A Valley of Darkness (A Shade of Vampire #52)(68)

“No… No… Please, don’t…” he croaked.

The daemon grabbed him by the throat and pulled him out. It forced the Iman to open his mouth, pressing against his cheeks. Then it fed on him, but I wasn’t exactly sure what it was that the invisible creature was extracting from the Iman. I could see feeble wisps of white energy coming out of his mouth and vanishing into the daemon, but I didn’t know what was happening beyond that.

“What are they doing?” I whispered.

“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here, fast.” Fiona put her shock aside and returned to prying open the gate on the tunnel next to us.

The daemons were doing the same thing all over the prison. I glanced up and saw that all the Correction Officers were gone. Did they know what was happening? Was this deliberate?

I glanced at Fiona, who was pulling on the gate’s iron bars, and felt the blood drain from my body in an instant as I noticed movement behind her. A daemon had snuck up on her.

“Fiona, behind you!” I shrieked.

She only got to look over her shoulder before she yelped and vanished.

“NO!” I screamed and darted from my hiding spot, followed by Blaze. “Fiona!”

“Caia!” she cried out from somewhere to the right, halfway down the path leading to the open tunnel. We ran after her, and I brought my lighters out.

I launched a couple of fireballs ahead, but I couldn’t see Fiona anywhere and I wasn’t even sure I’d hit anything.

“Fiona!” I screamed again.

“Caia!” Her voice faded into the open tunnel.

“No, no, no!” I ran faster and saw Blaze dart past me, the leather on his combat uniform stretching as he started morphing into a fire dragon.

A daemon rammed into him from the side, tackling him hard. I threw more fireballs out, aiming for the flickers of red eyes I could see. Blaze landed on his back, but it didn’t stop him from transforming.

“Oh, crap,” I blurted, then stopped and moved back.

Blaze exploded into full dragon form, and I heard shuffling on the stone floor around us. I analyzed the situation briefly, and it didn’t look too good. We were surrounded by several daemons, while the rest were busy feeding on the Imen prisoners. Fiona had been taken by a daemon and had vanished into the tunnel.

“Feeding,” I muttered, something suddenly making sense. I looked at Blaze. “Blaze! Soul eaters! The Imen called them soul eaters! The daemons—they’re feeding on the Imen! I think they’re consuming their souls! Their actual freaking souls!”

Blaze roared as he came around to protect me, while more daemons moved closer. The dragon’s jaws snapped open, and he shot a thin column of fire at the fiends. It was enough to make them move back.

One of them tried to claw Blaze’s long, scaly neck. It got swiftly crushed between his massive jaws. I shot more fireballs at the other daemons, and I heard them growl with discomfort before they scattered away. Even the almighty and invisible beasts didn’t dare go against a fire dragon, it seemed.

“We need to go after her, Blaze!” I called out.

He looked down at me, the invisible creature still in his mouth. I could see dark red blood coating his large fangs and chin, dripping onto the floor. He gave me a brief nod and moved to drop the dead daemon.

A powerful explosion tore into the open tunnel from which the daemons had emerged and through which Fiona had been taken. The blast swept over me and knocked me off my feet, as clouds of smoke and dust billowed and filled the prison. I coughed and felt the ground shake beneath me.

More blasts emerged—the tunnel was clearly being destroyed.

“Fiona!” I screamed from the bottom of my lungs.

Blaze growled, seemingly unaffected by the explosions. He took the dead daemon back in his mouth, then brought his claws around my waist and plucked me off the ground, forcing me to climb onto his back. My entire body was shaking, but I was able to hold on as he got up and stretched his wings.

I saw Correction Officers emerging above, staring down at us from the footbridges, fear embedded in their features.

“Blaze, we need to get Fiona back,” I said, my voice weak despite my strong desire to go after her. But go after her through which tunnel, since they’d just blown the right one up?

He didn’t listen. Instead, he flew straight toward the tunnel we’d initially come through. I screamed and ducked out of reflex as his hard dragon head crashed through the gate and we shot through the tunnel.

“What are we doing? We need to go after Fiona!” I cried out. His body shuddered, forcing me to hold on tight to the back of his scaly neck. He flew us out of the mountain and soared over the ocean, before doing a U-turn and heading for the infirmary level of Azure Heights.

I looked down and saw dust billowing out from the tunnel as we left it behind. I didn’t understand what we were doing, and my throat clamped up. Fiona’s capture replayed over and over in my head in excruciating detail.

“FIONA!” I rasped.

As Blaze continued to hurtle full speed in the opposite direction, it was all I could do to not break down.





Fiona





(Daughter of Benedict & Yelena)





I was completely immobilized. Something strong was holding my arms and legs still. I struggled against the daemon’s grip, but it barely huffed in response as it carried me through the tunnel and across the plains.