Wounded(28)

My whip curled around Orion’s left arm, just above the wrist. He let out a roar as the flesh curled and blackened, but he didn’t fight it. Nope, not that asshole. He grabbed the whip and jerked it out of my hands, stopping the connection. I stood and faced him, confidence filling me until I saw his hand.

The charred skin flaked and fell off, revealing an arm that was as unhurt as it had been only moments before.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy to take me on in my own realm, did you?” He smiled and took a step toward Milly, as if I were of no consequence. “The child is mine. You have always known that.”

With his back to me, I leapt toward him. I drove my sword forward, through his heart as I pulled my second blade and slashed it through his back, nearly severing his body in half. “Heal that, asshat.”

He glanced over his shoulder at me, a smile on his lips as his body healed around my weapons. “You truly think you can kill me, don’t you? You are a bigger fool than I’d thought. Stay there, Tracker, I will deal with you in a moment.”

Just like that, he dismissed me as if I were no longer a threat. Was I that weak?

Erik said hands on was best, that going through my weapons was a weaker version. For Milly, for the baby, I had to try and stop this monster now. If I didn’t, and he possessed the child, he’d be free to walk in the world.

With a scream, I leapt onto his back, wrapping my hands around his face. His head went up in a black flame that consumed my hands, but I didn’t let go. The heat sung along my nerve endings, a pain that tore at me, worse than any of the injuries I’d ever incurred, even putting them all together.

He tried to buck me off, his hands grabbing at my legs, his fingers digging into my flesh. “Will you fucking die already?” I yelled as the flames began to travel down his neck.

“Rylee, let go!” Milly screamed, and I wanted to, damn, how I wanted to. But I knew that the second I did, he’d heal again.

“Can’t.”

“You can’t kill him! It isn’t possible.”

That was Talia and my eyes found her next to the doorway on the landing. It was open and on the other side … shit, the other side opened up to my farm in North Dakota.

“HURRY!”

Timing was everything in a fight, and this one was no different. Gripping Orion’s face even harder, I drove my fingers deep into his skull through the fire softened flesh, and put my feet up into his lower back. With that leverage, I pulled as hard as I could, my jaw tight with the effort and the enormous pain writhing up my hands.

A scream slipped out of me, merging with Orion’s as his neck snapped backward and his howl of fury slid into bits and pieces of gurgling mess.

I rode his body to the ground. Talia grabbed me and jerked my hands from Orion’s burning flesh. I couldn’t look at them, could already feel muscles and tendons tightening into crippled digits that would be next to useless.

“Milly hasn’t the strength to heal you,” Talia said as she slipped the violet skinned book into my arms and then a small, mewling bundle wrapped in red silk. I could barely stand; the pain reverberating through my hands and arms was so bad.

“How long will he be out?” I whispered, though whispering hadn’t been my intention. I coughed. The smoke I’d inhaled had scorched my throat and lungs.

Talia guided me and I tried to see where Milly was. “I don’t know. If we’re lucky, days. Not so lucky, hours, maybe minutes.”

My brain struggled to function around what had happened, how fast everything had come together. “Milly.”

The necromancer let out a heavy sigh. “She has to stay, you know that.”

“I want to see her.”

Talia moved to the side so I could see Milly slumped against the wall, her green eyes unseeing, a pool of blood blending into the red dress. So much blood.

“No.” I couldn’t see past the tears that filled my eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Not with her like that, splayed out in a demon’s realm like a broken doll—dying as she gave birth.

“Go, you have to.” Talia gave me a push in the right direction, but her voice was thick and heavy with tears that slid down her face. She tucked my whip into my arms beside the baby. “She wanted you to save her child, above all else.”

I knew what Talia was saying was true, that Milly wanted her baby to be safe. “Goodbye, my friend,” I whispered as I backed through the doorway. The bite of the winter wind was a blessing against the burns arching from my hands almost to my elbows, but the relief was only physical. Talia stood in the doorway, and then shut it so I stared at nothing, not even an empty door. She would tell where she’d sent me the minute Orion questioned her.