She turned to face everyone slowly coming to a halt, pushed out her power and connected them once again like a hive mind. “There are hundreds of warriors just ahead. There will be a fierce battle to escape the Empire, but I believe we can make it.”
Shocked murmurings floated on the air, with cries of denial and anger. Some tried to run back toward their cages, fearing the retaliation of the Empire. The sounds of stomping feet, jangling armors rumbled through the tunnel as the warriors ahead started coming at them.
“Please step from the shadows Lachlan Ravenswood,” Shilah said.
He complied, and a surge of fear filled those close enough to see. “We have a powerful ally who will help us win!” She did not believe it, but she needed them to feel anything but the rancid fear and horror filling her mind. He was just one man, and she already sensed his priority would be to get her to safety, not saving the quivering, battered souls before her.
“This man is Lachlan Ravenswood.” She fed to their mind his image as she spoke. “He is An Archduke of the Darkage and has sworn to help me as I help us escape.”
Their fears and horror amplified and swarmed their senses.
Shilah stumbled back from this, desperately connecting to the minds of everyone behind her.
“He will not hurt us.”
She waded through their jumbled, panicked thoughts.
“Yes, he is a Darkan…but he is my Darkan.” Her heart trembled when she felt the echoes of his amusement and pleasure at her absurd claim.
There was no calm in their minds, and the assault on her senses was becoming too much. Shards of glass seemed to be piercing her head with the effort to sort through their uncensored emotions. Yet Shilah could not give up, would not give up. How could she liberate millions from tyranny and save her people if she could not save these pitiful people before her? Grief welled up, enveloping her, driving away her logic and reason. “There are three hundred and nineteen of you escaping with me. Not one of you will die,” she promised, determination beating through her. “I am Lachlan Ravenswood’s mate, and he has vowed to lay the world at my feet…and he will start with this piece of the Empire.”
Kala cried out her denial. The air in the room thickened to a black malevolence and savage satisfaction burned along her senses. A flood of violence
and depravity stormed into her as the blackest of chakra swirled around him. Palpable might and brutality emanated from Lachlan, and with a sinuous twist, the tattoo on his skin curled around his body.
Her sister flinched, her lips forming but no word emanating. Shilah faced him, a desperate fear in her urging her to take back the words, that there were unimaginable consequences to her plight to save these people but could not.
The warriors in the distance started running towards them, and she felt the people at her back braced for the brutal attack. She spared them no attention, centering her powers into the deep still well inside and pushing out the largest kinetic protective barrier around the people behind her. The blue glow of that aura rushed over their heads until it covered everyone in a barrier of cracking energy.
Lachlan tilted back his head and inhaled. Then a pulse of raw savagery and blood-thirst came from him as the tattoo of the Leviathan twisted off his skin and appeared before her. Shilah screamed at the wave of darkness and death that leaked from it.
Rage flooded Shilah, consuming her with the need to kill, to fill the terrible emptiness. She slapped a hand to her forehead, fighting to separate the demon’s beast essence from hers. The link had to be severed. Her head was splintering, fragmenting as the pressure increased. An ugly, twisting darkness poured through Lachlan to her as the need to bloodlet lit in his veins creating an inferno, one that blazed inside creating an unrelenting need to kill.
Somehow, she created a shield along their entwined threads, and it was only then she could breathe. This…this was more than she could understand. And she had aligned herself to him at her peril. Her throat ached as the implication of the depth of trouble she stood in resounded.
That monster’s head shifted. His pitiless eyes slid over her, making her flesh crawl, but with a sensual heat, revulsion and desire pulsed through her in equal measure. Lachlan’s beast revealed itself, towering over her at least ten feet tall, the head was dragon-like with a massive maw with serried rows of pointed teeth. The body was pitch black, except for the massive ridges running from its head down to its tail. Those were made from the most beautiful scales of green, purple, yellow and red. It stood upon four legs, muscled with rope-like sinews, and ending in feet with curved talons that gleamed like polished silver scimitars. The beast’s long pointed tail lashed in its eagerness to kill, its serpent eyes were pitiless in their barbarity, yet the creature was absolutely exquisite in its sheer savagery. Lachlan himself appeared as darkness. Chakra roiled around him like the blackest of smoke, and the wall of energy she felt rising inside him was unfathomable.
Heart pounding, tasting fear in her mouth, she braced, not sure what to expect.
“Kill.”
The command burned along their link to the monster, and the beast screamed its triumph. Darkness descended, and Shilah could not see anything. Cries of fear and pain echoed through the tunnels, and the psychic overload had her doubling over. The terrible pressure in her head increased so that for a moment her head felt as if it might explode.
“What is happening?”
Her whispered entreaty was met with implacable silence from Lachlan. Only cries of terror and pain. Sound waves whistled through the narrow corridor and battered at the psychokinetic shield. Then as soon as the attack started, it ended, and the darkness relented.
Shilah stared. And then stared some more. She started to tremble violently.
Dozens of fallen warriors littered the floor. Hundreds of them and all by the hands of Lachlan Ravenswood and his beast. She glanced toward his direction and flinched. He was coated in blood, and thankfully the beast that had originated from the tattoo embracing his body was not in sight.
But she could feel the malevolence ahead.
The walls of the tunnel rumbled and shook with such force she cried out and leaned against one of its walls.
“What is happening?” she demanded.
“Come, mate, your power is needed.”