It was lethal.
And we were trapped in a room with it.
The slau pulsed steadily for a moment and then it rushed at us.
Chapter Thirty-Eight Tor
I lower the varga to her feet in the forest as Jessie works on opening a rift.
The shifter barely weighs a thing, all skin and bones. They’ve been starving her and yet she makes no attempt to attack any of us. The feral hunger that I’ve seen in other varga eyes is absent in hers.
The urge in my veins to slaughter her is also absent. “I have so many questions.”
She looks almost sad. “I can’t answer them. All I can do is tell you that things aren’t always black and white.”
“You kill humans.”
She bows her head. “I know.”
A pang of pity stabs at my chest, surprising me.
Her jaw tenses. “Do not pity me.” She lifts her head and locks gazes with me. “Do not let this interlude color your determination to end us. If we enter your world, we come here to feed, and you must fight us. You must stop us. Do you understand?”
I’m so confused. There is no doubt that the varga are killers, but here’s one who seems contrite, even a little disgusted with her actions. Could it be they aren’t masters of their deeds? Are they being forced to hunt and kill?
Everything I know about the varga is in question. “I need to understand.”
A cough wracks her body, and she sags against me. “I can’t help you with that.”
“Tor.” Leif moves closer to us, carrying the other varga. “She’s barely conscious.”
“We can’t stay any longer,” the ice-eyed varga says. “If we do, we’ll die. The air…Too long, and it’s toxic.”
The air crackles and Jessie steps back with a smug look on her face. “One rift ready for transporting.”
“Sophie.” Arctic Eyes strokes the other varga’s face. “Come, we’re going home.”
Sophie’s eyes flutter open and she smiles weakly. “We lived, Dayna.”
“Yes, but we need to hurry.”
Leif lowers Sophie to the ground and Dayna ducks under her arm to support her even though her own legs are shaking. The two varga head for the rift.
Jessie steps back to join Leif and me as the varga shuffle toward the portal. Dayna looks over her shoulder when she gets there.
“The next time we meet, we will not be friends,” she says. “Do not let down your guard.”
She steps through the rift and the light swallows her.
“What the fuck, Tor?” Leif asks softly.
I shake my head. “I don’t know, but we—”
My chest lurches, and my stomach drops as if I’ve just taken a dip on a roller coaster. My head whips to Leif to find him staring at me, wide-eyed. His hand goes to his diaphragm.
“Cora!” we say in unison.
We turn and sprint through the clearing, because this is no ordinary tug on the threads that bind us. It’s a wrench.
A scream.
Cora’s in mortal danger, and we need to get to her. Now.
Chapter Thirty-Nine Cora
The slau rushed toward us, a wave of darkness intent on swallowing us whole. I brought my hands up and slammed it with lightning from my fingertips, opening up crimson welts across the surface of its body, but the wounds closed up just as quickly as I made them. Sloane and Poppy hit it with their power. Waves of green and blue energy battered the slau, forcing it away from us.
“We need to deactivate the barrier and get out of here,” Sloane yelled.
Jessie was the warding queen, but she wasn’t here.
“Cover me!” Poppy cried.
Sloane and I intensified our attacks on the slau, forcing it further back to clear a path to the steps.
Poppy made a break for it and Rune ran with her, keeping his body between the slau and the witch.
“Focus, Cora,” Sloane ordered. “All we can do is hold it back. Keep it from repairing itself so it can’t attack.”
“I have my iron daggers.”
“They won’t work against a slau this size. You’d need a fucking flurry of iron swords.”
“So, we run?”
“If you want to live, yeah.”
I channeled more power into my hands, chest trembling with the effort. “You’re telling me there’s no way to kill a slau.”
“Oh, you can kill a slau, but not one this size. This is…This is a fucking anomaly. They shouldn’t grow this large.”
We stepped forward in unison, pushing the slau further back. Energy rushed down my arms, flowing out of my fingers in bright white bolts of light.
The slau writhed and shrieked in rage. Faces rippled over its inky surface, eye whites popped open here and there, mouths yawned in desperation, and hands pushed out of its viscous body.
Join us.
Be one with us.
Words from my nightmare. I shook my head and focused on keeping the level of power up.
Rune’s growl battled the slau’s shrieks. A quick glance in Poppy’s direction showed that she was frantically drawing runes in the air.
“How’s it going, Pops,” Sloane yelled.
“I can’t…Sloane, it’s too strong, I can’t—”
A crack and Poppy was thrown across the room. She slammed into the pool table and slumped to the ground, unconscious.
“Fuck.”
The slau jerked and slid forward and then my chest grew tight. Oh shit. No. The tugging sensation bloomed in my chest as the slau began its extraction of my soul.
Sloane made a strangled sound. I didn’t need to look at her to know she was also in its grip. My power crackled and fizzled out, and then it had me. My boots slid across the ground, drawing me toward it. Tentacles of darkness shot out of the slau and whipped toward us, ready to embrace us.
“No!” Sloane cried.
Rune’s huge golden body cut a path between us and the slau. He looked at me, and I saw his intention in his hazel eyes.
“No, Rune. No!”
He leapt at the slau with a growl but never made it. His body twisted mid-air and he was flung across the room by an invisible force.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention, awareness blooming in the pit of my stomach.
Jasper took
