Land of Monsters (Savage Lands #8)

Chapter 23

Ash

The cold air blissfully licked against my skin, my lungs filling with freedom, with life. Earth balanced on a fine line between existence and the void. Either you went too far up in the atmosphere or too far down into the core, and life ceased to exist. The hollowness was like a vacuum, leaving an emptiness in my body.

My toes curled in my boots when I spotted the night sky, giving my eyes focus. I craved the feel of my feet in the soil, the buzz of nature sinking into my bones, whisking away the panic still thumping in my chest.

Raven’s hand squeezed mine, calming the chaos in my chest. The thrum of her pulse centered me, like she was the soil my roots needed to embed themselves in.

Stepping inside the courtyard of the castle, she let go, her gun raised as she searched the area, but her weapon was for show. Her dweller lingered underneath; the obscurer sat impatiently on her tongue.

Rook’s large dweller shape glided in silently, blending in just as well with the night as he did in the pitch black. His eyes glowed hot, his claws cutting into the cobbled ground. He huffed, his nose nudging Celeste to stay next to him.

Her expression was blank, her eyes still slightly unfocused, her body covered with bruises, cuts, and grime. But she clung to him like a terrified child. She wore a loose tank that barely covered the tops of her legs, and I could see the redness between her thighs, the coating left behind from her assault.

My stomach twisted, my gaze flickering to Raven. She had been within seconds of being his victim too, a body to use as he pleased, nothing more than an empty vessel. Guttural rage surged up my throat, the snap of tree branches echoing through the yard.

The sounds of battle raging on the other side of the courtyard wall finally brought me back to what was important in the moment.

Surviving.

“This way.” I pointed us towards the exit. We barely got a few feet.

Swish!

Rook’s beast roared, and I whipped around to see his back leg dip, an arrow sticking out of it.

Swish! Another arrow drove into his other back leg, dropping him to the ground. My gaze snapped up to where the arrows came from.

Revulsion strangled my throat.

“I knew the bomb would scurry some rats to the surface.” Iain stood on the upper balcony, smugness curling his lips, his bow and arrow aimed at us, shooting off another one into Rook’s back. The dweller jerked, his body twitching, trying to shake it off, yet his massive frame struggled to rise.

“Rook!” I felt Raven’s fear, her confusion at her brother’s rapid response to the arrows. Dark dwellers were the killers, the almost indestructible assassins of the old fae world. A few arrows shouldn’t be able to take him down.

“I had these custom made.” Iain grabbed another arrow, appraising it. “Coated in a lethal dose of pure goblin metal. It seeps into your blood system instantaneously, paralyzing you.” Fuck. Pure goblin essence was fatal. “Did you not see what happened to your Russian friend earlier?”

My mind scrambled back to how easily Eve went down, her legs not able to get her back up after the arrow hit her.

“She’s dead. And soon your brother will be too.” Iain sneered.

A rumble of pure fury vibrated up Raven’s throat, taking a step towards him.

“I wouldn’t.” Iain pulled back the bow, pointing at Celeste and letting another go, zipping over her head to the person who stood behind her.

The tip sank into my chest before I could even move.

“NO!” Raven screamed, her eyes wide in horror, instinctively moving to me.

“Uh-uh,” Iain toyed, stopping her in her tracks, her body heaving, her fear radiating through me.

I stared numbly down at the arrow piercing my chest, feeling the poison slipping into my tissue. Plucking it out, I dropped the toxic barb to the stone floor with a clank, my sneer rising to Iain.

“I will make sure you go down with me.”

“Such meaningless words.” Iain rolled his eyes, lowering his bow, his face a portrait of pure conceit and narcissism. “You will do nothing to me.” He nodded to something behind us.

A bulked-up figure stepped out from the shadows, chest puffed as he made gorilla noises while another man slinked toward me, his catlike characteristics stalking his prey. The third shifted shadily closer, the hyena-man going for Celeste.

Joska and Samu advanced on Raven and me, causing her to growl, her magic swelling, her claws and teeth budding from her as the blades on her back pierced her clothes, a hiss of words rolling off her tongue.

Iain grabbed his head with a cry.

“What is happening?” Iain’s voice rose in panic. “What are you doing?”

