Lord's Fall (Elder Races #5)(80)

A steaming trickle of blood from the cut slid down the side of his face. More agony, as Eva unceremoniously rolled off of him and leaped to the ground, drawing both swords that had been strapped to her back. She lunged to engage the Elves that crowded close, her dark features lit with ferocity.

Pia scrambled over the mound of his shoulder and slithered on her stomach headfirst to land in an awkward heap on the ground just under his chin. She wore her armor, he noticed with satisfaction, and she carried her crossbow slung over one shoulder along with a belt of bolts.

Dragging herself to her knees, she screamed at him, “Where are you hurt?”

He coughed, and that was agonizing too. He told her telepathically, Neck, back, ribs, wing.

“Goddammit,” she said. “The only other two times I did this there was an actual wound.”

What did she mean, the other two times? She had healed him once when they had run from the Goblin army. Who else had she healed?

I am actually wounded, he told her, bemused.

“That’s not what I meant,” she snarled. “I meant the wounds were on the surface and visible.”

She looked and sounded demented. She yanked a crossbow bolt out of the belt and raked the tip of it down one of her forearms, from elbow to wrist. Blood and Power poured from the deep cut. Then she turned and jammed her entire arm into his mouth.

He gagged as her elbow hit the back of his tongue. I am overwhelmed by your bedside manner.

She glared at him, wild-eyed. “You’re not in a bed, and it’s all I can think of to do, SO JUST SUCK IT UP, BABY.”

It hurt too much to laugh. Besides, if he did he was afraid one of his long, razor sharp teeth would slice into her delicate flesh. As wetness trickled into his mouth, more mountains fell out of the sky to batter the ground around him.

The gryphons called to each other in their wild eagle voices as they lunged and struck at Gaeleval’s army. Rune’s mate Carling ran over to kneel on the other side of Dragos’s head. The Vampyre wore a spell of protection against the light of day like an invisible cloak. She chanted one long, continuous incantation. As the words spilled from her mouth, hieroglyphs of Power hung in the air and glowed like lava in his mind’s eye.

Others arrived. An enormous black panther coughed a hoarse scream as it leaped from the back of a pegasus that soared down. When the pegasus touched all four hooves to the ground, it transformed into a tall dark man who leaped to join the panther.

Then with a laugh Aryal winged into sight, and the harpy whirled into action. She was at her most charming when she went into battle.

There was Grym too, hovering in the sky over all of the others, with his batlike wings and demonic face. Wait a minute, that couldn’t be true. Grym had stayed behind in New York. This was the other gargoyle, from Pia’s guards. Monroe. As Dragos watched, Monroe dove into the fight and then rose up again in the air almost immediately. In his arms he held a wriggling, filthy Elven child, and he wheeled to fly away.

The strange thing, Dragos noticed, was that Pia’s blood didn’t taste like blood. He had seen more than he had ever wanted to of her blood when she had been wounded last year. He certainly knew that it looked red enough, but the trickle that flowed down his throat did not have the heavy, rich taste of normal blood. Instead, it was like liquid moonlight.

Or maybe that was her Power flowing into his body. It cooled the hot agony that glazed his mind. He gasped as his shattered ribs eased back into place, and he was able to take in his first full breath since he had crashed. His neck fused into one long, sinuous unbroken line again, and his back straightened. The last thing to heal was his wing, partly because he had been lying on it. He rolled to pull it out from underneath his weight, and the bones and cartilage flared into seamless alignment. Rightness vibrated in his bones.

Most healing was just as messy as any wound or sickness, and healing spells and potions hurt like a bastard. This didn’t. This was Pia gazing at him with eyes the color of midnight, as she laid cool fingers against his face and said, “I love you.”

She was his best teacher, and the most Powerful force in his universe, and everything hinged on it, on her. Everything.

She watched him so worriedly. She still had her arm jammed in his mouth, which still made him want to laugh. Her face was dirty and bruised, and the battle rang out all around them, but somehow the viciousness never touched them.

They existed somewhere else, somewhere sacred, apart from it all.

That was until Carling rapped on his snout with her knuckles. Since you’re getting better, you ought to know that my protection spell against the sun doesn’t last as long as it used to, said the witch. I need to get out of the sun, and you need to take over this incantation. People are going to keep dying if we don’t figure out how to make some headway against this.

Dragos’s attention snapped back to what was happening all around him.

Not ten feet away, Graydon had wrestled Beluviel to the ground. He held the Elven woman pinned from behind, his arms wrapped around her as he gripped her wrists. Her body strained convulsively to break his hold until the tendons in her arms and legs showed white like bone against her skin. All the while she stared blankly into space through the tangled curtain of her hair.

Even though violence churned all around them, Graydon talked to her. His voice was gentle as he said, “You’re all right. You’re going to be all right.”

But while Monroe rescued children and Graydon held on to Beluviel, no one else had the luxury of picking just one person to save. He noticed that they tried to knock the Elves back without inflicting harm, but gradually they were both taking and inflicting damage as they were surrounded by an army that would not stop advancing.