Riders (Riders, #1)(93)

“You heard me,” she said.

“Another refusal?” Samrael said. “I thought that might be the case.”

Time slowed as he looked up, lifting his eyes to the darkness.

Alevar.

The night demon was almost invisible in the sky, his black wings tucked like a diving falcon’s. I saw him, high above. Then he was right over us, his wings whipping out, suspended in midair for an instant.

Daryn and I lunged toward the hut.

She surged ahead of me. I saw her reach Marcus—reach the shelter of the hut—then I flew back. I slammed into the ground, the wind rushing out of my lungs.

Alevar was on me. His feathers covered me, putting me in total darkness. I called my armor as his sharp claws raked over my face and my arms. I found his shoulder and summoned my sword. It pierced his wing as it came up.

He shrieked, the sound deafening. Then he lifted off me, flapping furiously as he retreated in a wounded, awkward flight.

I came to my feet in time to see Pyro launching fire in my direction. I threw myself back onto the ground, the air shaking with the explosion behind me. Heat washed over me, engulfing me.

I looked up, blinking through the searing heat. The hut was burning. Consumed with fire, like the sun was in front of me.

Where were the others?

They’d been right in front of it.

I heard my name yelled, and spun.

One of Bay’s boars galloped toward me, snout wrinkled, canines bared.

Riot. I needed him.

He came up in a wash of flames around me, and I folded into him.

Taking his fire, meeting it with mine.

We were inseparable now.

Burning and light.

Untouchable.

We climbed into the night, rising high enough that I could see the entire bluff below. Our burning hut. The swarms of demons. The fires, hemming everything in.

The familiar sweep of the scythe drew my eye. Marcus was mounted on Ruin, Daryn in the saddle behind him. I saw Jode close by, on Lucent. A hail of arrows streaked from his bow, one after another, taking Ronwae and Bay’s creatures down in a lethal barrage. Concussive sounds filled the air as demons erupted in bursts of claws and stingers, fur and thick, dark blood.

Jode.

He was a machine.

But there were too many for him. There was no end to the hordes.

At the center of everything, I saw Sebastian. He was still in the same place, the middle of the clearing, standing there like a statue. But he wasn’t alone. Samrael stood next to him, holding one of his bone blades at his side.

Riot and I fell into a dive and soared down to the clearing. I spotted one of Ronwae’s scorpions in the chaos and came in behind it, forming up with Riot at a gallop. I had my sword ready, and took its stinger clean off, then I reversed my grip, and drove the sword down, cracking through the armor on its back. Riot jumped aside, avoiding the whipping tail of the dying scorpion, and I almost flew out of the saddle.

Finding my balance, I put him into a hard charge toward Marcus and Daryn. Jode was trying to keep them protected, loosing arrow after arrow, but he was losing ground against the tide of demons that were closing in around them.

I slashed at anything that got in my way. Almost there.

Ahead, I saw one of Bay’s creatures make a wild sprint toward Marcus. Then another one. Marcus saw them and chose one, swinging the scythe. The blade hooked into the monster’s thick back. As it fell aside, Marcus twisted hard, tugged like a fish on a line. Ruin saw the other monster and reeled. Caught between the two sharp movements, Daryn flew from behind Marcus and tumbled to the earth.

“Daryn!” I couldn’t get to her fast enough. Bay’s beasts came from all directions. Riot bucked beneath me, kicking at them with his hooves as I slashed at whichever one came closest.

Daryn shot to her feet and ran. Ran like a hurdler, strong and fast—but there was nowhere to go. We were on the side of the mountain with only two trails off the bluff. Pyro had set fire to both. I saw her reach the edge of the flames and pull up, then whirl and search around desperately for another way out.

There was no other way out.

I had to reach her. Marcus and Jode were in trouble. Sebastian was in trouble. But Daryn had the key. I went to shift to fire, but Riot resisted. He wanted to stand and fight.

“Riot!” I yelled, and he understood and finally relented. We folded in fast—finding the place where we were equal, perfect—and we soared to Daryn. Forming back up, I reached down for her hand. “Come on!”

She clasped it and vaulted into the saddle behind me.

The chaos across the clearing had intensified and the fires were climbing the woods behind the bluff. Pyro’s burning missiles battled with Jode’s bright white arrows. A frenzy had overtaken Ronwae’s scorpions and Bay’s beasts as they reacted in fear to the fires.

“Give her to me!” Samrael yelled from across the clearing. He laid the blade across Sebastian’s throat.

But it wasn’t Bas. It couldn’t be him.

What if it was?

I was trusting my gut. But the price of being wrong was Bas’s life.

I swung at a charging, stoop-backed beast with my sword, and it fell, howling.

“Gideon, go!” Daryn yelled, delivering a kick across the snout of another.

There was only one way I’d get her out. Hopefully she’d live through it. I ditched my sword, reached back, and pulled her in front of me. Then I put my heels to Riot’s flanks.