Raven snarled, her obscurer blackening the stars above, dimming the firebulbs, its fury like a fog of death.

Iain screamed, blood pooling from his nose, her power squeezing his brain.

“Stop her!”

Joska leaped for her, but her obscurer was too focused on Iain to notice.

“No!” I bellowed, but it was too late. Joska tackled her to the ground, breaking her concentration for a moment.

It was enough time for Iain to pick up his bow. Aiming it at her, his fingers twitched to let go of the poison arrow.

“Mroczny! Stop!” I heaved, pleading with her, not able to handle if anything happened to her, the toxin already tingling my fingers. “Please… dziubu?. ”

She snapped her teeth, her eyes fire, wanting to disobey me.

Dziubu?. I called to her, running invisible fingers over the monsters inside her, whispering for them to back down. I can’t handle anything happening to you.

“Nor I you,” she responded to something I never said aloud.

“Too late for that,” I whispered.

Joska latched goblin metal around her wrists, ripping her fae magic from her. Her body went limp for a moment under him.

“Get the fuck up.” Joska kicked at her, dragging her up to her feet.

Iain glared at her, wiping the blood leaking from his nose. “Take them to my mother.”

Samu grabbed onto me, pushing me to follow Joska and Raven, Balazs yanking Celeste with him.

“Nooooooooo!” The high-pitched cry came from Celeste. She thrashed against Balazs, screaming hysterically. “Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!” Her arms flayed and punched. It was as if his touch dissolved her numbness and pushed her into sheer panic. Her trauma was a place where logic was no longer a concept, and distress had taken over. “Let gooooo!” she wailed, twisting out of the hyena’s hold. “Nooo! Help!!”

“Get her under control!” Iain ordered, lifting his arrow again, but she wouldn’t stop wiggling and squirming, making it impossible to get a lock on her. “Shut her up!” His agitation rose at her frenetic screeches.

“Get off me!” she pitched from her gut. “Don’t touch—”

Balazs reared back, his fist striking her face so hard it cracked like a whip across the courtyard. Her neck snapped back, flinging her body to the ground in a heap.

Rook growled, trying to lift himself up, but fell back down, his system trying to fight the poison crippling him.

Celeste didn’t move. I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.

“Good.” Iain lowered his bow, nodding his chin at Balazs in approval. “Move them out.” He indicated to me and Raven. Samu, Joska, and Balazs shoved us forward to a stairway.

Rook growled as we passed, but his physique sagged further into the stone, the handful of arrows still sticking out of his hide, his breath labored.

Energy crackled in the air between Rook and Raven, as if they were communicating. A sob wracked her chest, a hum in his. They held each other’s gazes until the last moment. Joska drove us up the stairs, leaving Rook to die.

In the moments of battle, where death and survival were a blink apart, there was no time to think, to consider true loss when peril was a constant. But I could feel Raven lock down, not allowing even a consideration, a splinter of doubt that he would survive this. She couldn’t, not if she had to keep functioning.

But we all knew pure goblin essence was fatal. Even if you got a remedy quickly after it hit the bloodstream, it still might not help. I had worked with herbs, which could postpone the fatality until a remedy was found, but I had none of those nearby, even if I had the chance to save him.

To save myself.

Rook and I were dead men walking.

My only design was to somehow get Raven to safety before the poison overtook me, to know she was secure and away from harm. Then I could die peacefully.

I tripped up the stairs leading to the top, numbness shooting down into my legs. The reverberations of battle drummed through the stone and into my bones like a death march.

When we reached the top, my lungs sucked in. Fire torches ignited the land below in a bath of yellowish red, as if we descended into the nine layers of hell, each one a different horror.

Bodies littered the ground, and I was afraid to look too closely to see if I knew any of them. I could see Warwick and Brexley fighting by the pond and Scorpion and Hanna below us, but the rest were lost in the throng of silhouettes dancing the last steps of their demise.

“Perfect timing.” Her voice knifed through my chest, convulsing me with rage, wrenching my head to her.

Sonya stood on the higher walkway, her blood-red dress blowing in the wind, her blonde hair twirling around her face. She turned and smiled, the necklace around her throat glinting under the firelight.

