Drake grunted when a demon’s fist connected with his shoulder. Heat flared across his skin as claws carved vicious tracks into his suit and flesh. He gritted his teeth, blocked the creature’s next strike with his shield, and slashed him across the thigh with his sword. The man shrieked and sagged. Drake stabbed him in the chest and pushed him over the railing before turning to face the rest of the demons crowding the gangway, his pulse hammering away in his veins. Four feet behind him, Serena and Nate were holding off a second group of demons.
Movement below caught Drake’s attention. More creatures swarmed the auction hall from the shadows.
What the—?
“Damn it!” Serena deflected a couple of lightning-fast blows to her head and glared at the horde of demonic figures heading for the gangway. “There are too many of them!”
Drake clenched his jaw. He could feel the energy inside him straining to break loose in the presence of the demons, his power resonating once more with their corrupt aura. Though it sickened him, he realized he had no option but to access it if he wanted to get out of there alive with Serena and Nate. There would be no Artemus, Smokey, and Callie to save them this time around.
Shit. That blond bastard was right. We should have stuck together.
Drake took a shallow breath before concentrating on the walls restraining the darkness suffusing his soul. They appeared in his mind’s eye, tall, indomitable barriers that contained the evil within him. He allowed them to flex slightly.
A gasp left him as the ungodly force spilled over and swept through his body.
The marks on his back trembled. A coppery taste filled his mouth. Coldness swamped his consciousness. In his hand, the sword thickened and lengthened, the metal growing a shade darker.
The demons blinked, their amber eyes widening.
Drake moved.
Serena cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Drake. She could sense something different about the dark-haired thief. Something ominous.
She crossed her knives and slashed the neck of the demon before her. Wetness sprayed the back of her hands and arms as black blood gushed out of the creature’s wounds. She kicked her attacker into the man behind him, sidestepped to avoid the clawed fist heading for the back of her head, and drove her right elbow into the gut of the demon behind her. A guttural noise left the creature. It turned into a shocked sound when Nate lifted him and threw him over the railing.
The demon smashed into the ground twenty-five feet below the gangway with a sickening thud. He lay still for a moment before slowly sitting up and shaking his head.
Serena’s knuckles whitened on the blades in her hands.
These assholes just won’t stay down!
Her chest heaved as she turned to confront the demons facing them. She glanced at Nate and was alarmed to see him also panting.
In all their years as soldiers of fortune, they had never come across an adversary they couldn’t defeat in hand-to-hand combat. That they had nearly been overcome twice in the space of twenty-four hours was an unpleasant surprise. She narrowed her eyes.
This fight is far from over.
She stretched out the kinks in her neck, twisted her heels into the ground, and focused. The air thickened next to her as Nate similarly tapped into the core of what made them inhuman.
Drake’s body tingled and hummed with power as he slashed, stabbed, and cut through the crowd of demons surrounding him. Though the sword in his hand dripped with blood, he could feel the monster inside him hungering for more. More chaos. More destruction. More death. He shivered at the potently addictive feeling.
A strange undercurrent pierced the red bloodlust clouding his vision. He became conscious of the vibrations shaking the walkway and looked over his shoulder.
Ten feet away, Serena and Nate fought a group of demons with a tactical precision and speed that more than matched their adversaries, their strikes so powerful they left imprints in the bodies of the creatures attacking them.
Three shadowy figures lunged up from beneath the railing to Serena’s left and launched themselves at the mercenary. A grunt escaped her as they lifted her off her feet and carried her over the opposite railing.
Drake’s stomach twisted. The darkness inside him abated. He moved instinctively toward her, arm outstretched, knowing he would be too late to stop her fall. His eyes widened.
Serena spun and twisted elegantly through twenty-five feet of empty air before landing nimbly in a low crouch on the floor of the auction hall. A grim smile curved her lips when she looked up at the demons slowly rising to face her. She straightened and bolted toward her attackers. Her fists and feet blurred as she danced between them, her blows and kicks catching them unawares.
Admiration flickered through Drake. Jesus, that woman is—
“Behind you,” Nate said.
Drake turned and saw a giant hand heading for his face.
Artemus, Callie, and Smokey rushed into a shadowy hall at the far end of Voggell’s building. Twenty feet ahead of them, Serena was fighting a group of demons with brutal speed and strength, her face a mask of pure focus while her bloodied knuckles delivered powerful blows. High up on a gangway to the right, Nate was similarly engaged in a fierce battle with another horde of demonic creatures.
Artemus’s stomach clenched with fear.
A few feet behind Nate, Drake was clawing at the arm of the large demon choking him, his sword lying uselessly on the walkway by his feet.
Artemus raised his gun and fired.
His shot struck the creature in the thigh. The demon staggered back a step, grip loosening slightly around Drake’s throat. He looked down at the shallow depression in his flesh and the faint orange cracks spreading from it before locking eyes with Artemus. The demon frowned.
Artemus’s heart sank.
Shit. Why isn’t he turning into ash?
Callie transformed next to him and opened her mouth on an unholy roar. The sound immobilized the four demons charging toward them from the left of the hall. More appeared from the right.
Artemus unleashed his sword and started firing at them. His bullets tore holes in their chests and limbs. Their uncanny screams echoed to the rafters as they were consumed by flames. Ash thickened the air along with the smell of death and blood.
More demons appeared from the gloom.
Up on the walkway, a group of creatures swarmed Nate and lifted him over the railing. He gasped and reached out as he started to fall. His right hand closed on the edge of the platform while the demons plummeted to the floor of the hall around him. He grabbed the railing with his other hand and started hauling himself up.
Artemus caught movement on the columns supporting the grid of gangways. He slashed the creature before him in the neck and turned to shoot at the two figures launching themselves through the air toward the mercenary.
His bullets missed them by a hair’s breadth.