“Your left!” Adam’s tone was deep and angry.
Talia whirled. Two wraiths charged her, both baring inhuman teeth. She panicked. Adam blurred in her side vision, kicking one in the belly. She swung at the other, and he fell; then she pivoted to swipe at the first. She cut his monstrous gape right off his face.
Adam’s arm came roughly around her waist as he pulled her suddenly back. The blade sliced through the air, caught a third wraith at his shoulder, and sent him spinning into death.
Chest heaving, Talia darted a glance right and left, looking for the next to attack. But the wraiths were backing away.
“They’re jumping ship,” Adam said into her ear.
Talia’s gaze flew to the edge where, indeed, a wraith leaped over the side. It made sense: The wraiths might drown, but they couldn’t die. Talia wouldn’t be able to reach them beneath the waves without drowning herself, and she was after hooking a much bigger fish.
“To me!” the host called. He hadn’t moved from the top step of the helipad.
The demon’s call went unacknowledged as his army deserted him. That made sense, too: Anyone who chose the monstrous existence of a wraith was fundamentally selfish to begin with. They wouldn’t stay to fight for the demon if it cost them their lives, the very thing they had traded their humanity to sustain.
Talia stalked across the clearing deck to the stairs. The helicopter was ready; why wasn’t the demon and his host aboard, safe?
She looked closely for signs of subterfuge.
The host was corpse pale, expression lined with stress.
“Kill us quick, before it takes me completely,” the man said, gasping in a human voice. His white-knuckled grip on the railing trembled as the demon snake poured itself into his ear. The host’s jaundiced face contracted into a rictus of pain, his eyes wide-open, sightless, and horrified. Thick tar coated the inside of his mouth and bled from his nose.
Talia understood. The host, lesson learned, was making one last choice. Withstand the demon’s rape of his body, wait for the scythe, and be freed.
“Half-breed…” the demon said, voice pitched to a feral growl, in command of the host’s mouth again.
Sharp, sweet power rose within her as Talia raised the scythe.
“…whore’s get…” The host, overcome, lost his battle and released the railing to scramble, crawling, toward the waiting helicopter.
The power ached beautifully in her muscles and tingled to her fingertips. Fantasies of death played in her mind. Her blood roared to stain the ship’s deck with a smear of demon.
She stalked the demon-host abomination, Adam at her back. There was no way the demon could escape. No place to hide and no time.
Talia gathered the force of her scream, and channeled it into a great, slashing swing.
The blade sang through the air and cut the abomination in half. Talia trembled on the edge of rapture with the thrill of the kill.
The man whimpered into death as the demon split, its sinuous form condensing into a dark tongue of shadow before losing all cohesion, just like his hellhounds.
Dead.
For a moment, Talia couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to anyway near the dispersing black gases.
Then the cloud of demon reek convulsed.
Talia jumped back and bumped into Adam. His strong arm circled her waist protectively.
Out of the stagnant black cloud, a dusky hand whipped out, midair. The hand jerked just as suddenly back into oblivion. Before Talia could take another breath, the arm again clawed through the center of darkest shadow, as if fighting against an unseen force.
Talia’s heart seized. Another demon? Her hands tightened on the shaft of the scythe. She could do this. Her muscles coiled to strike, waiting for the moment the being emerged.
“Be ready,” Adam murmured. She felt his body tense at her back.
She pulled on shadow, the source of her power. Pulled hard until the scythe glowed overhead amid layers of darkness. Pulled until…the being himself emerged out of his wild prison and into the world.
Talia shook with shock and recognition.
The being fell to the deck in a cascade of seething shadowcloak and gleaming long black hair. When he straightened, his tilted eyes coming to rest on her, there could be no doubt whatsoever. Death was her father.
They regarded each other for a long moment, the intent of his gaze rippling the surrounding veils.
Talia raised her chin, heart hammering, and returned his scrutiny.
Her father had a face like a dark angel, ageless with cruel compassion. His body appeared strong and healthy, though shadows of death circled—the very same shadows that twined about her. His stillness had grace, yet she knew his strike was brutally fast, the results a mess of pain and hurt.
No wonder people stayed away from her.
“You have your mother’s face,” he said at last. His voice was dark velvet, brushing over her like a caress.
Talia’s heart leaped with emotion. She had no words.