The Last Warrior (Shifters Unbound #13) - Jennifer Ashley Page 0,4
way to the cells below. Of course, when they reached the door through which he’d entered the castle, rubble blocked it. Cian was having too much fun.
“What’s he using?” Rhianne asked, sounding merely curious. “I didn’t think dokk alfar had that kind of magic.”
“He doesn’t. He has explosives.” Ben scanned the corridor and chose a side hall, hoping it would take them to another exit. “How do you know he’s dokk alfar?”
“You said his name is Cian. That’s a dokk alfar name.”
“Fair enough.” Ben pulled Rhianne around another corner to an even darker corridor.
“Do you know the way out?” Rhianne asked.
“When I came in, yes I did. Now, no.”
“I don’t know the way either. I wasn’t awake for most of the journey.”
“Nice way to woo a girl.”
Rhianne’s laughter was shaky but held a hint of richness. “That’s what I said.”
“This way, I think. Or ... Okay, maybe not.”
Three hoch alfar stopped abruptly in front of them.
They obviously hadn’t expected to see Ben and Rhianne, because they hesitated a hair too long before they shouted and attacked. Ben was already engaged in the fight by the time they sorted themselves out.
Hoch alfar were much harder to brawl with than drunk guys in a Louisiana roadhouse. Fae had nasty pointed weapons for one thing, usually loaded with spells, plus these guards were trained from childhood to do battle.
Ben wasn’t any kind of alfar, which worked to his advantage. The hoch alfar were honed fighters who occasionally faced dokk alfar but mostly they battled other hoch alfar from rival clans. These guards didn’t know what to do with a pissed-off goblin who hated them on principle.
Ben’s fight with the barflies had been a warmup. This was the real thing. He kicked and spun, punched and jabbed, dodging knives headed for his gut, breaking a hand that wielded one.
The guards also didn’t know what to do with the yelling whirlwind of red hair who sprang at them instead of waiting on the sidelines like a good damsel in distress. Rhianne had found a piece of bronze pipe in the rubble, and now she whacked left and right.
The wall next to Ben exploded. Shards of dust and metal sprayed into the corridor, and the guards began to scream.
Rhianne stepped back in bewilderment, her bronze bar held like a sword as the guards writhed and clawed at their faces.
Ben grabbed Rhianne’s hand and pulled her through the newly made hole. “Cian packs iron into the explosives.”
“That’s mean.” Hoch alfar hated the touch of iron. It burned them, crippled them, killed them if they were hit with a big enough dose. Rhianne shuddered. “On the other hand, Walther let half a dozen of his guards grope me when he tracked me down, so they can eat it.”
Ben’s body tightened. He debated wading back into the castle and breaking necks and crushing bones, but it was more important right now that he whisk Rhianne to safety.
The hole led to a space between the castle’s inner and outer walls. Another opening had been blasted in the curtain wall, through which fresh wind blew. The outside world. Or, at least, Faerie.
Ben climbed through, pulling Rhianne behind him. She scrambled over the broken stones, her hair snagging on the jagged opening. She impatiently jerked it free, never letting go of Ben’s hand.
Ben slid a few feet down the steep hill the castle perched upon before he planted himself to help Rhianne to firmer ground. At least the hole in the wall hadn’t opened to a sheer part of the cliff.
The only road to the castle was a precarious one from a river valley, the better for defense. All other ways involved clambering around densely packed trees and scrub on a near-vertical slope.
Cian leapt out over the pile of rubble, landing with the grace of a cat. He wore close-fitting black clothes and soft shoes, which made him look much like the popular movie image of a ninja in the human world.
Cian’s usually grim face split into a broad smile. “Head’s up,” he said in dokk alfar.
Ben grabbed Rhianne and yanked her to the earth. Cian removed a small object from his pocket and tossed it through the hole he’d just emerged from then slammed himself facedown in the dirt.
A final boom rang out and a cloud of dust burst from the opening. Screams, curses, and shouts rose over the rumble of falling stones. The hole that had been their escape route vanished as the wall became a pile of debris.