Jacob stirred across the room. Damn it. Wraiths healed too fast, too.
The scythe flashed as Talia suddenly lunged. The hellhounds’ shouts were cut into sharp squeaks as they lifted into dark, sulfurous smoke.
The blade arced up again and Talia paced forward, as if she could read Adam’s mind.
Go. Go. Go. His heart thumped hard, pounding in time with his internal chant.
The blade swept down in a deep threshing movement.
Talia took Jacob where he lay in a heap on the room’s floor, his head rolling to a light tap against the wall. His body gasped and settled as if he’d already been long dead. The smell confirmed it.
And just like that Adam’s promise was fulfilled. An old tightness in his chest, one that had robbed him of air for six years too long, released. The rush that followed made his eyes water with slightly euphoric realization: He’d seen to his brother, what was left of him anyway. And now he was free. Adam didn’t know how he could ever thank Talia enough, but he would try. Over and over again, as necessary.
Talia turned. “Are you okay?”
The wrinkle between her brows told him she was worried. She bit her bottom lip to deep red. If they got off this ship alive, he’d start thanking her by kissing that lip first. The one that took all the punishment for her nerves.
“Never better.” Bleeding from his belly in a ship full of wraiths, captained by the demon Death Collector, and it was the absolute truth.
Her teeth scraped her lip again as she smiled back at him.
Yeah, that bottom lip had to be first, and then maybe the delightful dip of her cleavage. Those goths were definitely onto something with their corsets.
“Let’s go finish this, then,” Talia said, her humor fading from her face. She gripped her staff with one hand and held out her other to him.
As Adam took hold, he felt her pull on the shadows between the mortal world and the Other beyond the veils, the passage called death. Dark magic infused her until every cell gleamed potent in the shifting gloom. Never had she straddled that boundary more completely than she did now.
He stepped to the door and carefully checked the narrow gray corridor. It was broken by connecting doors, but otherwise empty.
“Watch your step,” he said, gesturing to the demon vomit. Now he wanted to stay as far away from the stuff as he could. He’d have to thank her for that, too. Deeply and repeatedly.
They moved down the hallway. The rhythmic pounding of feet from elsewhere filtered to their position, but they met no resistance. A steep stair—almost a ladder—led to the deck above. Talia ascended first, leaving him in pitch blackness. He climbed up after. A cool hand on his face brought the ship back into focus.
Adam held her in the shadowed cabin, arms around her cinched waist, considering their next move.
“If the demon is smart, he’ll have positioned the wraiths to the sides of the door, to pick us off as soon as we try to exit. The ship probably has a communication center. I’d radio for help, but I’ve no one left to call. I’m afraid it’s just you and me.” It was hard to believe—all the resources he’d labored to amass were either destroyed or scattered.
Adam felt Talia’s body shake as she chuckled.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” she whispered. “I say we go through the door. My father’s scythe has a long reach. Longer than I thought possible. It’ll be enough.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.” Talia’s touch trailed out of the embrace to find his hand once again. She squeezed, ready.
Talia braced as Adam shifted to unlatch the door and kick it open; then she blew a storm of darkness onto the deck. Beyond, the deafening chop-chop of a helicopter signaled the Death Collector’s escape route, but the gusting air was nothing to the gale of her shadow.
Adam loosed her hand, so she could grip her scythe firmly. She wasn’t about to leave him in the dark, so she pushed the veils away until the world lay in turbulent gray.
A wraith darted inside the cabin door and was cut in half for his stupidity. The blade cleaved with only the slightest resis tance, enough to gain her the satisfaction of the kill without slowing her. A second wraith scurried back as she and Adam emerged onto the deck. Dozens more crowded the open-air surface.
All of them backed away from her. It was a heady sensation—the hunted finally becoming the hunter. And while the scythe was too large for her frame, the humming energy that charged her senses felt just right.
Beyond the press of wraiths, the demon and his host were just climbing the stairs of the helipad. In only moments, they would be safely inside and take to the sky. The scythe’s reach was long, but not that long.
Talia’s fae senses screamed the time was now. She drove into the crowd of wraiths, swinging. Adam swore coarsely behind her, but she pressed forward.
She brought down the blade and caught a wraith at the knees. The strike was enough to collapse the rest of him, mouth gaping as he was sundered from life.