Fierce love grabbed hold of his chest. But before he could reply, her fingers abruptly clenched. A gust of wind blew through the billowing smoke and revealed the demon tusker.
Given a choice, Kavik wouldn’t want to face a tusker even if the animal hadn’t been possessed by a demon. With legs like thick tree trunks, a hulking back, and heavily domed head, the bulls were aggressive and territorial—and big, often growing as tall as the mammoths that roamed the far southern steppes. Unlike mammoths, however, a tusker didn’t wear a pair of long tusks beside its prehensile snout. A tusker’s snout and the tusks that flanked it were shorter. The primary tusks jutted straight out from beneath the jaw like a pair of flat blades. The animals used them to slash through thick branches and vegetation as it foraged, and as defense. He’d seen a tusker cut a hunter’s horse from beneath him by swinging those tusks like a scythe.
The demon’s possession transformed an already-dangerous animal into a monstrous terror. The tusker’s long red hairs had been shed from its hide. Bloated white skin stretched tightly over its enormous frame, as if the burning evil inhabiting the creature expanded its body to an ever-greater size to contain the demon inside it. Each of its tusks had elongated and sharpened, and its jaw could unhinge to reveal jagged teeth unlike any natural tusker’s.
And unlike a tusker, the demon didn’t lumber. It stalked the ground swiftly, silent when it wasn’t roaring. Now it slipped through the smoke like a wraith and vanished from their sight again.
Through the dark, he spotted a handful of villagers scrambling over the eastern wall. No one had yet fled through the southern gate as Shim raced north around the village. “Check the southern gate first! Revenants might be blocking escape!”
Nodding, she squeezed his thigh and released him. Throat tight, Kavik pressed his face against the back of her neck and breathed deep. Mala. No longer in red. But he’d been on his knees. Now there was only the end.
He would still fight to his last breath against it. Never would he leave her alone, forsaken. He would never leave her side.
Shim rounded the northern wall. Fire raged in the nearest houses, throwing wavering orange light through the wall’s shattered remains. With his sword, Kavik pointed to the breach. “There!”
The horse slowed as he passed it. The shrieking howls of nearby revenants sounded as Kavik swung to the ground, landing amid the broken stones. Without stopping, Shim continued on, and Kavik stole a last look. His gaze met Mala’s. She’d glanced back over her shoulder, her face lit by the burning houses behind him.
Her unmarked face.
Shock jarred him forward a step, but the stallion’s speed had already carried her past the breach and into the darkness beyond. Kavik stared after her for a breath. His heart pounded as he crossed the shattered remnants of the wall.
He’d been on his knees. That didn’t just mean the end. Kavik had told her something else—that he was tamed.
Now her mark was gone. No longer forsaken. Her task accomplished.
The beast of Blackmoor was tamed.
Wild elation whipped through him and he answered the revenants’ shrieks with a howl of his own, banging the flat of his sword against stone. “Come for me, then!” he shouted. “I am leashed! An easy kill!”
A red-eyed shadow raced toward him. A wulfen revenant, jaws slobbering. Kavik cleaved through its neck with a mighty swing, then set his boot against the neck stump and ripped the creature open from gullet to stomach. Hot blood poured out, steaming on the ground, stinking.
The stench of a revenant’s blood always drew more—as if its scent told the others that their blood had been spilled, so there was a foe to defeat.
Within moments, he’d killed two more, then charged forward to protect a white-faced woman who emerged from the smoke screaming. He slaughtered the revenants chasing behind her, then sent her over the breached wall.
They did not stop after that. Revenants by twos and threes. A family who scrambled gratefully past him in the dark, a bleeding old woman that he couldn’t help over the broken wall until he’d put down the five revenants that came at him. The demon’s roars were followed by the crashing of stone, more flames.
Rapid hoofbeats pounded through the smoke. Mala.
Her sword cleaved the neck of a revenant snapping at Shim’s hindquarters, her blade already dripping with gore. Her grin was wide as she approached him and took in his pile of corpses. “We ran!” she shouted on a laugh. “We’re heading back around! The south gate is open now!”
So she’d encountered the demon and fled. “Your mark!” he called as Shim swept past him. “I’m tamed!”
With a heaving snort, Shim abruptly wheeled around. Mala clung to his back, her expression a mask of disbelief and astonishment. She touched her cheek.