He disappeared.
Damn it! There had to be a doorway through there, and the courtyard was like the castle, a gods-be-damned gateway for travelling through the veil.
But all that passed my mind in a flash, and then I was dodging two ogres and had no time to worry about Liam.
Liam hit the wall hard, the sounds of the fight ringing in his ears, but as he slid downward the world twisted, and then he was face down on a rocky beach, waves crashing up around him, startling him out of his momentary stupor.
“What the hell?” He pushed himself to his feet. The shoreline stretched for miles on either side of him, the smell of rotting fish and salt water filling his nose.
A tittering laugh spun him around. There, just behind him lay a stunningly beautiful woman, her blonde hair studded with pearls and curling around her heart-shaped face, with luminescent blue eyes that stared up at him. Her soft curves were bared to the open sky, but there was no shame in her. He blinked a couple of times and she reached for him.
“Stay with me, wolf.” There was a command in her voice, a spell that stirred his wolf and the strength to deny her more than anything else could have.
He snarled, reached out, and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her high. She let out a scream, high-pitched and warbling, the lower half of her body coming clear of where she’d hidden it. From the waist down she was all fish, a pearlescent collision of scales, a rainbow of colors that danced in the lights.
“How do I get back?”
Fury lit her pretty features, twisting them into something ugly and monstrous. “The darkness will rise and he will swallow you, wolf. I see it, even now. You will die. And your death will be meaningless.”
“TELL ME OR I’LL SNAP YOUR NECK.”
She trembled in his hands, but he didn’t care. With a thrust, she pointed at a rock, somewhat more square than the others, one that almost resembled a doorway.
With no ceremony, he dropped her to the jagged rocks and ignored her grunt of pain. Leaping past her, he didn’t hesitate, but hit the doorway at full speed, expecting it to give way to him.
Thank the gods it did.
Liam was gone all of three minutes, but it was enough to land me in a seriously bad spot. The triplets had dispatched two of the interlopers, screaming obscenities at them the whole time. In another place, I would have been laughing at the ridiculous, imaginative cursing they came up with.
The triplets still faced two of the black-skinned ogres, and Dox and I faced three. But we’d been separated, and while Dox was holding his own, he didn’t have the experience with a full-on fight to the death. Bar brawls he was used to, but throwing drunks out of the Landing Pad was a hell of a lot different than trying to actually kill someone. This did not bode well for his long-term health. Hell, it didn’t bode well for his short-term health.
I, on the other hand, had plenty of experience with this kind of fighting. Didn’t mean I was faring any better against the big bastards.#p#分页标题#e#
A blunt club smashed into the ground, missing me by a single hairsbreadth. I rolled to my feet, then spun, arms outstretched at the full reach of my blade. I caught the ogre in the thigh, but while blood spilled, it was not a killing slice. Or even a particularly crippling one. But I couldn’t focus on just one of them, I had to dance between the two, dodging blows without being able to get much in by the way of strikes of my own.
Fast, these ogres for all their size were damn quick: both with their swings and their feet. A booted foot swung at me, sweeping my legs out from under me. I hit the ground hard and rolled before a club could finish the job.
A snarling growl brought their heads around, but for all their speed, it was too late. Liam hit the one on the left from behind, driving both blades through the ogre’s neck, nearly severing his head from his shoulders. While the second ogre was distracted, I drove both my swords through his guts, jerking my blades up and sideways in an attempt to bisect his body.
The black-skinned ogre slowly turned his head toward me. “Well done, Tracker.” He slumped forward to his knees as I yanked my blades free.
I didn’t stop to thank Liam for the help or acknowledge the ogre’s words, just pointed at Dox. Liam leapt from the back of the ogre he’d nearly decapitated to hamstring the ogre facing Dox. As the black-skinned ogre fell with a scream, I cut it short with a hard strike from my own blade. His head rolled from his shoulders, the sightless eyes staring up at the rain clouds hovering above us.
“Now what?” Liam panted.
“Now we make some friends.” I ran toward the battle, saw Tin go down to one knee, stunned from a blow to his head. As the ogre opposite him lifted his club to finish the job, I swept my sword upward, taking his arm.