Page 77 of Legacy of Chaos

Her hand thrust upward, and he grabbed it hard with both hands. He wasn’t letting her go this time. No way.

He yanked with all his strength, and she breached the surface, sputtering and coughing, her eyes wide with terror.

Blade dove across the boat and grabbed her other hand. “We got you!”

Some sort of fishy thing with a million teeth and no eyes burst out of the water and fastened onto Mace’s forearm. Pain screamed from his fingertips to his shoulder, but he kept hold of Scotty as he and Blade struggled to haul her onto the boat.

The moment she was lying on the deck, blood spilling from deep, ragged gashes that exposed tendon and bone—and maybean organ or two—Blade buried a seven-inch blade in the demon’s skull. It hissed, releasing Mace’s arm before slithering back into the sea.

The mist closed in. “Blade! The fog! Shit!”

“I know, I know!” He snatched up the device from where he’d dropped it and swept it in a circle, forcing the heavy mist into retreat. “Can you drive?”

Mace didn’t want to leave Scotty, but they needed to get to the safety of the rig, and they needed to do it fast. She was losing a lot of blood. She might be immortal, but that didn’t mean she was unkillable. Under the right circumstances, everything died.

His left arm screaming with pain and practically useless, he scrambled over to the controls just as a set of clawed hands reached over the stern. Glowing red eyes and a gaping maw full of fangs popped up on the port side. That was enough dawdling.

He gunned the engine and took them toward the platform at top speed. Unable to hang on, the demons dropped off the boat, but shit, how many of those fuckers were there in these waters?

Waves crashed against the massive metal support beams as they approached. Things were looking up. Scotty’s father said that aquatic demons generally avoided the violent action of the waves against rocks and piers. Dude had been fighting demons for thousands of years and knew his shit. Ares knew his shit so well that he ran a battle academy of sorts, and all three of them had spent countless hours training with him—twice a week since the day they learned to tie their shoes.

We must prepare for the Apocalypse.

The guy said that all the time. Constantly.

“My species has a five-hundred-year lifespan,” Mace had once argued. Because, yeah, he wanted to be a badass. But Ares took fighting lessons to the extreme. Even Mace’s biological father, Wraith, who lived to fight and was proficient in every fighting discipline, thought Ares was a little too obsessed. “Wewon’t be around when Satan’s prison sentence is up in…what, nine hundred and fifty-something years?”

“Do you want to survive to your full lifespan?” Ares had growled. “Yes? Then train.”

Right now, Mace was glad he’d been pushed into being the best he could be. No, he didn’t have Scotty’s immortality or her ability to summon weapons, but he was stronger and faster than any human, he healed quickly, and he’d been honed into a lethal weapon by not just Ares butallthe Horsemen, Wraith, and even a couple of angels.

Thanks for being a pain in my ass, Ares.

“Ky said the dock will be on the south side,” Blade shouted back.

“I see it.” He steered the craft up alongside the dock.

Shade tossed a rope and leaped onto the structure. While he tied up, Mace shut down the craft and scooped Scotty into his arms. She was barely conscious, but she flopped her arm around his neck and clung tightly.

Tentacled and clawed things, and things with no eyes or skin, reached for them as they ran toward the stairs. The metal steps vibrated as they took them two at a time to the upper levels.

“There!” Blade pointed at a door. “The forward operating center.”

They ran over to it. Locked.

Blade pounded on it, and almost immediately, a muffled “Who is it?” could be heard.

“Stryke called us. We’re from DART!”

The door whipped open, and a tall, blond guy greeted them. “Thank the gods. Come in. Sorry about the lock. Demons.”

Mace only half-heard as he shoved past the guy and lowered Scotty onto the floor. Blade was right there next to him, and before Scotty was even fully laid out, Blade’s arm lit up like atorch as his healing power surged into his fingertips and then into Scotty’s body.

Mace fired up his gift and powered it into her too. Blade could repair her torn vessels and sliced muscle, while Mace could control her pain and tweak her body so it would produce red blood cells at an accelerated rate.

“This is pretty bad,” Blade murmured.

“Nah,” she moaned, already looking better. “You guys have healed me from worse.”

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