“You can come watch as your friends die.” She motioned to the commotion below. “It’s been quite entertaining to watch them try, though.”

“Looks like most of those are yours.” I couldn’t stop the quip from snipping out, noting Warwick taking another dozen out while Brexley’s ghostly army lined them up like lambs to a slaughter.

“Because I allowed them to.” She rubbed at her stomach, the fabric hiding any observation of a bump forming there. Fae had different pregnancy times. Some were equivalent to humans, some showed very quickly, some took years. It all depended on what they were carrying.

There was no real precedence of a fae carrying one of those monsters’ babies. If there was, I didn’t know of it.

“But now I’ve grown bored. My emotions are so fickle these days,” she mused, her smile haughty. She nodded to her guard, who let out a whistle.

The sound churned my blood to ice, the Primul darting out of the gate below, each one heading for a separate group of my family.

Fear and anger rebounded in my chest, the goblin metal robbing me of my magic, keeping the trees from responding. I couldn’t do anything but stand here, watching the monsters leap towards my family, taking them from me.

“No,” I whimpered, hating my feebleness, hating that I wasn’t stronger.

“Go join them.” Sonya ordered Joska, Samu, and Balazs. “The baby is making me sleepy, and I want to go to bed soon.”

Joska’s grin hitched the side of his face, his attention going to where Brexley was.

“Gladly.” An excited monkey sound hooted from him. His hatred of Brex was thick in the air. His grudge from their past had him taking off down the stairs, pounding his chest. Samu and Balazs trailed after.

“Caden!” I heard Birdie scream out in warning as the rhino barreled for them, hitting Caden with his horn, flinging him to the ground, rolling him.

Caden! My mouth tried to call for my friend, but nothing came out, my body shaking and starting to work against me.

Raven thrashed against her cuffs, her tongue trying to move the gag from her mouth.

“Oh no, sweetheart.” Iain grabbed her ponytail, yanking her back into him, his mouth moving against her ear, malicious hatred pointed at her. “After what you just did, you will watch every one of them get their lungs torn from their chests.” His eyes shifted to me, his hand sliding down Raven’s stomach. “And he will watch me fuck you before he dies.” He flipped the button on her pants.

I charged at him, my teeth bared. A razor-edged spear came to my throat, a guard slipping from the shadows to stop me from attacking, but when I peered over, I felt the ground break under me again.

Dubthach.

The Druid was dressed in the same dashiki-style shirt and cotton pants, but nothing else felt the same. His body was tense, and he stared down at me with a detached expression, his jaw tense, his eyes flickering with disgust.

What. The. Fuck.

It was obvious… he wasn’t being kept prisoner here. He belonged here.

“Holy shit. It was you.” I gaped, seeing everything in a different light. “It was you who led the army to the site. You turned on your friends.” I always figured it was me, that Nyx had tracked me down, exposing the camp’s whereabouts.

“They were never my friends .” His lip lifted. “Even in a place that pretended to accept everyone, I was treated like an outcast. I belonged less than the humans did.”

“So you turned on them because you weren’t in the popular group?” I sputtered. “Becoming a slave to her instead?”

“Slave?” He chuckled. “I get freedom here to be who I truly am. Iacob cut us off from our true nature. We couldn’t use magic inside the camp walls, besides my protection spell. He limited us, kept us docile and weak. No weapons of any kind, including ourselves.”

“Why didn’t you just leave, then?”

“Because he saved my life a long time ago.” Dubthach’s lip curled. “I was bound to him.”

“Until you paid him back.”

“I have now saved his life.” Dubthach motioned under us. “He lives… and is even better off. Superior to his human form.”

“Not sure he will feel the same.”

“Once his transition is done,” Sonya spoke up. “He will see the truth.”

“And what’s your truth, Sonya?” I sneered, but every word was a struggle, slurring and slow, the toxins burning into my veins.

“That the weakest will always be weeded out.” A mirthless smile hinted on her lips, her eyebrow cocking at me before she stared back at the carnage below, her hand once again going to her abdomen. “Laws of nature. The strong take out the weak.” She stared off, then yawned. “Iain, my love, before you fuck that girl in front of me, like you did to Sergiu before I killed Lazar…”

What? Lazar was dead?

