Slaying Monsters for the Feeble - Annette Marie Page 0,59

leaped higher, smoke boiling toward the ceiling and heat scorching the air.

Yelling in alarm, the vampires jerked back from the spreading inferno. I tore free from their restraining arms and leaped toward the dark shape on the floor.

Zylas!

Chill air tingled across my skin, then arctic cold swept over the room, sucking away the fire’s heat. The flames shrank. Frost webbed across the floor in spreading fractals as the temperature plunged past freezing and kept dropping.

Darkness swept through the room, drowning out the firelight—but within the darkness, crimson eyes glowed.

I tripped over something and crashed down, half on top of Zylas. A warm hand pressed against my cheek. Power buzzed against my skin, then the heat rushed out of my body and flowed into the demon. As suffocating cold plunged over me, his eyes blazed.

Power erupted over his hands in twisting veins. It raced up his arms, his shoulders, his neck, and leaked across his cheeks like creeping scarlet vines. Light bled around his eyes, which burned even brighter.

His hand was still pressed to my face as he raised the other, muscles trembling with weakness but spread fingers steady.

Inside my head, a ruby-colored array appeared: a radiant tangle of lines and jagged runes that crisscrossed and overlapped with wild complexity. Like sorcery but different. Not human magic but demon magic.

It seared deep in my mind like a laser etching the pattern inside my skull.

Power flared over Zylas’s hand. Magic erupted all around us, shapes and runes forming in the air. The magic I could see in my head took form in front of my eyes, the tangled shape arching over us. Power built in the runes, pulsing through every line. The air went colder, the fires snuffing out, the darkness pressing in.

Evashvā vīsh.

The spell curving over us blasted outward like a detonating bomb, ripping through steel and concrete. A cacophony of shrieking, banging, and crashing shattered my eardrums. The explosion tore the ceiling away, obliterating everything in its path.

Zylas pulled my face into his shoulder and wrapped his arms over my head. Debris plummeted down on us, painful thuds and stinging cuts. The clamor died away, my ears ringing in the new quiet, broken only by the patter and crunch of falling rubble. Darkness lay over everything.

A flicker of light. Somewhere among the wreckage, flames had reignited among the burst jerry cans and smoldering paper. I lifted my head, pulling free of Zylas’s arms.

The room was … not really there anymore. A massive hole gaped above us, the ceiling little more than twisted steel.

Zylas’s hand tightened around my wrist. His skin was chill, almost icy, and his eyes were dark again, his power expended.

“Run, drādah.”

Crimson power flared over him. His body dissolved and the light streaked toward a tangle of debris. I leaped after it and shoved aside smoldering drywall. The infernus lay on the floor, glowing with Zylas’s returning spirit. I snatched it up, and then I was running toward a dark threshold, the door torn off its hinges by the detonation.

As I flew through the doorway, a voice shouted. The vampires weren’t dead. Some had survived that demonic unleashing. They were coming for me.

I sprinted down the hallway, the dancing firelight fading the farther I ran. Dropping the infernus chain over my head, I wheeled around a corner and darkness engulfed me. My fingers tightened on the photo I still clutched. “Luce!”

The cantrip flared, lighting my way, but it wouldn’t last long before the rune had to recharge. I raced down the corridor, trying vainly to remember the route Zylas had followed on our way in.

As the cantrip’s light faded, I glimpsed an unlit exit sign above the next door. I shoved through it and into the inky stairwell. Reaching out with fumbling hands, I found the railing. I flew down the steps, rounded a bend in the staircase, and descended farther. When the stairway curved again, I stretched my hands out, blindly searching. A concrete wall … a door! I slid my hands down, found the handle, and shoved it open.

Light bloomed, the lobby bathed in the orange glow of streetlamps.

A bang echoed through the stairwell behind me. I flung the door shut, sprinted across the lobby, and slammed full force into the front door. It didn’t budge. Locked. I grabbed a heavy bucket of joint compound and threw it into the nearest window. The glass shattered.

I was outside an instant later and clambering over a barricade. Then I ran as fast as my exhausted legs would carry