Daniel squared his shoulders, standing tall and mighty. He opened his arms, his sword ready in one hand. With the other, he beckoned the wolf to attack with the inward wave of his fingers.
The red wolf reared back and leaped at Daniel. Daniel countered out of the way and sent a hard crack across the wolf’s head with the hilt of his sword. The wolf shook off the blow and ran a few yards in the opposite direction away from Daniel.
I ran toward them, ready to back up Daniel if needed, but before I was even halfway across the field, the wolf leaped high into the air, straight at Daniel’s right side. Daniel tossed his sword into his right hand and stabbed it up into the wolf’s rib cage, then used brute force to swing the wolf through the air and slam it to the ground on its back. Daniel pinned it to the ground with the sword as the red wolf thrashed his clawed paws.
Daniel towered over the red wolf, and I could see the fierceness in his eyes. Not rage like I’d seen in Talbot, but the fierceness and determination of a warrior.
“Submit!” Daniel commanded the red wolf. I could feel the tidal wave of power crashing off his body. “Submit and I will spare you!”
The red wolf crumpled in submission. Daniel pulled the sword from his chest. The red wolf rolled over and crawled from the ring on its belly. That’s when I noticed that many of the guardians around the ring were bowing to Daniel now. As if they’d heeded Daniel’s call for submission also. I looked behind me and saw Lisa and Slade bent on one knee.
Only Talbot still stood. The bloody remains of his kill at his feet.
Daniel dropped his sword in the straw and clutched at his shoulder. He must have injured it again in the fight. He looked at me, his eyes softer now, and I ran toward him.
What now? I thought. With all the challengers gone, and Shadow Kings a no-show, did that mean it was over?
I was only feet from Daniel when Brent shouted in my ear: “Grace! Stop! The barn!”
I spun around and looked at the barn.
Nothing.
“Look up!”
My gaze flitted up to the roof, and I saw them, perched there like gargoyles. Rows and rows of Shadow Kings.
Caleb stood on the very apex of the barn’s roof, a tin rooster-shaped weathervane spinning at his feet. “Sorry to miss the preshow entertainment,” he called, “but I’ve made it just in time for the main event.”
A horrible chorus of screeches, snarls, and howls echoed into the night as the waves of Shadow Kings charged down the roof of the barn and vaulted onto the battlefield.
Chapter Thirty-six
THE REAL BATTLE BEGINS
WITHIN SECONDS
There were so many of them. So many Shadow Kings. More than I’d ever imagined. They just kept on coming, hurdling over the roof of the barn, filling the challenging ring. Caleb must have spent every moment of the last week creating and recruiting new Akhs and Gelals. I wondered how many of these Akhs had been regular teens at the trance party from earlier this week. I imagined empty homeless shelters and halfway houses. I tried to remember that they were already dead when I took my first swing at an Akh, slicing through its neck with my broadsword.
I could barely see Daniel, who was only a few yards away, just flashes of his gold hair or his sword as he took out demon and after demon that just kept on coming. Lisa, Talbot, and Slade, who had been on the other end of the 150-yard-wide battlefield, were totally lost from my vision. But the spray of Gelal acid and bursts of dust that went up in the air in that part of the arena told me that at least two of them were still fighting.
I took out three more Ahks and a Gelal with my sword, wondering why I had ever settled for a stake in the past.
However, not all the SKs were pure demon, and I had to pull back on one of my swings before I nearly took off the head of an Urbat teen. He growled and almost instantaneously transformed into a great hulking tan wolf right in front of me. He was almost as big as the red wolf Daniel had fought.