate to carry out its maker’s wishes. She dripped her blood up and down the spine in the same pattern as she had over the pages.
She heard the fierce battle Isai waged against the hellhounds, trying to give her the time she needed to destroy the book once and for all. There was a sudden hush over the battlefield, as if the very world around her in the midst of the thick storm held its breath. Nature,