Page 60 of A Shadow in the Reaping
I unsheathe thekaikenfrom my thigh and kick off my shoes. The stone is cool and slick beneath my soles. I take a deep breath as I lean against the column and look up. All praise to M.I.A. for the hype tune tracking through my mind.Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.
This is gonna be great.
I smile and then turn into the shadow and run in the darkness between the pillars.
I hear the first hyena galloping for me from the left, from Ashen's direction. Just as I start to think he'll get to it before me, the creature leaps into my path and I drop to the floor, sliding on my hip beneath its jaws. I come to a stop below its heart. I thrust my kaiken into its chest. The animal stutters to the side and I roll away as it falls.
I'm up and running before I hear it hit the floor. The first one I saw by the cauldrons is skulking toward the open corridor where I can hear Ashen's blade tearing through muscle and bone. By the time it realizes I'm coming, I'm already in the air. I bring thekatanadown against its neck with a hiss. Thick, putrid blood sprays across my face.
As the hyena and I fall together with a thud of fur and bones across the stone, I look toward the corridor of the hall and see Ashen's blade slicing light into shadow. The fire illuminates his face, his dark hair falling across his brow. The flame in his eyes glows bright with deadly focus. A hyena runs toward him and he readies his sword.
Before it can meet Ashen's blade, it meets mine as I burst from the darkness. I catch it in the throat with mykatanaand spill its blood across the floor.
"That was mine," Ashen says as I stop next to him. I look up and smile at the devious grin that alights within his skin.
I turn away and run to the shadows of the other side of the room as Ashen strides onward to meet the next beast. I kill one more before the odds turn against me.
As I'm running for the darkness between two pillars, a force knocks me from the side, hurtling me into the center of the room. My blades fall from my hands when my ribs hit the stone. The air leaves my lungs in awhooshand I can't suck it back in. I roll onto my back and I hear Ashen calling my name.
A black form hovers over me. I smell the musky scent of fur that's been dampened by fog. Two bright eyes bore into mine as a paw lays weight against my shoulder. A long snout sniffs my hair.
Urtur.
The jackal looks up at Ashen in the distance of the room before his attention is caught by movement to the right of us.
Good thing I didn't shower, I guess.
Urtur bounds away and jumps onto a hyena stalking toward us from the darkness. The hyena is bulky but... disintegrating. Urtur tears at the creature's ruined flesh as the two tumble into the shadows.
I heave myself onto my stomach and reclaim mykatanafrom the floor.
"All right, vampire?" Ashen calls from the other end of the room. I can hear the worry in his voice, even though he tries to hide it. I look up to see him standing with both hands clasped around the handle of his sword, the tip of the blade pointed toward the floor. The flame brightens in the darkness, illuminating the tattoos that flow up his arms and beneath the sleeves that are rolled to his elbows.
I slide my hand forward and give him a thumbs up.This is so fucking embarrassing,I think as I finally gain control of my lungs. I have a feeling he's going to be bringing this up one day.
I push myself to my feet and smooth out my dress with my free hand before grabbing my dagger from the floor and diving back into the ebb and flow of the battle. I join Urtur to kill the creature he fights in the shadows and then we part ways, meeting our own enemies in the dark. I hear the fire of Ashen's blade at the end of the room near the cauldrons. I smell ink and smoke, and I know he's okay.
I really should have brought my GoPro, because I totally parkour myself up some pillars to jump on the back of a hyena and drive my sword between its vertebrae in a kickass move that Ashen won't believe. As I stand on the back of my latest kill, I start to wonder how many more there could be.
Fuck this shit, I think, sheathing mykatana.Time to go.
I turn to the back of the room and run to the pillar where we dropped our bags. I barely slow down as I scoop the straps into my arms. I take off down the center of the room. Ashen is at the other end, near the cauldrons, his back turned to me as he swings his sword against another beast. I'm too afraid to yell, so I do the next best thing.
I throw my dagger.
Thekaikenlodges into the skull of the hyena and Ashen turns toward me. The realization takes no more time than meeting my eyes.
Ashen pulls my dagger free and turns to light the embers that will take us home. He sets one foot into the cauldron as I run toward him. For the first time in three hundred years, maybe all my life, I embrace the caress of a flame. I grab Ashen's outstretched hand and we turn with my momentum, just like a dance. The fire surges around us. The pressure swells in my head and I close my eyes.
The curtain of the blaze falls around us. We stumble out of the cauldron and off the dais, looking behind us as though a creature might still be in pursuit. But the only sound that meets us in the Living Realm is our breath and our raging hearts.
We meet each other's eyes and Ashen drops his sword. He grasps my face and kisses me as though the world is about to fall. His touch burns as hot and bright as a last chance. It's as desperate as a final breath.
When he draws back he looks into my eyes, his chest rising and falling with the effort of recovering from the fight. "Let's not do that again," Ashen says, glancing toward the cauldron.
"Why not? I thought it was fun."
Ashen narrows his eyes at me and wipes some gore off my face with a warm palm. "I still do not agree with your assessment offun."
