Chapter 13

Roan’s face was expressionless looking up at the looming vampire. His hands lay flat on the ground on either side of him. He spoke with a steady voice as unconcerned as though he were talking about the weather. “Is that right? Well, if I’m going to die, at least tell me who slays me.”

The vampire held up its head proudly, its ebony horns reflecting the light of the fire. “I am the Hound Master, Lord Vander, and you are going to be snacks for my pets.”

Roan raised his brow with a disparaging scoff. “Vander and Zander? Your creator wasn’t very creative.”

The vampire threw back its head and laughed. “What an ass! You Seekers crack me up! I’m going to enjoy watching the life drain from your eyes. Well, maybe just the one. That other one ... maybe I’ll rip it out.”

A dry, breathy chuckle left the Seeker with a smug, daring smirk. “Why don’t you try?”

Incensed by his attitude, Vander snarled and reached for Roan’s face with the talons on its hand ready to tear through his flesh. Focusing on that mercurial eye, the vampire paused, appearing frozen in time as though irresistibly hypnotized by the swirling.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Roan uttered a flowing, magical phrase. The ground quivered before roots exploded through the upheaved soil.

The vampire let out an unnatural, ear-splitting screech. Struggling to rip free, its supernatural strength wasn’t enough to fight off the rapidly increasing tendrils ensnaring it.

Rolling away, Roan jumped to his feet. His eyes flicked up and met Cylthan’s. Whatever was or was not going on between them didn’t really matter right then. They needed to survive, and when the shapeshifters melted to the ground around them, taking on forms of half rotted feral animals, they both knew it would be easier together.

When her eyes hardened with the same understanding, Roan clapped his hands, causing the shifters to snap their heads to him.

“That’s right, fellas. Just a moment of your time. If you would, look into the light.” Opening his hands, he raised them over his head with a spell and a blinding light lit up the night brighter than the sun. The shifters screeched in agony, the resplendent light burning them.

“Get the elf bitch!” Vander snarled, ripping at the tendrils that were slowing down.

Creating such an intense light from nothing was a difficult spell to maintain and it soon faded in favor of keeping the vampire struggling against the roots.

Cylthan was already at the fire. With a head start, she had time to grab Roan’s scimitar, spin around, and throw the blade at him. Catching it by the handle, he continued the momentum around with enough force to sling the sheath into a wolf shifter, sending it tumbling back with a yelp.

Its partners snarled, rushing at him with snaps of their festering jaws. Swiping his weapon at them again, he turned the blade up and hooked the tip through the nearest hound’s jaw and right through the top of the skull. On the point of his weapon was a small piece of rotten flesh from its Master to give it life. The unnatural light faded from its sockets and it slumped forward– just a rotten corpse.

Jerking his blade free, he had to jump back to avoid another snap. His eyes flicked back and forth between the rotten hounds surrounding him and the vampire that had called one over to change into a bear form and bite through the vines. So long as he kept his magic eye within their view, they were too engrossed in its swirling appeal to attack him directly.

Three shifters obeyed their Master and went after Cylthan, trying to surround her, blocking her path into the woods. Pulling her sword free with a soft hiss of steel, she growled as she stepped back towards the fight happening behind her.

The first hound thought it could surprise her from over the fire, but she had left the opening for that reason. With a quick phrase in a flowing elven, the campfire erupted into the sky, rocketing the screeching shifter upwards before sucking it back into a swirling inferno it could not escape from. Only when the light faded from its sockets was the crisp, formless corpse dumped onto the forest floor in a smoldering heap.

The other two lunged and snapped, forcing her back further. Spreading out, they were trying to get behind her. Without the coordinated will of their Master, they reverted to the animal mind, to the muscle memory of the many parts that made them.

Stepping back once more, Cylthan could feel the heat of Roan’s body behind her. She didn’t want to admit it felt like a relief. If anything, it infuriated her that he was the safest one to have at her back right now. Glaring over her shoulder, she bared a sharp tooth at him. “I hate you.”

She definitely saw the grin that came and went while he tried to hold his concentration. “Prove it. I’ll believe it if I’m dead by the end of this.”

With an aggravated scoff, she swung her sword to keep the hounds back while others stalked behind the pack, ready to jump in.

“I’ve already killed one,” she threatened in a low growl.

She could hear the smirk in his voice. “I did, too.”

Her eyes darted to the vampire still ripping at the vines that single-mindedly sought to wrap it in a suffocating embrace, already having squeezed a wing clean off its back. “How long can you hold him?”

“Longer if he didn’t have help.”

Glancing up as she formulated a plan, she left an opening for the hounds to rush her. One went for her legs while the other jumped with maw wide open.

Her elbow brushed Roan’s side as she dropped low and stabbed up into the open mouth of the rotten creation, destroying the piece of its Master. At the same moment, Roan twisted the direction she had touched to swing his blade with precision, slicing the leaping hound’s head clean from its body.

The body of it crumpled while the head snarled and snapped at the air, attempting to shift into another form. Cylthan’s hand jerked in the symbols of a spell she had used against the Seeker, murmuring words to cause the earth to turn to liquid and suck the shifter down beneath the surface before it could change into something more pesky.

She looked up as he looked down, locking eyes. When she shifted her gaze to the branches, he knew she had a plan and that was all he needed to know.

Snapping back to his own attackers, his swing bit deep across the snout of the hound that had come closest. Yelping, it jumped back, causing the others to snarl and snap.