Page 48 of Legacy of Chaos

Absolutely. Losing loved ones was way, way worse.

Cyan used a trick her mother had calledemergency modeto put her fear aside and get shit handled. Still, as rattled as she was, she made sure everyone in the FOC was okay and then made her way to the crew quarters. Stryke had said he’d be administering first aid until his “juices ran dry.”

The guy had a lot of flaws, but no one could argue that he didn’t care about his people.

Wind howled through the cold passages as she traversed the winding hallways. Pipes ran along the corrugated-metal walls, some finished with painted paneling, others paneled with naked wood or steel, none of which did much to muffle the screeches and growls that rose from the sea below. She’d had to dart outside twice to get from one building module to another, and she’d nearly been knocked off her feet both times by what she hoped were wind gusts and not the air displacement from really big demon wings.

Please let them be squalls.

The rain had stopped, but the fog clung to her in the form of damp, cold droplets. It weighed down her hair and made her clothes stick to her skin like wet sheets. When she opened the hatch to the crew quarters, the warm, dry air welcomed her like an embrace. She was so sick of being wet.

Rubbing her arms in a futile attempt to dry herself, she hurried down the hall to the first room, but the four bunks were empty. Two beds in the second room were occupied by two bandaged males lying prone in their bunks. All four of the bunks in the third room were taken up by injured guys, but there was no sign of Stryke.

“You looking for the boss?” one called out from where he was sitting on his bunk.

“I’m looking for Stryke.”

“We heard a scream.” The guy braced his elbows on his knees and dragged his hands through his mop of blond hair. “He ran outside to see who it was after the rig stopped shaking. We’d have gone with him, but he told us to stay.”

A guy with about a dozen gashes across his chest and arms nodded weakly. “If Stryke says stay, you stay.”

Shit.

She didn’t think about how stupid it would be to go back outside. She just did the stupid thing and ran out into the piercingly cold night.

A chill instantly spread across her skin, but it wasn’t from the cold. The air felt heavy and sinister, seeping into her as she moved to the railing and craned her neck to check out the decks below and above. The mist thickened and thinned randomly, making visibility inconsistent…several yards in one direction and only a couple of feet in another. Sometimes, she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

“Stryke?”

An eerie silence settled all around her. Even the crash of the waves against the metal structure seemed muted.

“Stryke?”

A loud crash made her jump. She wheeled toward the sound, wondering why she’d come out here without grabbing the axmounted near the exit. Sounds of a struggle came on the echoes of the crash.

Heart pounding, she followed the sound of pained grunts and fists on flesh.

Crack.

That sounded like metal striking bone.

She slipped on the wet deck as she scrambled between equipment and beams, ducking at times beneath cables as thick as her waist. The fog thinned just as she heard a thunk.

She looked up to the level above her. Dark liquid dripped through the metal grating near where Stryke stood, holding a wrench, a slimy black thing twitching at his feet. He kicked at its body, shoving it toward the platform’s edge.

Cyan mounted the stairs and reached him just as the demon tumbled over the side and into the sea.

“Stryke, are you okay?”

Gaze still fixed below, he nodded. “Thing killed Ubundi before I could stop it.”

Shock sapped the moisture from her mouth. “Where’s his body?” she croaked.

“Down there. He’s gone.”

She looked down at the churning sea and swore she saw something with tentacles and lots of teeth.

“Let’s go inside where it’s safe,” she said, turning back to Stryke.

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