The other night terrors followed, shrieking out a caterwauling war cry.
Nicodemus grabbed hold of Shannon, just barely pulling the old man off Tamelkan before the eyeless dragon charged into battle.
Typhon meet Garkex with a blast of red light that deconstructed the construct’s left arm. But with a brutal right-handed slash, the troll raked his claws across Typhon’s cheek and knocked the demon’s head to one side. The rest of the nightmares rushed forward in a tide of scales, tentacles, and talons. They bowled into the demon and knocked him onto his back.
“Kill me!” Deirdre cried. “His control over me lessens.” Her arms had gone slack. She looked at Nicodemus with wide, pleading eyes.
“Deirdre, I c-can’t possibly—”
“The blade,” she said nodding to the greatsword she had dropped. “Pick it up.”
The cavern blazed brighter with Typhon’s white light. Garkex bellowed as Typhon crushed the troll’s chest with a blazing fist. The other night terrors were deconstructing as the light frayed their exterior sentences.
Nicodemus picked up the sword and stepped toward the brawl; he would rather die with a weapon in hand than hide in a corner.
“For pity’s sake!” Deirdre pleaded. “Typhon corrupted my goddess. He led me to endanger Kyran. Don’t let me live to serve the demon.” Tears filled her eyes. “He will twist my will. He will make me one of them!”
Nicodemus could not move.
Before him Typhon leaped to his feet with a deafening roar. The demon tore apart Fael, the night terror lycanthrope. Oily blood now seeped from small wounds across the demon’s head and chest. Only Tamelkan, the eyeless dragon, remained.
“Now!” Deirdre pleaded. “Nicodemus, before it is too late!”
Typhon lunged forward and caught the small dragon’s head. With a quick twist of the torso the demon snapped the wyrm’s neck and threw it aside.
Nicodemus raised his sword.
Typhon turned to him. “Nicodemus, stop. You will only harm yourself.”
“Nicodemus!” Deirdre cried. “I beg you!”
Typhon shook his head. “I have chosen the two of you to beget a new race after the War of Disjunction. You are to know unparalleled happiness. You must survive together!”
“Please,” Deirdre whispered. Her tear-bright face shone with torment and longing. Her trembling hand drew back her cloak to reveal the dirty white cloth above her left breast. “Save me if you bear me any love.”
“No!” Typhon bellowed as Nicodemus thrust the rusted blade through Deirdre’s heart.
DEIRDRE CONVULSED. Her hands came up to grasp the sword.
Typhon howled, a torrent of crimson blood spewing from his left breast. The demon fell to his knees, wings flapping wildly, arms trembling.
Deirdre collapsed into Nicodemus’s arms. They sank slowly to the floor. She looked up at him, struggling for breath. He could barely see through his own tears.
Without warning, a massive obsidian arm pulled them apart and tossed Nicodemus to the ground. Typhon lifted Deirdre up and pulled the sword from her chest. He hugged her close. “No!” she gasped. “No! Nicodemus, help! He’s healing—”
The demon had dissolved into a dark cloud that was imbuing itself into Deirdre’s body.
Confused relief flooded through Nicodemus. Deirdre wouldn’t die after all. The demon’s red and black wings now grew from her back. She held the greatsword in one hand.
Nicodemus struggled to his feet and grabbed her arm. Touching her sent a shock through his body and filled his mind with a vision of Deirdre as a girl running through a field of heather. He saw her holding a child. Then he was back in the present. She was holding him. Her once green eyes were now black as onyx.
She began to whisper, not with her own voice, but with Typhon’s rumbling one. “Lord Severn, April, James Berr,” she whispered. “You’ve always been mine. The next dragon will make you mine again.”
Nicodemus opened his mouth but could not speak.
“Kill the beast!” a woman’s voice bellowed as a Magnus wartext shot over Deirdre’s head. Suddenly Magistra Okeke and two sentinels rushed into the cavern casting violent language at Deirdre.
The sentinels must have magically spanned the distance from the fractured Spindle Tunnel to the cavern.
With a shove, Deirdre sent Nicodemus flying to slam against the cavern wall. Everything disappeared for a moment. Then he was slouched on the floor.
Deirdre leveled her greatsword at the sentinels. With blinding speed, she dodged around the spells to charge the black-robes. The first she slashed across the chest, the second across the throat. But when she lunged for Magistra Okeke, the woman leaped back in time to avoid the blade.
Another silver spell flashed through the cavern and knocked the sword from