“Are you okay, Ember?” the panther panted, looking all the part a wild cat, her mouth painted with blood and her fur matted. Ember was at once relieved and horrified to see her.
“Been better,” she admitted, taking advantage of the distraction to tug the shotgun fully away from the gunman. She held it at an angle and stomped on it hard enough that the wood cracked, slinging the broken weapon as far as she could into the trees.
“Hang in there,” Jisu yelled back, engaging with the closest human, the short man with the machete. She made no acknowledgment of the two dead Linnaeans, whose blood was soaking into the soil like rain after a storm.
“Go hide,” Ember told Daniel, who was crouched next to Gunther’s splayed-open body. The human whose face she had disfigured had yet to recover, and she stepped over him to join Jisu’s fight against the three others.
Without speaking, they fell into the rhythm they had established during their six months as training partners. Ember guarded the panther’s back, protecting her from the close fighting that was her weakness. They bobbed and weaved between each other like dual whirlwinds, preventing the humans from adapting to their fighting styles.
The machete-wielder was the first to give into the pressure. When he charged straight at Jisu, she ducked under his arm and came up behind him, using her foot to boot him at Ember who disarmed him with the technique she’d learned in Ophelia’s class. Her knee slammed into his torso the moment it was unprotected, the bone giving way with a crack.
She drew back for a headstrike, but he was yanked out of her reach by the largest of the three remaining humans, a tomahawk-wielder with a beard as black as coal. Ember gritted her teeth, doubting she could take them both simultaneously.
“Ember!” Jisu yelled, and her head snapped up in search of the panther. The fighting had brought them to the other side of the clearing, where the female gunman lay at an unnatural angle. The unmistakable glint of Ember’s fang knife came from the top of her pack, where it must have poked through after she’d fallen. Jisu hooked it with the toe of her boot, flinging it toward Ember. “Catch!”
It went arching through the air, handle over blade, and Ember caught it just as the two humans she’d been facing attempted a coordinated attack. The machete-wielder grabbed at her from behind, but she jumped back, feigning a low kick and then swinging the same leg into a headshot. Without pausing, she spun low with her knife in hand, avoiding the other’s fist, and came up to backhand him with the blade. It plunged into his face and he fell, screaming.
In a split second, the scene was seared into Ember’s mind forever: the wickedly curved blade sticking from his eye as the dying light caught the rippling pattern on its surface; everyone and everything covered in blood; the heavy breathing of the dying in the background.
She was forced to move as her infrared detected movement to her side, and she darted away just as the tomahawk sliced into the air where she’d just been standing. Its wielder was big but slow, and it wasn’t difficult to keep up the footwork necessary to avoid him.
Ember looked for Jisu, finding the panther battling the archer back at the treeline. She was gaining the upper hand: her technique and speed far exceeded his, and he was finding it difficult to react to her inhuman acrobatics. He would fall at any moment, and then they could take down the remaining man together.
Except… The archer had held his own against Gunther, and his steps seemed almost deliberate. What if he’s not being pushed back, but luring her back?
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He glanced down once, almost imperceptibly, but it was enough to confirm Ember’s suspicions. “Jisu!” she screamed, already in motion, but it was too late.
The cat planted her foot in a thick pile of leaves, gearing up for a finishing blow, and a bear trap snapped over her shin.
The prongs cut deep into her leg, and she threw her head back and let out a cry like a wounded animal. The archer closed in, and she tried to pull away, but the trap and its chains—connected to the bases of the nearest trees—held her fast. The archer raised his knife, and she would be dead within seconds.
Ember’s bloodlust consumed her like an open flame. She closed the distance in only a few steps, so quickly that the world seemed to warp around her. Her body slammed into the archer’s, sending them both sprawling away from Jisu in a tangle of limbs, and something cracked beneath them like splintering wood. His knife bit into the flesh above her hip, but she reached down between them and flung it away, fighting for the upper hand.
Suddenly, she was peeled away from the archer by a hand at the back of her neck, and before she could react, the tomahawk-wielder tossed her hard into the center of the clearing.
She landed near Gunther’s body, her ankle twisted the wrong direction and a wave of pain rippling out from her ribs. She managed to fight off unconsciousness but failed to get to her feet, falling back on one arm. The tomahawk-wielder approached while the archer helped the man she’d disfigured to rise into a sitting position.
With all three pairs of eyes on her, she steadied her jaw and tried desperately to think of a plan. She still had her fang knife, and the splintering crack had been the bow on the archer’s back breaking during the fall, so a long-range attack was out. If I can’t win, maybe I can stall until Ophelia arrives…
The idea withered and died as she saw the tomahawk-wielder approaching. His look was grave, and the archer half-stood, ready to assist him. Across the clearing, Jisu’s emerald eyes reflected the same despair that Ember felt. The panther’s death would come after hers, and then the humans would hunt down and kill Daniel, and no one would be left to warn the others.
The knowledge of what she had to do washed over her like waves on the lakeshore, and she almost laughed that she hadn’t realized it sooner, because it was only natural that things would end like this.
She felt strangely at peace as she brought her knife to her mouth, the tip of the curved blade catching the bottom of her fang. She wrenched it upward with a flick of her wrist.
The tooth splintered, and her mouth filled with blood from where the knife had nicked her gums. The tomahawk-wielder reached her at the same time, unaware of what she had done. He kicked her fang knife away, forcing her to the ground with a foot planted in the center of her chest. She went willingly, but as he swung back the tomahawk she wrapped both hands around his ankle and sunk her broken fang into his flesh.
She knew instantly that she had never truly meant it before—not with Freya, and not even with Roland—because the force of her muscles contracting sent a spasm of pain splitting through her head. She barely avoided the man’s swing, the blade cutting through the hair that pooled out behind her head.
The man didn’t swing again. He staggered backward, looking at the bite wound with a sort of shocked surprise. Everyone—Ember, Jisu, the archer, and even the man whose face she’d ruined (though his eyes were swollen shut) —looked on without moving, as if sensing that the moment was significant.
Corax had once told her that her venom was hemotoxic, and Mr. Ernold that it was five times more potent than the inland species. But Ember had never understood what any of it meant, not really, until the man before her came undone.
The blood came first: a trickle from his eyes, like tears; from his nose; from his ears, pooling at his clavicle and blooming across his shirt. It swelled beneath his skin, forming coin-sized blisters. The screaming started, then, registered only dimly by Ember’s ears, who watched as he convulsed until he collapsed to his knees. His muscles contracted of their own accord, like a puppet whose strings were being yanked, and all the while, a terrible darkness spread from the entry wound on his leg.
He screamed until he choked on the blood in his mouth, and then he fell face-first, twitching feebly.
It was as if his final collapse awoke the others. The disfigured man grabbed at the archer, asking for answers, but the taller man kicked him away. “Demon,” he whispered, his voice shaking, and with one last horrified look at Ember, he turned tail and ran into the forest.