Hissing in pain, Nico pushed herself out of the crater she’d made and launched back into the air, grabbing the demon hand’s grasping claws as they came down on top of her, desperate for the ground below.
“Josef!” she bellowed, using all her strength to keep the enormous hand from slamming into the ground and crushing her in the process.
All at once, the hand went slack, the dull black carapace crumbling to nothing under her claws, severed in one blow from the Heart of War. Tossing the ruined limb aside, Nico shot into the air and looked frantically for the demon she’d once called Master.
She found him immediately. He was still on the ground where he’d landed, shoveling small mountains into his enormous gaping mouth. Behind him, a long trail of black, dead stone showed where he’d gorged himself already.
Nico’s heart fell in her chest. Already, he was noticeably larger, his great, black body towering over the mountain’s foothills. Another few minutes at this pace and he would be larger than the limbs that shot down through the holes.
With a snarl that grew into a howl, Nico charged.
He kept eating until the moment her claws touched his neck, and then he vanished into the shadows. She felt him move behind her and turned just in time to see him surface again. The size of him was intimidating. He towered over her, a great menace of teeth and powerful muscle even as he sank into a crouch. Fear began to curdle in her stomach, but Nico pushed it aside in favor of raw fury.
“Eating wasn’t part of the deal!” she roared. “What are you doing?”
“Betraying you,” the Demon of the Dead Mountain said, shoving another handful of stone down his throat. “I should think that was obvious.”
His honesty stopped Nico like a wall, and the demon began to laugh, a terrible, dry sound, like wind in dead grass. “Now, now, my dear,” he said. “You knew this was coming.”
This was true, but Nico still couldn’t quite believe he’d do it before the shell was sealed.
The demon sighed. “Don’t be an idiot, darling. Did you honestly think I’d wait politely until you all were free to gang up on me?” The topmost of his three yellow eyes rolled back toward the Dead Mountain. “When I saw the thief return, I waited to see if you’d notice. You didn’t, of course, but then you never were any good at keeping your eyes on more than one target at a time. Still, I thought I’d better take one last shot at bringing you over to the winning side. Waste of time, really, but I’ve always been the sentimental sort.”
Nico started to growl, but the demon shook his head. “Moot point now, dear. Didn’t you see the flash? The Hunter’s been reborn. He’ll undoubtedly be along shortly to take care of this.” The demon swept a clawed hand across the sundered sky and the clawing black arms. “But I didn’t let you free me just so I could go back to my prison. I intend to eat everything I can, and after your Powers reseal the shell, I mean to make myself king of this little feed bowl.”
He paused, his golden eyes roving over her. “This is your last chance, you know. There’s more than enough food here to share. We could rule together. I’d even let you keep your swordsman.” His triple-jointed arm reached out, claw turned up. “Last chance, daughter. I suggest you take it, or I’ll have to end you just like all the rest.”
Nico didn’t answer. Instead, fast as a flash, she slashed the Demon of the Dead Mountain straight across his claw, severing it at the wrist. She paused, waiting for the scream, but the demon didn’t even blink. He just grinned at her, his enormous mouth opening in a wall of sharp, black teeth.
“Remember,” he said, “you brought this on yourself.”
And then he was gone.
Nico blinked, focusing on the slimy, cold feel of him as he slipped through the shadows. He moved faster than she’d ever thought possible, popping up north of her. With a roar, she took off after him, slipping in and out of the shadows as she picked up speed.
In the sky, things were quickly getting out of control. Josef was holding all three cracks alone now, and without the Lord of Storms to block them, the hands were starting to reach the ground again, the clawed fingers eating the land wherever they touched. Nico cursed and moved faster. She had to put the demon down and get back to Josef before they were overwhelmed.
But as she closed in on the spot where the demon should have been, his presence vanished. Nico jerked to a stop, confused. She was at the foot of the Dead Mountain’s north slope. She’d felt the Demon of the Dead Mountain sliding up from the shadows here a second earlier, but now he was gone completely. She turned her head in a full circle, roaring a challenge. As her cry echoed through the sky, she suddenly felt him again, coming out of the shadows a few hundred feet away.
Even as she felt him surface, she knew she was too late. She’d been fooled. The black stone beneath her was the Dead Mountain, the demon’s prison for thousands of years. Of course he would know his way around it, know how to slide deep into its roots to avoid her before popping up in another location.
Nico shot into the air anyway, but it was far, far too late. A second after she left the ground, Josef’s scream ripped through her. She cleared the mountain’s ledge just in time to see Josef, her Josef, drop to his knees, the Heart of War falling from his limp hands. Below him, the demon’s claws poked up through the swordsman’s shadow, the enormous, curved tips stabbing through his blood-soaked chest.
The demon emerged fully as she watched, lifting Josef with him. He grinned at the swordsman before he flicked his claw. Josef hit the stone with an echoing crash. He didn’t cry out as he landed, just collapsed like a doll, motionless and limp even as the demon reached down to grasp his head delicately between his talons. He was seconds from twisting the swordsman’s head clean off when Nico barreled into him. The shock of her impact knocked Josef from his claws, and the demon went flying off the mountain.
Nico didn’t follow him. Instead, she crouched over Josef. Gathering his broken body delicately, she lifted him and gently moved him so that he was lying beside his sword. Using the tips of her claws, she wrapped his bloody fingers around the Heart of War’s hilt. She did not allow herself to notice how still he was, did not think about how his chest wasn’t moving. She allowed no thought into her head save two, that Josef would live, and that she was going to make the demon pay.
When her swordsman was with his sword, Nico turned on the demon. He was crouched at the edge of the snowy valley where she had thrown him, his claws spanning the entire swath of mountain that formed one half of the pass where she and Josef had once sheltered. It was only then that Nico realized just how enormous he’d become. He was easily twice her size now, his mouth big enough to swallow her head whole.
Sensing her fear, the Demon of the Dead Mountain grinned, baring his thousands of ragged teeth as his three yellow eyes shone with amusement. “If you want to beg, it’s not too late,” he said, his deep voice almost crooning.
Nico’s answer was to sink into the shadows. She moved like water through the dark, exploding out of the shadow cast by his enormous bulk on the cliff face behind him. Her momentum knocked them both off the mountain, and they fell in a black tangle, crashing into the snowy valley with enough force to rock the foundations of the world.
The demon pushed her off, using his superior strength to peel her claws back. Nico just snarled as she sank her teeth into the black flesh below his jaw. They both roared then, the demon in pain, Nico in furious vengeance as they tumbled in the snow.
Overhead, forgotten and uninhibited, the enormous hands shot down from the sky to dig into the defenseless mountains, lifting them up one by one as the holes in the sky grew larger. As the first mountain left the shell, a chorus of screeches echoed down through the cracks, a great call of victory that drowned out even the panicked screaming of the spirits below.
CHAPTER
24
Miranda rubbed her eyes as they ran, not quite believing that a place could be so white. She’d thought the Shaper Mountain’s heart was blinding, but it was dingy compared to the landscape they were now running through. The Lord of Storms led the way, though he was now so white himself that she kept losing him. So, instead, she followed Eli.
