out of reach. Once out of his hand, its flames had extinguished. He supposed it didn't matter that he'd dropped the axe. He was too weak to lift it right now anyway.
Haaken looked down at them, grinning with a maw full of shark teeth. 'You don't know how good it feels to finally have a chance to pay the two of you back for wrecking my ship and stranding me on Demothi Island. I suppose I should thank you, though. If it wasn't for you, I'd never have become the magnificent creature I am today. I did manage to extract a bit of revenge on Trebaz Sinara, though.' The wereshark focused his gaze on Diran. 'It was no accident that I threw your werewolf friend at Asenka. She was a pain in my rump back when I was human, and I was glad to end her life. Her bones made such lovely snapping sounds when the wolf hit her, didn't they?'
Haaken laughed then, the sound hideous coming from his inhuman throat.
Ghaji saw Diran struggle to rise, an expression of mingled sorrow and fury on his face, but the priest was too injured to get up and slumped back down onto the dock.
'I was just going to kill the two of you,' Haaken continued, 'but now that I think of it, that would be too easy. Instead, I'm to give you each a little love nip. Just enough to draw blood-and pass along my gift to you. I think you'll eventually come to enjoy being weresharks. I know I love it.'
Haaken started forward, mouth open wide-
'Get away from them!'
Haaken paused and turned to look at Tresslar. The artificer held forth the blackened dragonwand, the Amahau pointed directly at the wereshark.
'Take another step and I destroy you!'
'Don't bluff, old man,' Haaken growled. 'If that thing still worked, you'd have used it already.' The wereshark looked back down at Ghaji and Diran. 'You two aren't going anywhere soon. I'll wet my appetite for you by slaying the old man first.'
Haaken turned back to Tresslar and began to advance on the artificer. Tresslar held his ground, but Ghaji could see that the dragonwand was shaking in the artificer's hand. Tresslar had been bluffing, and now that Haaken had called his bluff, it appeared that the artificer had run out of tricks.
'I don't suppose you're going to give me a chance to say any last words?' Tresslar said, backing up slowly.
'Why should I?' Haaken snarled.
'Pity,' Tresslar said. 'Because if you did, I'd say, 'Look out.''
Haaken scowled and spun just in time to see a strange creature-part wolf and part shark-leaping at him.
Diran watched as Leontis-at least, he assumed the hybrid monster was his old friend-tore into Haaken with a savage fury that was both wonderful and terrible to behold. Leontis knocked Haaken onto the dock and clawed at his chest with his hands, ripped at his belly with his feet, and ravaged his neck and face with his teeth. Haaken screamed as his blood fountained into the air and his viscera spilled onto the dock. Diran knew that Haaken was no longer a threat to them, so he turned his attention to Nathifa.
The priest didn't know what was happening inside the lich, but from the way her shadowy form was shaking, he assumed that Makala was doing something to attack the sorceress from within. Nathifa couldn't drain Makala's lifeforce, since she was a vampire and thus undead, but Makala couldn't hope to do any lasting damage to the lich, since the only way to slay her kind was to locate and destroy the phylactery in which she'd stored her essence. The best Makala could hope for was a stalemate, but even weakened as Nathifa surely was from the effort of casting her summoning spell, she was still a powerful sorceress, and Diran knew it was only a matter of time until Nathifa bested Makala. Diran hadn't driven the dark spirit from Makala's body only to abandon her now. He had to do something, and he had to do it fast.
He struggled to rise up on his left elbow, ignoring the throbbing in his skull, and the resulting wave of nausea that twisted his gut. He knew he had a severe head injury, but he couldn't afford to waste the time it would take to heal himself. He could tend to his wounds later-after Nathifa was defeated once and for all.
Diran retained his grip on the silver arrowhead. He held it lightly between the thumb and forefinger of his free hand and, though it wasn't a dagger, he'd sharpened its edges, and Nathifa's transformation into a giant tentacled monster had made her a satisfyingly large target.
Diran whispered a quick prayer and hurled the holy symbol toward Nathifa. The silver arrowhead spun through the air, struck the lich's ebon substance, and passed into her darkness.
Perhaps it hadn't been the most skillful throw he'd ever made, Diran thought, but he'd take it.
Nathifa felt Makala, in humanoid form now, clawing at her from the inside. The lich wished she had never transported the vampire within her body on Trebaz Sinara, for surely that had given the woman the notion to attack this way. Normally, Makala's efforts to harm her would have been laughable, but Nathifa's power had been greatly diminished by the events of the last several days, and it was taking her longer to muster the strength to deal with the vampire than she would've liked-especially considering the fact that Prince Moren had arrived to claim his due. If she were to have any hope of slaying Bastiaan and the others, she had to deal with Makala swiftly.
She felt a small sharp-edged object slice into her. Not only was the damnable thing fashioned from silver, it also bore a holy blessing, imparted by Bastiaan, no doubt. The object burned like white fire inside of Nathifa, causing so much agony that she could no longer hold onto Makala. She ejected the vampire from her dark substance and flung Makala onto the dock. The woman landed near the priest and his half-orc companion, but Nathifa had no more attention to give the vampire. She had to expel the silver object from her body before-
She sensed tendrils of green mist curl onto the dock, stretch toward the ebon tentacles that supported her, and gently, almost lovingly brush against her dark substance.
Her time was up.
In his quarters aboard the Ship of Bones, Prince Moren sat in a chair fashioned from the unfulfilled dreams of dead sailors. Resting before him atop a table made from memories of regret and betrayal was the obsidian skull named Espial. Nathifa had bartered the skull in order to obtain the material she needed to repair her damaged vessel, and Moren had agreed not to leave Espial alone for a short time to give the lich an opportunity to achieve her vengeance. Moren had kept his word. He hadn't laid a finger on the skull, though that hadn't stopped him from examining it in other ways. It was a most intriguing object. The lich used it to communicate with Vol-or rather the Lich Queen used it to pass along her orders to Nathifa. But Espial served a dual purpose: it was also the lich's phylactery.
Prince Moren reached out and lifted Espial off the table. The skull was about to serve a third purpose. Nathifa's lifeforce was contained inside, and Moren-like the rest of his cursed crew-fed on the life essence of others. And the Prince was hungry.
Moren raised the skull to his mouth and, as if Espial were nothing more than a piece of rotten fruit, he pressed his decayed teeth onto its obsidian surface and bit down hard.
He chewed, swallowed, and grinned as black juice dribbled over his dry, leathery lips and onto the exposed bone of his chin. Delicious.
He took another bite.
Nathifa screamed.
But not for very long.
Diran watched as the lich's form broke apart into scraps of shadow that swirled about like black leaves before dissipating like smoke. He didn't know how-his arrowhead certainly hadn't done the deed-but he knew that Nathifa had been destroyed. Tresslar rushed to Diran's side and helped him to a sitting position. The priest looked out over the bay. The greenish mist that had covered the water was receding, and Diran could sense the presence of an evil much greater than Nathifa withdrawing. He was too hurt to worry about it now. Whatever the mist was, and whatever role it had played in the events here tonight would have to remain a mystery for the time being. Diran had more important tasks to tend to. He placed his hand over his heart, closed his eyes, and willed the healing power of the Silver Flame to work its divine magic through him. He then repeated the procedure for Ghaji, and when both men were whole and healthy once more, Tresslar helped them both to stand.
Makala stood on the dock, gazing out to the sea. Diran didn't know what she was looking at, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. He turned to Leontis, fearing they would still have a battle on their hands if the lycanthropic
