Aidan could feel the battle in his veins as they made their way to the back of the castle. Fire was in tune with the anger and fear, the bloodlust and rage. He’d felt this to an extent before, but never this strongly. It had been years since Scotland had felt this much magic and destruction at once. Years since an event this momentous had taken place.
For better or worse, after tonight, everything would be different.
Either the humans would die, and Calum would rule an empty country. Or they would win, and Aidan would be crowned a king.
Either way, Aidan would blaze in battle. The question was whether or not that blaze would be snuffed out at the end. And frankly, Fire didn’t care. His Sphere writhed excitedly within him, scalding his chest as he tried to keep it contained. Not because his Sphere was angry. Not just because people were killing and dying so close to him.
No. His Sphere was restless in its excitement: every step toward the castle felt like another step toward more than just victory. It felt like coming home.
Soon, this will all be mine.
Aidan guided them closer to the castle wall, staying far away from the main attack and moving nearer to the shore. The transition from ruined city to glass-slick wasteland was razor-sharp, a line that cut a circle all around the castle, as though someone had drawn it with a sextant, the castle at its nexus. On one side, char and rubble, soil and sodden plants. On the other, smooth, glass-black stone that reflected the burning sky above like a mirror.
A testament of Calum’s power. His army could melt the world if he so chose.
He never had. The Hunters had always been there to fight him back.
Until now, Aidan thought. I’ll have the balls to do what Calum never could. Rule beyond this circle. Make the whole world kneel.
Fire smoldered in his chest at the thought, at the rightness of it. He glanced down at his reflection. In the flickering light of the hellfire above, he didn’t look entirely human. His face was etched in shadows, and his tattoos seemed to slither over his skin like serpents. He looked demonic.
He smiled.
Let the whole world kneel.
“Do you think we’re winning?” Kianna asked absently.
On the far side of the wall, where the battle was taking place, the sky roared with flame and tornadoes, lightning and hail. Any minute now...
“Why do you ask?”
“Because this is taking forever.”
He nodded. They should have leveled the wall by now. The initial attack was meant to be a distraction, not the focus. Where the hell was the second unit?
This is why Trevor never should have let you go, Fire purred within him. Without you, the entire mission will fail. Without you, they are nothing.
“We can’t just wait here,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”
She nodded, as though she’d already figured that out and had been waiting for him to pick up the slack.
The silence back here put his nerves on edge. His mind raced with possibilities of what had gone wrong. For why the wall still stood and why here, closer to the waves and the edge of the wall, everything was silent as a graveyard. He stared ahead, trying to peer through the gloom and darkness while keeping Fire dimmed for fear of giving himself away. All he could see was the towering black wall to his left and the endless expanse of dark waves ahead.
“Is it getting colder to you?” Kianna asked.
He’d thought it was his imagination. Scotland was always cold, even with Fire in his veins. But the moment she said it he realized his breath was coming out in puffs. The rain was lighter here, and it was then he noticed it wasn’t just misting. It was snowing. The ground beneath his feet crunched with every footstep. Ice.
This wasn’t the work of a necromancer, not the work of any magic. No, this cold tugged at his bones, sliced its fingers through his heart and tried to pull out every last drop of heat.
Incubi.
The troops had been ambushed.
“Calum knew,” he muttered, and ran faster.
Despite the red sky and flashes of light, everything near the crashing shore was cold and steeped in shadow. He squinted as lightning strobed across the sky, arching far out over the water.
That’s when he saw them.
Littered across the shore like some broken Roman palisade were dozens of columns piercing up from the soil. But he knew there weren’t columns, not here. There was nothing on the shore but charred earth and crashing waves.
Lightning flashed.
Despite the burn of Fire in his chest, he still found room to be shocked. The columns were the second unit. Scattered and frozen midcharge.
Frozen, save for the few figures still walking among the dead. The figures that had realized they weren’t alone.
Kianna was at the ready, a sword in her left hand and a pistol in her right. He didn’t think. Fire didn’t need to think. Fire just needed to kill.
He pulled deeper through the heat, let the embers roar to life, and gave in to that one immutable need.
Fire flared bright in his chest, hissing power through his limbs and lighting his adrenaline with newfound need. Flames spiraled around his clenched palms. Cast their shadows over the black and the snow like wraiths. The incubi screamed out. The world around them cut colder as the Howls tried to drain their Spheres.
