burst of the same.
A cacophony of hideous shrieks filled the air from the remaining Beasts.
The angmostros head slithered away, jaws dripping ooze, gullet rippling with its swallow, as all the prophesied turned on the advancing brethren.
Silence held one back by fire.
Farah one by wind.
While Ha-Lah called a wave and took one off its feet.
It slipped along the rock and fell over the side of the cliff.
Silence resurrected the fire the wave had doused and then hurled a ball of flame that struck her Beast in its face and threw the creature back.
The one to its left suddenly shrieked and batted at what appeared to be nothing as the fur covering its body opened up seemingly on its own, blood flowing out.
“The Mystics are keeping it occupied! Concentrate!” Princess Serena screamed.
Fire, wind and the return of the sea creature commenced.
The Beast that flew over the side climbed back up it, made the top and raced through the circle of flame toward its stretching sibling.
But the angmostros clamped down and black ooze blasted out.
A mauled body that seemed to come from thin air flew across the rock and landed with a sickening thud on its back.
Teddy saw it was a man from The Mystics.
His gaze jumped back as the Beast being opened up by imperceptible blades caught another of its invisible tormentors in his huge clawed hand, making him visible.
Without delay, the creature rushed the hole and tossed the man inside.
“Retreat!” Mars’s Trusted from The Mystics shouted.
“Oh, gods,” Moira whimpered.
That Beast turned, like his remaining brother, to the prophesied.
“The one to the left!” Cassius shouted just as Mars yelled, “Focus on the right!”
The blue streams of the tridents struck the one to the right.
He bellowed, and then in a flash of fur and cries and grunts of men, the blue streams of the Mer stopped, and that Beast came to halt beside his brother, his claws wrapped around the staffs of a collection of tridents.
And with a squeeze and a crunch, they broke with a spray of blue sparks and the halves fell to the rock.
On no.
One of them began to walk toward the prophesied.
But he stopped when a stream of fire hit the stone before him, coming from Silence.
“Not a fucking step closer,” Mars growled.
The thing’s head seemed to descend more into hits neck before it popped out, the fur withdrew, the claws receded.
And suddenly, before them stood a remarkably handsome, fit, naked blond man.
The man Teddy had seen back in that horrid glade in the forest of Wodell.
“Gads,” Moira whispered, before she sneered, “That’s a nifty damned trick.”
“I am Daemon,” the Beast man said.
No one spoke.
Daemon didn’t mind.
“We admire you,” he told them, lifting a hand to the other Beast, who Teddy’s eyes went to and he saw not a Beast and not a man, but an attractive blonde woman, though her body was cut in many places and oozing blood. “Let us have the god and then we will rule beside you.”
The thing calling himself Daemon took another step forward.
Both heads of the hovering angmostros dipped closer.
Dragons flew in from all sides and flapped, suspended in the air, red eyes aimed to the Beasts standing on stone.
“Not another sirens-damned step,” Aramus warned.
“As we admire you, we do not wish to destroy you. And thus, you should know, we are holding back,” Daemon warned in return.
“If that’s the case, your brothers probably should have given it their all,” Cassius drawled.
Teddy and Moira pressed closer when Daemon’s head whipped to Cassius and he flashed awful teeth his way.
“Touchy,” Mars said.
“Do not play with us for we are finished playing with you,” Daemon threatened.
“Care to wager?” True asked.
“I will kill you last,” Daemon promised.
“But we’ll kill her first,” True said.
And then another inhuman shriek as the female fell facedown to the rock with a sword sticking out of her back.
Cassius’s and Elena’s lieutenants stood beyond her, the man called Mac clearly being the one who hurled his sword, for he was still bent forward with the effort of doing so.
Instantly, fire blasted at Daemon while wind took the she-creature up and Elena reached behind her to snatch up her bow.
And one after another after another, with a swiftness that was impossible to believe, she strung it and let fly, each arrow that embedded itself in the female Beast making her body jump with the impacts before small coral and purple explosions burst from each wound.
But this time, Ha-Lah did not call her creature.
A wave rose up over the cliff, arched down in