Page 133 of Land of Monsters

He huffed, a smile tugging his mouth as he gripped my face.

“Then I guess I have to live because I want nothing more than for you to drive me insane for the rest of my days, Raven Haley Scarlet Dragen.” His mouth captured mine, his kiss claiming and needy.

A loud cry came from the garden below, breaking us apart.

“Kennedy, stop!” My father’s cry soared up to us on the castle walk. The fear in his tone rushed me to my feet. We peered over the wall where the battle dotted the landscape, groups fighting with various foes. I spotted my father standing near my mom, reaching for her as blood dripped from my mother’s eyes and nose, her body suspended in air as she used her black magic to control the guards coming at them. Piper lay on the ground nearby, Aunt Fionna over her, while Wyatt and Uncle Ryker still battled the snake-man.

They were all killing themselves to protect me.

Before, I had run from the consequences of my actions, pretended they were better off with me gone. Safer.

I had been a coward. That was not who I was. I was my mother and father’s daughter. I came from the bloodline of a high Druid, a queen, a beast, and a killer.

I was a Cathbad and a Dragen, and I didn’t bow or cower for anyone.

A growl came up my throat, fury setting my shoulders back. I peered over at Ash.

“Keep the necklace on, Your Highness.” He grabbed my hand. “We will need all the luck we can get.”

With that, we turned and rushed down the stairs into the sea of beasts, fiends, and monsters.

?

The tales of my family, the battles and wars they had fought, turned them into legends in my eyes growing up. Especially during the holidays, when more drinks were consumed. I was enraptured by their heroic journeys, thrilled at how exciting they sounded. Rook and I were extremely jealous because we were never part of one, like Piper had been, and Wyatt was too young to remember. She never shared our envy and lust, saying she recalled too much, was branded with the memories of the stench of death. While Wyatt, Rook, and I would reenact them with reverence as children.

Now I understood.

War was glamorized by those who had never been immersed in one. Whose boots hadn’t slipped over guts, whose ears didn’t echo with cries of death, who hadn’t experienced the rancid, metallic taste of bullets and blood on their tongue. The horror of it was like a lashing, cutting so deep into my mind the scar would never cede.

While I wanted to vomit, the dweller surged up, the obscurer hissing with fury, craving repentance from anything hurting my family. No matter what, fighting was in my DNA, death as much a part of me as life.

On the field, the throng of mindless soldiers my mother was struggling to pin against each other was waning. Her energy dipped from her like the black blood seeping from her eyes in thick trails. Our obscurers were not gentle in their retaliation; they took from our bodies as greedily as suckling pigs. They hadno understanding of weakness, of stopping to protect us from their craving. Black magic had no off switch.

“Mom!” I screamed, but she didn’t hear me, too lost in her bubble, the plane she was hovering on locking her in. My father was trying to reach her, to be her anchor against the power.

With a roar, my own obscurer soared up, not wanting to release her from such a burden, but to be the one killing. Controlling those it deemed unworthy.

“Use me!” Ash barked to me, his hand taking mine again, already sensing what I needed.

Latin spilled from my lips, the world around me hazing, my power escalating. I felt the blades in my back, the length of my teeth cut into my lip, while a chant formed on my tongue.

I used to think of the dweller and obscurer being two separate entities, putting up with each other because they had to, learning to use the other to get what they wanted. Two dysfunctional pieces I fought endlessly with. It wasn’t until Ash that I started to see them differently. Like he secured my two fragmented pieces together, melding them into one. Something that made me whole. They didn’t use each other. They were part of each other, creating a unique monster, not a broken one.

I didn’t need to fully shift like the rest of the dark dwellers, and I didn’t need to be a high Druid like my mother’s side. I would never be light magic. I sought to destroy. I was twisted, dark, ugly, and fucked up inside, and I was okay with that.

I was one of a fucking kind.

With the energy from Ash, my magic tore out of me, ripping through the minds of the guards, dropping the dozen near me like dominoes, my rage leaving nothing in its wake.

Their minds were like mush, easy to shred through. Sonya had already weakened them. Somewhere inside, I felt bad, knowing most were victims. Villagers who had no choice in becoming her prisoner. But they were dead anyway. Theirhuman minds were not capable of mending after that sort of magic. She damned them the moment they stepped on these grounds.

Reaching out further, I heard the piercing cries. The bodies dropping, gripping their heads, feeling their brains burst and then slither out, as if they were trying to escape like drowning rats. A stabbing headache knifed between my eyes, blood dripping down my face to my chin, but I gripped Ash’s hand harder, pushing out even further. In the distance, I could see guards around Caden, Birdie, and Wes, my dark fog slithering around the soldiers and gripping them until I could feel their brains squash in my hands. I didn’t want to stop, zeroing in on another area near Aunt Ember and Uncle Eli. The feeling was seductive, the power addicting. My dweller huffed with the need to join, to sink its teeth into their flesh and kill its prey.

To roll in their blood, letting it mark my fur.

“Mroczny.” Ash’s voice nipped at the back of my neck. A warning.

A snarl wrinkled my nose, my chant slaughtering through another group.

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