Chapter 35
Quinn had never faced worse odds.
Uprooted trees were now connected like a pile of scattered logs propped up against one another. Demons, new arrivals, were climbing toward them from all directions, foaming at the mouth to reach the prize—Reese.
Her weight shifted behind him where she still hugged his body. He felt her stretch to look past him.
She said, “You need to help me move in front. I have what they want. There’s no point in both of us dying when they’ll ignore you as long as the energy inside me is ... available.”
Translation: Until they drained her and left an empty shell.
That made him so angry he couldn’t come up with a civil reply. “What the fuck, Reese? Do you really think I’m going to step aside and let them turn you into a demon buffet?”
She sniffled and his heart twisted at the sound.
She was afraid and offering herself as a sacrifice.
No, no, and hell fucking no.
Gripping his sides tighter, she said, “Why can’t you be logical about this?”
“That’s not the issue here.” He kept his eyes on the demons, who thankfully were fighting among themselves below, but that wouldn’t last long. If Quinn was going to die here, he wanted to know something. “What man treated you so badly that you think all of us are self-serving jerks who would allow a woman to die just so we can survive?”
The fight slowed below. Bad news.
Two demons leaped over the tangle of bodies to start climbing quickly up nearby trees.
Reese’s breath started coming in fast gasps. “I don’t think we have time for me to answer your question. Just move, dammit, and let me do one good thing with my life before I die.”
“No. Keep your ass back there and out of my way. If we get out of this, you and I are going to have a talk.”
She dropped her head to his back again. “Yeah, that’s never going to happen.”
Quinn had no desire to give up his life now and he sure as hell didn’t want anything to happen to her, but if this was it for both of them they wouldn’t die alone.
He sent out another telepathic shout for help. Trey, this is Quinn. We’ve created a rip in the energy field, but we’re pinned down near the west end of the mining ravine by more demons than we can—
Fire burst through a break in the canopy, spewing fury in a seventy-foot stream and torching demons all over the ground. They turned into fireballs, then clouds of gray dust that puffed out of existence.
A red dragon thirty-five feet long from head to tail burst through the hole above and incinerated everything in its path. He blew trees out of the way and arched up, breaking the energy field apart even more.
Reese screeched. “What the hell is that?”
Quinn smiled. “My boss.”
“He’s a dragon? They don’t exist.”
“Some people would think the same about us. He’s two thousand years old and I’m damned glad to see him.”
In less than a minute, Daegan had swooped in and out, killing enough demons that Quinn could feel himself powering up as the energy field weakened and sputtered.
Bodies of half-dead demons flopped around below, but they were no longer a force.
Daegan’s voice boomed in Quinn’s head. Can you get down from that tree?
Absolutely.
Good. Let’s go get our people.
We’re up against an army of those warriors with Belador-like powers, which is probably why Evalle and Tristan haven’t made it out.
Yeah, well, the enemy doesn’t have a dragon. Let’s go.
Quinn rolled his eyes at the arrogant shifter, but the saying went that it wasn’t bragging if you could back it up. He hoped like hell Daegan’s power was half as strong as his ego.
Patting Reese’s hand, he said, “Jump on my back and hold on.”
“What are you going to do?”
“It’ll be easier to show you.”