Dark Tarot (Dark Carpathians)

The moment she had finished the sealing ceremony, she reached into her coat and pulled another sword free. Her gaze was on the last scorpion. It rattled its thick tail as it tried to follow the false trail Danutdaxton had left in the cloudy mist. She waited until the scorpion turned slightly, the tail stabbing down at an illusion Dax created, then she leapt down, slicing cleanly through the segmented tail. It was so much easier to get through than that of the gigantic scorpion, she nearly put too much strength into the cut. The stinger dropped to the forest floor, and she ran up the back, right over the eight eyes, and took another swing at the head. The body shook and the head ducked. Two hellhounds attacked from either side.

Danutdaxton shot arrows at them, but as he did, a hellhound ran up a fallen tree trunk and used it as a springboard and hit him square in the back, sending him tumbling through the sky. Dax shifted out from under the heavy body, dissolving into mist. The hellhound fell to the ground, landing hard, knocking the breath out of it. It stood up slowly, red eyes filled with rage and madness, locking onto Adalasia instantly.

Sandu felt as if his arms had been jerked out of their sockets, and the claws had ripped flesh and muscles all the way to the bone, but he shut off his ability to feel pain, reversed his energy and strength and yanked the sword from the earth. He rubbed the blade along the backs of his thighs, where the hyssop oil was the thickest, and then, with one swipe of the sharp blade, sliced off the hellhound’s front legs with those terrible claws embedded in his back. He couldn’t see them, but he felt them, and his strike was true.

The claws were still in his back, deep, leaking poison, the plague, but that was inconsequential at the moment. The hellhound slowly collapsed, black blood spewing in all directions. Sandu rolled out from under it, gripping the sword. Nicu was there, shooting arrows into the eyes of the hound to give Sandu his chance to get away. Sandu dissolved, streaking across the distance like a fallen star, straight to Adalasia.

The sword glittered like a comet as it came straight to his lifemate’s hand. She caught it and spun in a circle, the tips of the two swords pointing outward, then upward toward the sky, then down toward the soil as she murmured something softly. Sandu was too busy fitting arrows into a bow and killing the hellhounds as they thundered toward his woman. There seemed to be less of them. They were slower. Some stopped and shook their heads in confusion. The brethren finished them off quickly.

Sandu staggered and sat down in the middle of the leaves and rotting vegetation, away from the dead and dying hellhounds and the bodies of the scorpions. Adalasia hurried over to him. Benedek and Siv followed her.

“Sandu,” she breathed his name.

His skin was already turning gray, the poison in him rapidly replicating. “Adalasia, you can’t come near me.”

She frowned at him. “I’m your lifemate, Sandu. You need aid.”

He coughed, and blood bubbled around his mouth. Under his skin, she could see bleeding. Siv was already shedding his body against Sandu’s protest. Siv’s spirit, his white light, was astonishingly bright. Petru strode out of the cloudy mist and, without hesitation, shed his body as well, joining Siv in the fight to save Sandu.

“They will need blood,” Benedek said, “Nicu, Danutdaxton and I will provide that for them.” He indicated Dax. “This will be a long battle, and it is essential to guard their bodies while they attempt to drive the poison from his body and heal him, Adalasia. When it is necessary, and it will be, they will have you join with Sandu to hold him to this world.”

“Riley, my lifemate, will heal the ground while we work on Sandu,” Dax added. “She will be another pair of eyes to watch.”

Adalasia wanted to remind them that Sandu was her lifemate, that she should be the one to be healing him, but she could tell the situation was dire. Sandu had risked everything by aiding her, not once but twice. She had had no choice but to cut all communication between the demon and Nera. Sandu had saved them all both times. He had known the poison in the hellhound’s claws would move faster through his body when he had used so much energy, but he trusted his brethren to remove it, choosing to suffer the agony rather than risk them all.

Danutdaxton began to incinerate the carcasses while he waited to aid the others. Everywhere the hounds had bled, the black acid that was their blood had destroyed every living plant, leaving what appeared to be a barren wasteland behind. Even the trees they had brushed up against had terrible wounds in them.