Page 3 of Legacy of Chaos

He tore away from the female, leaving her propped against the tree, moaning through multiple orgasms. Heart racing, Stryke scrambled up the path, tripping over tree roots and his feet as he simultaneously ran and buttoned up. He burst onto the main drag, colliding with a man cradling his mangled arm to his chest, his face dripping red. Ahead, the popcorn stand lay on its side, one wheel spinning lazily. People weren’t running now. They were limping. Crawling. Dragging themselves.

“Crux!” he screamed. “Chaos!”

Then he saw the demons. A half dozen inky, nightmarish motherfuckers with jaws full of razor-sharp teeth, Freddy Kreuger claws, and way too many burning crimson eyes.

Logan, Sabre, and Blade rushed toward the carousel, Logan armed with the sword he could summon at will. With an agile leap and a smooth swing of his blade, he sliced the head clean off one of the demons.

Fuck, yeah!

Stryke shouldered past stumbling, panicked people. There! Crux! His little brother, his tawny hair matted with blood, was scrambling over bodies and dodging a demon’s sweeping blows and driving punches.

No! Terror became Stryke’s entire world as he calculated the distance to his brother and the odds of the demon’s next two blows killing Crux. Motherfucker, he wasn’t going to make it.

As Stryke threw himself at the demon, knowing he couldn’t get there in time, Blade swooped in like a superhero and hit the thing from behind. He drove his fist into the back of the monster’s head, hisdermoireglowing with power usually meant for healing but now weaponized. The demon snarled, striking out and knocking Blade away.

Close enough now to smell the beast’s rancid, smoky odor, Stryke slammed into him, engaging his power and serving up amassive heart attack. The demon screeched as its heart seized—all six fucking chambers of it.

Stryke felt Blade’s power join his, causing tears in the bastard’s veins and bleeding him out from the inside.

The thing collapsed. Blade instantly went after another demon as Stryke, his body vibrating with adrenaline and fear for his brothers, scooped up Crux.

“Where’s Chaos?” he shouted, spinning around in search of the other twin. “Chaos!” he screamed. “Chaos!”

Clinging to Crux, his feet slipping in puddles of blood, he navigated around overturned strollers and mangled, eviscerated bodies, some missing limbs. Or heads. He searched the carousel, desperately hoping Chaos was hiding behind a hippo or lion. He called Chaos’s name over and over, screaming over the sounds of slaughter and pain. The stench of hot blood and bowels filled the air, mingling with the buttery smell of popcorn.

“Chaos!”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Logan, Blade, and Sabre taking down demons like machines, but Stryke’s focus was on the ride, where a child was hiding behind an elephant, a tiny hand clinging to the carousel animal’s ornate tail.

Abruptly, a stab of pain shot through his skull and down his spine as if he’d been impaled by a rod of white-hot iron. Agony filled him, ripping his voice and breath from his throat. And then, as quickly as it had come, the rod of pain was gone, leaving an emptiness inside as if it had taken a core sample of his soul.

The part of his soul that had been connected to Chaos.

He’s dead.My brother is dead.

Stryke’s gut plummeted to his feet, which became leaden and unsteady. He staggered at the magnitude of his loss.

Crux screamed as his connection to Chaos was severed too.

A hand came down on Stryke’s shoulder. “Stryke…”

Shell-shocked, he wheeled around to Sabre, whose tortured expression and haunted eyes made everything even more real. Sabre was a cousin, not a sibling, so he wouldn’t have felt Chaos die.

But he’d seen it.

Stryke’s brain, which always crackled with energy, went numb. At some point, he must have set Crux down because Sabre knelt and hugged the boy to his chest, shielding his eyes from the massacre around them.

The din of screaming and moaning grew dull as Stryke’s sense of hearing became a victim of shock. His balance went next, his legs turning watery as he leaped awkwardly off the ride and stumbled, heart pounding, to Blade.

Blade, who knelt next to a pair of blinking shoes and…oh, gods.

“Please, no. Please, no!” he screamed inside his head to whoever would listen. “Take me. Take me instead!”

Blade, his dark head hanging, his shoulders slumped, turned slowly to Stryke. Tears streamed from his eyes and cut paths through the blood splattered on cheeks gone pale with trauma.

“Where were you?” he rasped. “Where the fuck were you?”

The world spun and went gray. The last thing Stryke saw before he lost consciousness was Blade’s scorching, accusatory glare and those brand-new flashing shoes.

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