Erra’s hand clawed the air. Darkness vomited another torrent of crippling fear. Curran shuddered. His hands thickened, growing longer claws.
Another blast of magic. He kept walking.
Another blast.
“Look!” Erra leaned into the axe, grinding it into me.
Curran crouched in the middle of the street. Dense fur sheathed him, flaring into an enormous mane on his back and disproportionately huge head. No trace of a human or lion remained—his body was seamless and whole, a nightmarish mutated blend that was neither. Long limbs supported a broad, muscled body, striped with dark gray. His eyes glowed yellow, so bright and pale, almost white. I looked into their depths and saw no rational thought. No intelligence or comprehension.
He raised his head, unhinging his enormous jaws, and roared, shaking the street, all teeth and fur.
Curran had gone mad.
I wouldn’t lose him. I would not lose him on this dark, cold street. It wouldn’t happen.
The beast that used to be Curran leapt at the undead. Huge hands grasped Darkness, pulling him up. Muscles bulged and Curran tore him to pieces, dismembering his body as if it were a rag doll. Blood gushed from the savaged body, drenching the snow.
Erra’s hands shook on her axe, but her weight kept me down.
Curran smashed into the blood ward. Magic boomed. He hit again, the impact of his body shaking the red wall and the street beneath. His eyes blazed white. The fur on his arms smoked from the contact with Erra’s blood ward.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Cracks formed in the blood ward.
Erra stared, her face slapped with shock.
Curran rammed the ward.
The red wall cracked and fell apart. He burst through it, roaring, his fur on fire, and crashed into the snow. Magic tore at me, like a typhoon wild in it fury. I screamed and Erra echoed me, doubling over in pain over me, her hair falling like a dark curtain.
I grabbed her hair and jerked her down with all my strength straight onto my sword.
Slayer slid into her eye. I felt it pierce the bone and drove it in all the way.
Erra vomited blood. It drenched me like fire, my magic mixing with my aunt’s lifeblood leaking from her body. I felt the magic in it, the way I’d felt it in the rakshasas’ golden cage.
I smeared our mixed blood onto her face, pushed, and saw a forest of needles burst through her skin.
She screamed and laid on the axe, and I screamed as the spike ripped my innards. The needles crumbled and melted into her skin.
“You will not take me down,” Erra ground out. “You will not . . .”
Her legs failed and she crashed to her knees.
“It’s over,” I whispered to her with bloody lips.
Desperation claimed her broken face. She clawed at the spear, trying to pull herself upright. Our blood painted the snow a bright rich scarlet.
“Die,” I told her.
She fell on all fours next to me. Her one good eye stared into mine. “Live . . . long, child,” she whispered. “Live long enough to see everyone you love die. Suffer . . . like me.”
Her words clamped on to me like a curse. She collapsed in the snow. Her chest rose for the last time. A single breath escaped with a soft whisper and the life faded from her eye.
I looked at her and saw myself, dead in the snow.
The smoking ruin that was Curran raised his bloody head.
“Curran,” I whispered. “Look at me.”
The burns blotching his monstrous face melted. Fur sprouted, running along his frame, hiding the wounds. His eyes were still pure white.
He strode to me, swiped at the axe, and plucked it out of me like a toothpick. Clawed hands picked me up.
“Talk to me.” I peered into his eyes and saw nothing. “Talk to me, Curran.”
A low growl reverberated in his throat.
No. No, no, no.
Emaciated twisted shapes dashed by the ward—the first vampiric scouts. They’d watched the battle until they figured out the winner. Curran saw the vampires. A horrible sound broke from his mouth, halfway between a roar and a scream. He lunged at the ward. In the split second before we hit the scarlet flames, I thrust my bloody hand into Erra’s defensive spell. Magic shot from me. The red collapsed, and everything went black.