Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [24]
“Silence!” he yelled back at her. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“I command you—”
“Not here!” he snapped, enraged at how every word she uttered destroyed more of the lie he had built between himself and the demons. Why couldn’t she understand the need for caution, the need for silence? Let Legion think what they wanted. Doing so was to Caelan’s—and Elandra’s—advantage.
Unwilling to let her say anything else, he severed her, wrapping her in cold isolation. He did it without thinking, pushing her partway into the void without warning or preparation. He had never done this to a person before. He had never realized he could, but it was necessary.
Elandra’s eyes widened with astonishment and her mouth opened, but she could not speak.
It was a strain to hold her so. For the first time since he’d swum the river, he felt beads of perspiration pop out across his forehead.
Feeling her mind and emotions lash out against his control, Caelan knew he could not hold her long. Fiercely he turned on Legion. “Tell me now,” he said harshly. “What is your answer? Do we have a bargain, or not?”
There were suspicious hisses and much jostling among the demons in the back. At least fifty or more were present now, red-eyed and semihostile. They kept staring at Elandra, and Caelan felt increasingly uneasy.
“Warm-blood,” the spokesman said at last. It drew back a step from Caelan and no longer looked reverent. “With other warm-blood, now not under spell of protection. No warm-bloods may cross the river. She is our meat.”
Fear stabbed through Caelan. To hide it, he raised his sword and scowled at them. “Would you rather feed on one woman instead of the many warm-bloods I will give you? Let her go, and I will free you.”
The spokesman drew back angrily and bared its fangs. “Trick!” it cried.
Just as it struck, however, Caelan brought down his sword in one clean, heavy stroke. The spokesman’s body, severed in half, went spinning in two directions.
Blood, black and foul-smelling, spilled from the two halves.
From the pooling blood emerged tiny demons, at least a dozen, hopping and furious.
Caelan stepped back, realizing he could not fight them the usual way.
But there was another way to kill them, a way he had never used before. He had always feared the power, knowing that if he ever used it he would want it again.
But the demons were rocking back and forth on their haunches now, tongues flickering, tails lashing. “Kill! Kill! Kill!” they chanted, clearly working themselves into a frenzy while the tiny demons grew larger with every passing second.
Caelan released Elandra and entered severance himself, plunging deeply into its coldness until he hardly knew himself, hardly remembered what he was or had been. Before him crouched the demon horde, a hundred now and more coming. Their guttural shouts and hisses filled the air, but he hardly heard the sound.
Rushing past him, they surrounded Elandra. Her horse reared, but the demons pulled the animal down, ripping it apart as others swarmed Elandra. She screamed.
Caelan could see the threads of life, black and knotty, stretching to something hidden beyond the mist at the edges of his vision. He wanted to see no farther, wanted to know nothing about what the threads were connected to.
Caelan severed the threads of life, cutting off the two demons first, then slashing in a broad swathe at the others.
Terrible screams filled the air. He snapped out of severance and saw blackened, charred heaps littering the ground. Smoke rose from the corpses; the stench from them choked his nostrils.
Howling with fear, the remaining demons fled from him, vanishing into the passageway.
He let them go, running instead to Elandra. She lay unharmed on the ground, one leg pinned beneath the dead horse. Her face was bone white. Her eyes flashed with fear and something else.
He pulled her free, grateful she had suffered no hurt, and lifted her to her feet.
Fear and revulsion were mingled on her face. She stared