The Deadliest Bite

was the ability to start fires. First they’d just appeared as an extension of my extreme emotions. Then I’d figured out how to control them just in time to save precious lives, including my own. But I’d learned that the flames I shot out from my Spirit Eye also burned a part of me. And I couldn’t trudge through life hoping bits of my soul would grow back before I watched my niece walk down the aisle. So I held back, keeping the burn in check even when I was at my most furious. Then Vayl said, “Perhaps this is why you were given the power in the first place. Not to destroy those who would harm you. But to protect yourself from the fires that are sent against you.” Inside my head a chorus of girls went, Aha! Everyone needs a shield. Brude had his tattoos.

Vayl could once cal up armor made entirely of ice. I’d fought reavers who were so thoroughly protected that hitting them felt like pounding your fists into a brick wal . So why shouldn’t I get some sort of defense? Especial y when I kept having to fight hel spawn?

“Okay,” I told him. “I’l try.” But for the moment I had to concentrate on the rope that I stil held in my hand, the one tied to the “thorn” in Daisy’s paw. I made sure it couldn’t get looped around anything. I checked that Raoul and Aaron had found places to perch among the links of the skin-cel ’s chain.

“It’s going to be a bumpy ride,” I warned them. “You may not be able to hold on by pure strength.” Aaron unbuckled his belt and used it to strap himself around the link he’d chosen. Raoul had already done the same with his sword belt.

When Vayl and I had tied ourselves in to our satisfaction we nodded to each other. “Okay!” I yel ed to the blemuth. “Upsy Daisy!” Then I snorted, because I’d always wanted to say that, and damned if this wasn’t the perfect time!

The blemuth grabbed the ceiling-bound chain of Aaron Sr.’s cel between its teeth and yanked.

Debris began to fal . The torturing crew final y looked up from their grisly business and realized the blemuth wasn’t in it for the fun, like they’d assumed. They screamed as more of the ceiling fel , crushing them and a few of their victims alike.

When a slab of rock the size of my Corvette landed right next to me I said to Vayl, “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”

“It was better than any of the alternatives. How are you feeling?”

“Why?”

“You are bleeding from both nostrils.” He touched the back of his hand to my forehead. “If we were in the world, I would take you straight to an emergency room. Brude is attacking you from the inside. He knows this is his last chance to escape before we take him to hel . And that door—” He nodded up to the portal, whose flames had turned a startling shade of magenta. “Its power is immense. I can feel it pul ing at you. Trying to suck you dry. Where is your fire, Jasmine? Where is the heat of your resistance?”

I felt the blood drip from my nose down to my chin. The pounding in my head had gone so far past migraine I was seeing pink. The domytr had begun raking at the wal s of my mind with his fingernails, pounding them with his fists and feet, leaving rivulets of blood and bruises in his wake.

And the portal, I could sense it, just like Vayl had said. Eager for my power. Lapping at the energy that had cal ed it despite the fact that it could stand on its own.

Suddenly I was so tired. I wanted to fal to my knees, bury my head in my hands, and cry until somebody came to save me. And Vayl would try. But he couldn’t fight invisible demons. Al he could do was stand beside me, hold me up, and hope I was strong enough to battle through to the end.

I reached inside for the rage that never seemed to stop burning, even during my happiest moments. It leaped to my hand like a longlost pet. And I welcomed it. Knew it was the reason I was strong and, after everything, stil vibrantly alive.

I pul ed it around me like a Kevlar cloak. And then I pushed it outward like the shel of an exploding bomb, driving Brude into a howling retreat as he beat at the flames that singed his hair, his skin, and his beard. The flames of the portal bil owed and shot straight upward, burning the pieces of debris as Daisy shook them out of the ceiling. They tried to reach for me as wel , but my fire was bigger, hotter, and it burned them back to where they belonged.

And then I felt myself lifted into the air. Daisy had broken our anchor from the ground. The ceiling anchor had come free as wel . Just in time, too, because Brude’s guards had come howling into the chamber, waving their weapons over their heads as if we should be intimidated by their noise and motion alone.

“Now, Daisy!” Vayl yel ed. “Into the gateway with us!”

The blemuth swung us into the portal, and as we flew through, I yanked on the rope, pul ing my sword free of the monster’s foot, gaining myself a roar of thanks as we hurtled out of the Thin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Sunday, June 17, 12:15 a.m.

No other motion feels quite as exhilarating as flying, whether you’re parachuting from a Cessna Caravan at thirteen thousand feet or hang gliding off the cliffs at Mission Beach. However, in those cases you know that you have at least a decent chance of landing softly enough to maintain the integrity of your skeletal structure. Not so much when a blemuth has tossed you high into the cosmos and you’re not even sure your landing site is solid. So, while part of me grooved on defying gravity to the point that I felt like I was thumbing my nose at Mother Nature, the rest was trying desperately to figure out what I was hurtling toward.

I ruled out hot lava, just because our landing site wasn’t particularly glowing. I couldn’t hear surf, so we probably wouldn’t be swimming for it. Which left sharp, spiky rocks that could impale us in the most ghastly, gut- wrenching ways. Or some guy’s roof, in which case only a couple of us would have to worry about taking a furnace chimney up the ass while the rest of us could enjoy more typical crash-related injuries. Or—

“Trees!” Raoul cal ed out. “Get ready for a beating!”

Oh. Goody.

They were pines. So besides the abuse we took from smashing through at least half a dozen treetops whose branches tried their hardest to whip us off our perches, we also sustained slashes, cuts, and bruises that would take days to heal. But we didn’t die. I decided that was a plus.

When we final y dropped to the ground we lay there for a few minutes, gasping and sore, trying to convince ourselves we’d survived. Vayl was the first to decide he should ask the rest of us just to be sure.