“Oh yes, such fun.” Iain chuckled. “He thought himself so tough, so alpha until I fucked it right out of him as his father watched, had him moaning so loud, even after his father was shot right in front of him.”

Vomit coated my throat, seeing for the first time how truly sick Iain was. I shouldn’t have been surprised—he shot his own brother in the head without hesitation.

“I don’t need you to rehash the moment, my dear.” She patted his arm, the one still wrapped around Raven. “The Primul are having too much fun playing with their toys, and I am desperate for a bath and a snack. Is Kalaraja ready?”

“I think so,” Iain responded.

She leaned over the wall. “Kill them all!”

A chattering hiss filled the air. Z stepped further into the field, his tail curled over his head, and wrapped his hand around someone’s throat, picking him off the ground. Their short frame struggled in his grip. I recognized him.

Kozlov.

As fast as a bullet, Z’s stinger stabbed through his neck, breaking through bone, cartilage, and guts. Dimitri Kozlov’s eyes widened, understanding filling them before Z yanked his tail back, almost tearing off the president’s head, the body going limp in his arms. Z flung the corpse to the ground with no thought and headed for his next victim.

Not far from his corpse, Eve laid dead, an arrow still sticking out of her chest.

The squeal of a wild boar echoed across the garden, the Primul running into a group, his tusks slicing into Wesley’s legs.

I tried to scream, to bark out a warning, but my voice got lost, drowning in my weakness. I pleaded with the nature gods, demanded them to rise, to burn the world down. Nothing happened, except darkness prickling at the edges of my vision.

Iain’s hands started to move down Raven’s body, yanking on her pants. He fixed his gaze on me, making sure to keep my attention on what he was doing.

I fell further into hell, trapped in my body, hearing the screams of my friends dying, watching my mate being touched by a psychopath, and I could do nothing to prevent it.

Dziubu?. Sajnálom. I expressed my sorrow, my soul aching.

Don’t you dare give up on me. I could see her glare back at me, but grief and devastation hinted in her emerald eyes. You are not allowed to leave me. You understand me?

I wish that was a promise I could make her.

Ash! Please don’t give up.

Did she think I wanted to leave her? To go out like this? Once again, I had let her down. She would be the one to watch me die, and I was helpless to stop it.

My legs dropped to the stone, numbness moving into my brain. I had finally found my soul, my heart, and I lost it all before it even started.

CRACK!

Magic popped the air like a cannon, the particles making waves like a lapping pool. Energy rushed over my skin, my head twisting to the side.

I was hallucinating. There could be no other explanation.

A fae door cut out of nothing floated near the property line, a figure walking through the opening.

Dzsinn.

My lids narrowed, blinking again, trying to clear my vision. My mind was playing tricks on me. Almost no one could work the fae doors since the barrier fell between the worlds. And you couldn’t show up inside a protected Druid barrier. Fae couldn’t counter a Druid spell.

Yet the battlefield went still, and a gasp rose from Sonya.

“How did they get in? What did you do!” she screeched at Dubthach.

“N-nothing.” Dubthach back from me, in shock. “It’s not possible.”

Sonya shoved her disbelief away, schooling her face, turning to the single man who had broken through.

“Is that your great talent, cousin?” She clasped her hands on the wall, trying to hide her confusion, appearing annoyed. “Popping through fae doors?”

“He should not be able to do it.” Dubthach shook his head in a hiss. “He is fae.”

“Yes, I am fae.” Dzsinn smiled, answering the Druid, but looking at Sonya. “But some of my friends are not.”

Movement came from behind him, the air fluttering like waves. Figures filed out of the door, and I heard Raven gasp through her gag, my own voice getting lost in the sea of poison.

Faces I recognized from a year ago stepped into the gardens—Ember, Eli, Cooper, West, Gabby, Cole, Dax, Dominic and a few more I didn’t recognize.

But when her father, Lorcan, emerged alongside a tiny brunette, looking so much like her daughter, I had to blink again. Her expression was fierce, magic billowing around her, telling me not to take her petite frame for granted.

The Sovereign of the Unified Nations.

Queen Kennedy.