Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,113

on her door handle. “I suppose it’s pointless to tell you to stay in the jeep.”

“You are correct, Lieutenant.” I opened my door and got out. Lucy followed suit. Malcolm floated out and stood beside me.

Lucy could have nudged me to obey her and stay in the jeep, but she didn’t. It didn’t make up for her earlier push, but it took a little of my anger away.

I didn’t look around for Daisy or Ronan. I hoped one or both were nearby, in case the Spartoi decided to get feisty.

“Lieutenant Lucy Stone,” he said, his voice deep and heavily accented, and thoroughly devoid of emotion.

I wondered how he knew Lucy, but I didn’t ask, unwilling to either let on that I didn’t know the answer or distract her. All my instincts told me he was incredibly dangerous.

“Identify yourself,” Lucy commanded.

“Commander Kyrios of the Fifth Division.” His dark, unblinking gaze was unnerving. “State your business here.”

If Lucy was the least rattled by Kyrios’s stare or his presence, I saw no sign of it. “I’m not at liberty to discuss such matters with you, Commander. Why are you blocking our way?”

“This area is off-limits to anyone other than the Brotherhood of Cadmus, by order of the prefect. You will all depart immediately.”

“Your prefect has no authority over the League, Commander.” The chill in Lucy’s voice could have flash-frozen a river of lava. “You’re a mercenary. Stand aside. We have business to attend to.”

Kyrios didn’t move, though he somehow managed to give the impression that he’d just widened his stance. “Final warning, Guardian and civilian.” The change of tone when he said civilian implied I was little more than a bug to him. That suited me just fine, because that meant he underestimated me. Being underestimated had worked to my advantage many times.

I took a hesitant half-step back, as if I expected Lucy to back down. Taking my cue, Malcolm flitted. Lucy, however, didn’t back down. She also didn’t bother to hide her hatred of Kyrios.

We needed to get past him and find the door. Apparently Lucy’s thoughts mirrored mine. She reached behind her head and drew her sword out of thin air. She flexed her wrist. The sword gleamed. “I told you to move along, Sprout.”

Sprout must have been some kind of insult to a Spartoi—maybe a reference to the legend that they’d been sown from a dragon’s teeth. Kyrios’s lip curled. He made a sound like the beginning of an avalanche.

And then all hell broke loose.

23

Well, not all hell—just some of its angrier, more deadly denizens.

Shades and gravelings erupted out of the trees and from the direction of the clearing. They slithered, bounded, and galloped toward us, howling and screaming.

At first, I thought Kyrios might have called the creatures, but they went after all of us with equal bloodlust. That didn’t make us allies, but we were all united in our need to survive.

I hadn’t seen him draw his blades, but Kyrios suddenly had a sword in each hand. He waded into the attacking monsters with a roar that made my hair stand on end. He was bloodied almost instantly. As fast as he was—and holy shit, he was fast—there were too many gravelings and even more of the much-deadlier shades. We’d all be mincemeat in seconds.

Grabbing a ley line back home was painful and potentially deadly. Latching on to one of the Broken World’s crazy ley lines might be damn near suicide, but as far as I could tell, it was that or certain messy death. Kyrios was already down. Lucy staggered, bloody and wounded, and Malcolm was barely able to elude the shades. As for Ronan, he was nowhere to be seen.

I dropped my shields, sucked as much Broken World earth magic into my body as I could withstand to ground myself, and grabbed the ley line.

“Alice, no!” Malcolm shouted.

His voice vanished behind a wave of power that simultaneously brought the most pain and most pleasure I’d ever experienced at once in my life. I might have moaned, or maybe I screamed—it was impossible to tell.

My dark magic roared through the gravelings and shades. With shrieks, wails, and screams, they disintegrated as the wave swept through the trees, across the road, and past Kyrios’s bloody, motionless body into the clearing beyond.

This was true power, and nothing had ever, ever felt so good.

I caught a flash of something out of the corner of my eye: a glint of silver-blue, but not a blade. My brain struggled to make sense of