Aidan burned brighter, and as the snow fell around them, they fell upon the Howls.
The incubi and their female counterparts, succubi, were humanoid and beautiful, seductive if not for the blood smeared on their faces and wild looks in their copper eyes. The Howls born of Fire craved human heat and could drain it from their victim from afar. It accounted for the rain-turned-snow, for the frigid cold that ate at his bones, the bite that—had he not been open to Fire—would have sent him to his knees. But with the Sphere burning in his chest, he felt immune. He poured all of himself into the flame, wrapped himself and Kianna in burning heat.
To the incubi, he was a damn buffet.
Good. Let them gorge.
He grabbed the first incubus by the throat and threw him to the side, right in the path of Kianna’s blade. Two shots, two flashes of gunfire, and two more Howls fell, bullets piercing right between their eyes, blood bursting behind them in fine mists.
Another Howl tackled him from behind, pinning him to the ground. He rolled and twisted out of the monster’s grip. A succubus. Her eyes wide as his dagger lodged in her chest.
Because incubi and succubi were born of Fire, they were immune to it. He could throw every ounce of power he had at the incubi surrounding them, and it wouldn’t crisp a hair on their heads. It would probably just make them stronger. But that wasn’t why he was open to the Sphere. He just used it to make himself feel alive.
He pushed himself up from his knees in time to see a head fly into the waves, the body dropping at Kianna’s feet. He was about to congratulate her when the column beside him lunged, wrapping its arms around his chest and throat, pulling his chin back so he could stare into its cold, pale eyes.
Then, before he could lash out, the Howl inhaled.
Aidan’s lungs deflated in a heartbeat, his chest collapsing as the Howl—a Breathless One—drained the Sphere of Air and the oxygen from his body. Fire snuffed from his chest.
Darkness clouded immediately. His body fell heavy, vision exploding with stars that burned to cinders and ash as his chest screamed and his throat constricted and he knew he would die, knew Kianna wouldn’t notice or reach him in time, and he could do nothing to struggle. His thoughts swam. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t even cry in pain. So much pain. A thousand daggers through his chest as his heart failed to pump, as his lungs pulled in on themselves, a million needles scraping his veins.
Everything he’d done, and he’d die at the hands of a Howl that didn’t have a name.
He fell in the darkness.
And there, deep in the abyss, deep in the pain, he saw the spark. A flare of power, a tiny pinprick of red in the black. His imagination. Must be.
The voice, surely.
Your death does not yet serve me, my Hunter.
The spark flickered. Became two. Two red eyes in the dark. The dark, a face. Her face.
Your life is not yours to give.
You will serve.
You will burn the world.
The eyes grew redder, bolder, burning hot, burning brighter than the sun, the sun that roared within him. The pain and the heat and the rage.
It flooded him. Filled him. Laced his veins with beautiful agony, a brushfire ignited in the depths of night, a light when there should be only dark. A light. Her light. His light.
Fire burned through him, ferocious and raging, a heat he couldn’t stand, a heat that threatened to burn him alive.
A heat he never wanted to release.
Distantly, he heard screaming. Choking.
He felt earth beneath his hands and knees. Hot earth. Ashen earth. But all he could see was the fire. The rage. The world burning and ending, the shadows coiling and rising. The light. He was the light that signaled the final flare.
Then he inhaled, and a new pain filled him.
He collapsed to his side as he choked down air, as the burning within him subsided and the Sphere of Fire quietened. Everything was fire and pain, the agony of oxygen returning to his limbs. His lungs burned with hunger. His throat was raw and scratched.
“The hell was that?” Kianna asked.
Her voice sounded distant. So distant.
He tried to push down the pain. Tried to find words to speak as he struggled to kneeling, his hands coated in the ash of the Howl that nearly stole his life away.
No.
Not his life.
He’d thought it was a dream. A nightmare. He thought the voice that hissed within him was a hallucination.
But deep down, in the darkest shadows, he knew the truth. The words he’d been hearing when Fire called loudest. The words he thought were his own.
Those were the words of the Dark Lady.
She had saved him. Somehow.
She wanted him alive.
Your life is not yet yours to give.