“Move back into the cellar, or you will not receive your rations for the day,” the Alliance member repeated.
Grayson’s stomach cinched at the memory of the rations from the morning before. Bread, water, thin soup. Not nearly enough to carry them through a long, frozen day.
The Dusters, cowed by the idea of not receiving their food and water, slunk away from the stairs, back into their shadowy corners. The Alliance member took the steps down, slowed by vigilance. He held a large tray, and Grayson could hear the contents rattling upon it.
He crouched to set the tray on the basement floor. Chelle, still standing, suddenly arched her back and screamed. She crashed to her knees. From other parts of the basement came more groans and cries of pain. Grayson sank to Chelle’s side, his hand hovering over her back.
“Chelle?”
The Alliance member dropped the tray. “What is it?”
A second fighter came down the first few steps and repeated the question.
“I don’t know,” Grayson answered, grasping Chelle’s shoulders. “Chelle? What’s wrong?”
She was facedown on the floor, and he was about to turn her up when he heard a rasping sound coming from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a pair of bright green eyes cutting through the dark.
Grayson got to his feet and stumbled backward as a Duster emerged from the shadows and into the spill of light. His chin had lengthened to a sharp point, the skin along his neck had blown out like a frilled lizard, and his forehead and hairless scalp shimmered with pearly scales. A long, forked tongue darted through his lips, then retracted.
The Duster lunged at Grayson, fangs first. A broadsword cut through the air between them, the long, sharpened edge burying into the Duster’s stomach.
“No!” Grayson shouted as a dark stain seeped into the fibers of the Duster’s shirt. “He’s human!”
“He is a monster!” the Alliance fighter returned, pulling the blade back with a wet squelching sound.
The other fighter now vacillated on the last step and shouted for his comrade to hurry.
The serpent Duster fell to his knees. And then Chelle’s prostrate form began to move. The fighter’s sword swung toward her. Grayson grabbed his arm and twisted him away, pushing him from Chelle’s side, toward the stairs.
“Do not. Touch. Her.”
The man shoved Grayson off, propelling him into the chest of the other Alliance member. The second man flung Grayson to the dirt floor.
“She is not human any—” The first man’s mouth stretched wide, his eyes bugging out. His next words dissolved into a hoarse scream. He collapsed to his knees. Chelle stood behind him, and with a twist of her torso, she yanked the long, curled tail that had punched through the seat of her trousers out of the fighter’s back.
The second Alliance fighter staggered, tripping over the tray of food, but Chelle snapped her tail like a whip. The quill-like spikes running the length of it rippled and clicked together in the second before they guillotined him.
The second fighter’s head and body parted and dropped limply to the floor. Grayson stared, revolted and on the verge of being ill.
Chelle’s eyes snapped to him, showing the same ferocity her tail had shown these fighters.
“It’s me,” he said, but her eyes were empty of any recognition. He hoisted himself upright using the bottom of the stairwell’s railing, his eyes still locked with Chelle’s. There were more noises coming from within the basement as well.
Grayson took the stairs three at a time, bounding toward the door, hoping he was out of her tail’s reach. The steps shook behind him, and he could feel Chelle closing in.
He barreled through and slammed the door, throwing his shoulder against it and jamming the heavy deadbolt into place. Through the thick slab of wood Grayson heard Chelle roar with anger. The door shuddered, and long ruby-colored spikes stabbed through the wood, less than an inch from his shoulder.
Grayson leaped back, staring at the quills. Chelle drew them out, leaving behind a dozen holes. Grayson backed down the short hall, toward a side-entrance servants’ door.
“I’m sorry, Chelle.” She could neither hear nor understand him, but he had to say it. He’d promised he wouldn’t leave her, but if he stayed he’d wind up as dead as those two Alliance fighters.
“I’ll be back for you,” he said, knowing what he had to do. None of this would end until Axia had been destroyed. She was here, controlling her seedlings and the newly created Dusters, and she would be in a mortal form. Grayson was sure of it. She had to be here. She had to be fallible. Grayson couldn’t allow himself to imagine what would happen if she wasn’t.
He opened the ground-level door that emptied into the narrow lane between buildings, elated to be free from the cellar but feeling guilty as well. There was a waxing roar outside: screams and raised voices, sirens and bells and whistles and breaking glass. It was starting again. Grayson stepped out, shut the door behind him, and walked toward the noise.
CHAPTER TWENTY