A mali estremi, estremi rimedi.
Desperate evils need desperate remedies.
“Thank the gods,” Kaleb wheezed.
“Will they make it in time?” Nina asked.
“That depends”—Kamaria tried to pry Kaleb’s clenched hand free to take his spot, but he was too out of it to let go—“on how much time we give them.”
Josef waved for her to take his spot and bent, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.
A scarabeo buzzed above them, and Kamaria ducked, throwing her hands over her head reflexively.
Kaleb gasped, momentarily left with the full brunt of Alessa’s strength. She pulled away before it took him down.
Gathering what leftover power she still possessed, she threw it at the sky. Dozens of creatures lit up, bolts of lightning fracturing around them. Twitching, they lost altitude.
Kaleb was on his knees, face ashen.
“Hold on,” Alessa said. “Just hold on.”
Dante stepped in front of Kaleb, sword at the ready. A scarabeo swooped past, taunting, just out of reach, and he planted his feet to wait. The next time it dove, Dante’s sword sliced a wing free. The creature spun, and he slashed again, rendering the other wing useless and lopping off a limb for good measure.
Kamaria cried out as a disembodied claw sliced her arm to the bone.
Nina crouched, trying to stanch Kamaria’s wound.
Wings buzzed, too close, then a spray of something wet and sticky struck Alessa’s face.
Dante yelled, stumbled. Blood soaked his shirt, dripping onto the stone. “I’ll be okay,” he said with a wet cough. “Just need a minute.”
A minute they might not get. Alessa turned her fear into rage and fought harder.
The ship had stopped as close to shore as it could get, and one person, then another, dove from the side. Others clambered into a rowboat.
The ocean churned, violently tossing the boat and swimmers. Alessa stopped throwing lightning. Past the bursts of fire and gusting wind, she couldn’t make out who was who, but whoever was rowing was also propelling the craft with gusts of wind, and the others kept the swooping, screaming scarabeo at bay.
Kaleb’s grip was slick; he kept slipping away. But Josef and Nina grasped Alessa like a lifeline.
Alessa gathered their power once more, flinging a blast of cold that tore a massive chunk from the swarm.
Nina cried out in pain, but Alessa couldn’t stop to see what had happened.
She needed to buy them time. Precious minutes for the other Fontes to make it up the peak, for Dante to heal. Time.
She didn’t have any.
The rowboat was drifting back out to sea, and figures ran, high-kneed, through the shallows, bursts of light and swirls of ice blossoming above them. Small and ineffective compared to what she could do with their gifts, but it kept the creatures away.
So close. They were so close.
The first swimmer to reach the shore held up her waterlogged skirts to sprint up the beach. The tall figure behind her looked like Kamaria. It had to be Shomari, the traitorous brother she’d sworn would help them.
As they vanished below the peak, Alessa turned to her weak, wounded Fontes. Trying to choose was a deadly game of roulette.
Ignoring his protest, Alessa seized the sword from Dante’s weak grip, gathering a bit of his fighting gift as she did so.
She glared at the flying creatures above, watching to see which one was next.
One dove, and she arced the blade through the air. The impact rattled through her body, but she’d barely stunned the monster. It swooped back around, and she swung again.
Dante’s fighting skills faded, but the demons kept coming. She screamed in anger and frustration.
A beat without an attack, a moment of reprieve. One breath. That’s all she asked.
Grime and sweat blurred her vision, and the sword wavered in her grasp.
Dea, help me.
Saida, wheezing, pulled it free. “I’m sorry we’re late.”
Shomari slid his fingers through Alessa’s, using his other hand to grip his sister’s shoulder in an unspoken apology. Kamaria punched his arm, but there were tears in her eyes.
Alessa couldn’t look to see how Dante was managing. Didn’t have time. She just had to hope it wasn’t too late for him.
A century, a lifetime, a heartbeat, a breath. She wouldn’t know until later how much time passed while she fought.
Saida’s wind and Shomari’s water drew a waterspout from the sea, sucking scarabeo from the sky, and when the creatures closest were consumed, Alessa let the water fall and twisted the wind toward the shore to scramble the demonic flight patterns.
Wings snapped, demons fell, and her soldiers were ready below, waiting with swords and scythes to finish them.
The creatures seemed to smell a whiff of defeat, and their screams intensified.
Every hair on Alessa’s body rose.
Nina covered her ears, her face screwed up in agony, but Josef was a statue. “Keep going,” he said. “Don’t stop.”
She had no choice.
Blood squelched with every hand she clasped, but when one hand vanished, another took its place.
The world was nothing but a maelstrom of cold and heat, fire and ice, the swell and flux of Nina’s strange gift diverting and warping, ripping swaths through the swarm.
Alessa saw sky, briefly, a glint of sun that told her time was passing, then darkness and wings and claws closed in again. But she’d seen the sky and she’d fight to see it again.
A silver blade slashed past, proof Dante was alive and still fighting.
Across the hillside behind Finestra’s Peak and the beach before it, soldiers battled, stumbling through the waves, stabbing half-submerged scarabeo. The orderly rows of warriors following commands had disintegrated, commanders shouting orders to ranks who couldn’t hear them over the screams, or were too terrified to listen.
And all the while, the swarm above swooped and regrouped, communicating without words, a hive mind that didn’t need directions or plans to work in tandem.
Two scarabeo dove at Dante.
He stabbed and slashed, hidden by a tangle of claws and mandibles, and she sent a burst of flame to assist.
The scarabeo fell, screaming, over the cliff’s edge.
Dante dropped to his knees, clutching his bloodied side, his sword abandoned beside him.
Dante could heal himself. He would heal himself. He had to.
But while soldiers battled around her and the Fontes, keeping the area around them clear, Dante was unprotected.
The roiling darkness coalesced as another wave of scarabeo saw easy prey.
Alessa snatched a scythe from the ground and ran, slashing it toward the scarabeo bent on reaching Dante. The curved blade at the end of the staff lopped off every leg on one side, and the bulk crashed down on the peak, nearly crushing Dante.
“Help him,” she shouted at the nearest soldiers. “Keep them away until he’s healed.”
Fontes waited, hands at the ready, for Alessa to resume the fight, but everywhere she looked, there was nothing but chaos.
She was doing her best, but it wasn’t enough. Too many scarabeo got past her, descending on an army lost to panic. She flinched as two soldiers, fighting beside each other, were ambushed and snapped in half.
If only her army could communicate without words, too.
A desperate idea lodged in her mind.
Time to break all the rules.