Braeden’s internal alarm triggered long before the warning bell tolled.

His blood roiled under his skin as if trying to escape, the pressure painful enough to rouse him from his sleep. The familiar seductive pull was a potent one – the crest of the waves that rippled his skin were inches tall. His hand twitched at his side, his fingers curling into claws, eager to rip away the flesh that contained his inner monster.

For an instant, the walls of the inn room fell away, and Braeden was consumed by an insatiable hunger. But a sleeping form filled his vision, and the bloodlust faded into something akin to desire. Sam. She thrashed against her bed, her breath coming in short whimpers.

The fog in his brain cleared and he acted before he could make sense of the torrent of emotions that flooded him every time he looked at Sam. He shook her awake.

Sam opened her eyes with a gasp. “Gods, Braeden, I was having the worst dream—“

He cut her off. “There are demons in this city, Sam.” He shivered, and not from cold. “A lot. I can feel them.”

“Are you certain?” Sam asked. Braeden pushed back his sleeve so that his undulating skin was on full display.

“I’m beginning to think my dreams are as prophetic as your blood,” Sam muttered. She threw off her covers and straightened her clothes. “Let’s go get Tristan.”

Fortunately, Master Byrd had put Tristan in a room just down the hall from theirs, and they found it with little trouble. Sam reached out to knock on the door and then paused. “Do you think he’s still sleeping?”

“I would think so."

Sam stepped back from the door. “You do it.”

Braeden rolled his eyes. “Really, Sam?”

“I’d rather face a demon than a just-awoken Tristan.”

“Fine.” He knocked, hard enough to rattle the frame. A sleep-rumpled Tristan opened the door and looked at him expectantly. “It’s demons,” Braeden said.

“Hold that thought,” said Tristan, disappearing back into his room. He returned seconds later, beads of water dripping down his face. “Can you pinpoint where they are?”

Braeden was a little taken aback that Tristan accepted his warning at his word. It was a strange thing, being trusted. “They’re not inside the city, not yet. The bulk of them are maybe just under a mile away, due north.”

“The bulk of them?” asked Sam. “They’re not all together?”

“Demons are like wolves. When there’s more than a couple in the vicinity, they operate in packs because they’re stronger that way. But there are lone demons just as there are lone wolves,” Braeden explained. “It’s harder for me to sense a demon when it’s by itself.”

“You know a lot of demon psychology,” said Tristan, tilting his head.

Braeden’s heart twisted. He knew it intimately. “There’s not much to it. Find, kill, eat. Not always in that order,” he said bitterly.

“I wonder,” said Tristan, holding his gaze. “Sam, grab a sword from the chest in my room. And before you ask, no, you can’t have my Scimitar. Braeden, I assume you have your knives?” Sam scowled, and Braeden nodded. “Good. Outside, now.”

Outside the inn, Pirama was as silent as when they first arrived, but the air seemed thicker, as if a storm were brewing. The sharp-ridged peaks of the mountain cloaked the city in a dark, uneven pall. A winged creature flew overhead, too obscure to make out in the duskily lit streets. Tristan shot it down with the bow he had slung over his shoulder. It fell to the ground in a small back clump. Braeden prodded it with his boot. Just a bat.

Braeden shut his eyes and mentally released the first shield cutting him off from the demons. He felt their tug at the edge of his mind. “They’re close,” he said, ignoring the rush of blood in his ears. “Less than a quarter mile.”

“No point in waiting around to be ambushed. You lead, and we’ll follow,” Tristan said.

Braeden drew a knife and sliced into his skin, letting the thrall of the demons carry him. Their savagery lured him in like a fish, and he took the bait, following the line back to the source. He walked with eyes closed, as if under a compulsion, but he held on to the part of him that was human and kept it safe.

“Where are we?” asked Sam when Braeden’s feet drew to a halt.

Braeden opened his eyes. He had led them into the mountains, to the top of a narrow pass between two near-vertical rocky faces. The ground was covered with layers of stones and pebbles, and the chalky path beneath them was worn and well-traversed. The pass was clearly meant to be traveled by day; under the light of the half-moon it was treacherous.



The warning bell rang loud and clear, reverberating in the pass. “Shite,” Tristan cursed. “Where are they?”

Braeden put his finger to his lips. “Listen, and you’ll hear them.” Claws scuttled and scraped on rock, close enough now that anyone could register the sound. Something rattled and buzzed, and he could pick up a faint humming.

“I hear them, alright, but I can’t see a thing,” Tristan said. “If we stay here, we’re doomed. We won’t be able to attack until they’re too close for comfort.”

“How many of them are there? Can you tell, Braeden?” Sam asked.

“More than ten and less than a hundred, but more exact than that I can’t say. The first of them are a short distance away now.”

“You can see in this light?” asked Tristan.

Braeden tapped the corner of his eye. “One of their few benefits.”

