Joseph pushed her behind him and drew his sword just as the first demon came into sight. It was about the size of a large dog, with glowing green eyes and rows of sharp teeth. Its proportions were all wrong, like a wolf and a chimpanzee had a rabid baby. Oily black poison seeped from its pores to mat its fur. Long claws were coated with the thick goo, and would make every one of its attacks lethal.

Before the first one had time to charge, another one broke through the underbrush. Then another.

“They found us,” said Lyka.

The blood he’d tasted. He didn’t know if it had been his or hers, but the ferocity of their kiss had earned them this inconvenience. “I’ll try to make this quick.”

Then they could get back to what they’d been doing.

He launched into an attack, timing his movements to take out each one as it crossed the distance to him.

From the corner of his eye he could see Lyka with her twin daggers drawn. She’d closed ranks with a larger sgath on their right flank and was doing a great impersonation of a food processor set on puree.

He turned his attention back to what he was doing, slicing cleanly through the scrawny body of the next demon in line.

These sgath were still young. They were fast, but didn’t have the power of their older counterparts. Thank goodness.

He finished off his side of the battle and was about to go help Lyka clean up her kill when the trees behind her shifted violently.

She didn’t see it happen. She’d just felled the big sgath in front of her and was too busy extracting her short daggers from its body to react to the danger.

Joseph tried to call out a warning, but he was too slow.

Something dark and shiny flew out of the forest. He got a quick flash of yellow teeth and glowing green eyes before it slammed into Lyka’s back and stuck there.

Its claws slid deep into her flesh, delivering a deadly dose of poison.

Rage dropped a red curtain across Joseph’s vision as he barreled toward her. He cut the thing in two with one carefully placed stroke of his blade. He hadn’t so much as trimmed a single hair on her head, but it didn’t matter. The demon had already killed her when it subjected her to its poison. All he could do now was watch her die a slow, agonizing death.

Chapter 21

Eric had no idea how much time had passed when he woke. All he knew was that his head was throbbing and he was thirsty enough to drink whatever swill was available in the dank cave.

Kayla was by his side in an instant, her sweet face puckered with worry. “Are you okay? You’ve been asleep a long time. We tried to wake you up, but you didn’t hear us.”

He sat up a few inches, hoping it would help his head stop spinning. It didn’t. “How long?” he croaked through his sandblasted throat.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “They fed us twice.” She scurried away for a minute and came back with a plastic pitcher of water. “The ugly guy left this for you. He told us not to drink it, but I took a sip anyway, just to make sure it was safe.”

Now a kid was protecting him? He must have looked even worse than he felt. “Don’t do that again, Kayla. You have to take care of yourself when I can’t.”

“But who’s going to take care of you?”

He forced himself upright, doing his best to ignore the way the cave was whirling around him. Even if he wasn’t strong right now, he had to find a way to look like it so none of the young would do anything foolish.

Kayla held the pitcher out to him. “The water is clean. You should drink. You smell sick.”

“Not sick. Just a little tired.” He closed his eyes to block out the spin and drank.

The cold water felt good going down. He was careful not to take too much at once for fear of puking it up.

Just the memory of that gaping maw in the top of Treszka’s head was enough to make him want to vomit.

He touched his neck where she’d fed from him, but the skin was whole again. He’d been out long enough to heal the wounds she’d left behind.

And the young had been alone the whole time.

“Is everyone safe?” he asked, too dizzy to do an accurate headcount.

“Yes.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But the boys have been crying.”

“But not you?” he asked.

She bared her baby teeth. “I don’t feel like crying. I feel like killing them.”

Eric hoped the kid got a chance to do just that. “Tell me what happened while I slept. How many guards have you seen? Is there any kind of routine you can see to their movement? Some kind of pattern?”

She frowned at him in confusion.

He shook his head and patted her arm. “Don’t worry about it. I got this.” Or he would, once he had enough blood pressure to stand.

For the next hour or so, he sipped the water and held as still as possible. Kayla stayed by his side. The other young slowly migrated his way until they were all clumped up against him, shivering with both fear and cold.

He had to get them out of here. Already they were weakening. If they stayed down here much longer, there wouldn’t be any fight left in them.

When he was able to stand, he slipped from the pile and wobbled on unsteady legs to the opening in the chamber.

Armed guards with patchy fur and rusty swords were everywhere. He counted at least thirty of them in sight, and could smell lots, lots more nearby. The second he approached the doorway, several of the demons bristled in aggressive warning.

Eric held up his hands and stopped in his tracks. “I need to see Treszka.” He had no clue if they understood him or not. As far as he could tell, they seemed incapable of speech. All he’d heard from them were animalistic grunts, howls and that eerie hum of reverence they let out whenever Queen Bitch was nearby.

At least she couldn’t sneak up on him.

“Do you understand?” he said, louder and more slowly. “Take me to your leader. Treszka.”

The demons rumbled in confusion and looked at one another. Clearly, they were all idiots, incapable of a single independent thought among them.

“They won’t take orders from you,” said a low voice from a deep crevice in the stone.

Vazel.

He stepped out of his hidey-hole and pushed his way through the guards.

Once again, Eric was struck by how intensely ugly this creature was. He tried not to let his revulsion show on his face, but he was a few pints low and not exactly at the top of his game.