“Convenient for you,” Tristan said, “but Sam and I are handicapped in the dark.”

“I’ll warn you when one comes near.”

“That won’t work forever, not if you’re fending one off, and not if they attack en masse,” said Tristan. “We’ll need to draw them out of the pass if we’re to win.”

“That might be problematic,” Braeden said. “They’re coming in from either side.”

“How is that possible?” asked Sam, a hint of nervousness in her voice. “How could they have gotten behind us?”

Braeden pointed up. Three oversized worms, with spiked tails and shovel-shaped heads, slinked down the sides of the mountain from above, leaving behind a slimy secretion that glowed neon in the dark. When the worm demons reached the bottom of the mountain side, hundreds of skinny, segmented legs descended from holes in their body walls, and they scuttled on the ground like centipedes. “That’s how,” said Braeden.

Tristan shuddered. “Absolutely vile. I loathe worms more than anything else.”

“I thought you hated snakes,” said Sam.

“I hate anything that moves without legs. It isn’t natural, I tell you.”

“Those creatures look like they have legs to me. Several hundred of them.”

“Sam?”

“Yes, Tristan?”

“Shut up.”

Ignoring their banter, Braeden drew more daggers from his robes, two in either hand. The front ranks of the demons, advancing from the north side of the pass, were ten yards or less away. “They’re almost upon us.”

Braeden knew that human vision suffered in the unlit night, but it would be hard to miss the gargantuan demons at this range. While they were uniform in size – twice Braeden’s height and thrice his girth – their bodies were a mismatched patchwork of human, animal and folklore. No rhyme or reason dictated their anatomical structure. One had an anthropoid leg dangling from the back of its head, and another had three mouths with four rows of teeth apiece, yet lacked for a single eye. Demons were not creatures designed by the gods.

“Try not to lose your dinner,” Tristan said.

Sam scoffed and made a show of twirling her borrowed weapon, a two-handed greatsword that was longer than she was tall. Of course she had chosen the biggest and mightiest sword in Tristan’s collection. Braeden couldn’t quite fathom how she didn’t topple over.

“Don’t be overconfident,” Tristan said. “Remember, you can’t rely on your eyes in this light.”

As he spoke, a demon no larger than a small dog darted out from behind the others and rushed them at a speed that far surpassed that of the average canine companion.

“Tristan, watch out!” Braeden shouted.

It was easy to forget when there were no demons to fight that Tristan was a master swordsman. The demon was no sooner at his ankles than its head was rolling on the ground, as though cleaving through tendon and bone came as easily to Tristan as breathing. A fountain of red spurted from its neck and splattered on Tristan’s breeches.

The sweet smell of blood wafted through the air, sending the demons into the frenzy. It didn’t matter that the blood belonged to one of their own kind – their thirst for violence transcended species. Braeden smiled. His knives were thirsty, too.

The demons fell on them in droves, colliding with one another for a chance to taste human flesh. Braeden’s knives left his hands as fast as he could throw them, all but one finding its mark. His stray dagger hadn’t missed its target, exactly, but had failed to land a killing blow. He went to retrieve the blade, wrenching it through the demon’s neck to pull it free. That remedied the problem.

Braeden kept one eye on Sam as he fought. She was contending with one of the worm demons, riding it astride as it squirmed to shake her off. She plunged the greatsword deep into its flat head, and it let out a bone-chilling scream as it died. Satisfied, she pulled the sword from its carcass and moved towards her next target, not noticing the winged beast that crept up behind her.

Braeden ran towards her, lodging three knives in her stealthy attacker before he managed to get out her name. Sam buried her sword into the neck of another demon and turned to face Braeden. “I had that,” she said, glaring at him. “I can handle myself. Go find your own demons to kill.”

It wasn’t like there was a shortage. As soon as he felled one demon, another took its place. He ripped through them mindlessly, stealing backward glances at Sam when he could. He couldn’t help himself, though he knew she could hold her own.

“Gods, they’re never ending,” Tristan grumbled in between panting breaths. He kicked a demon’s legs out from under it and lopped off its head. “A little help would be nice.”

“We are helping!” Sam said indignantly.

“I meant help from the Paladins. Where in the gods’ names are they? The warning bell rung ages ago.”

Though the ground was awash with blood and viscera, it hardly seemed like they were making progress. They’d barely made a dent in the demons’ numbers. Even Braeden was beginning to feel strained by the long fighting. He would need to access his extra reservoirs of power if this kept up.

Two large flames lit the south side of the pass. “Look! I think someone’s coming!” Sam shouted. Long, humanoid shadows flitted across the mountain walls, shrinking in size as they drew nearer.

“Paladins,” Tristan said. “Certainly took them long enough to get here.”

“No,” said Braeden slowly, his pupils constricting as the flames flooded the pass with light. “It’s the Uriel.”