A Battle of Blood and Stone (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 4)

I have less than two seconds to react, which isn’t enough time to get my whip off and uncoil it for an attack. Instead, I crouch low, put my hands up as if to ward the thing off, and call on my inner light power to protect me.

As expected, a filmy half-dome of a shield covers me and the wraith hits it so hard, the ground shakes. But then Maddox is there, a huge medieval looking sledgehammer in his hand. He swings it in a wide arc, aiming where the wraith’s head would be under the dark hood. With a sickening thwack, the wraith falls to the ground in a pile of dusty rags. That hit alone would not kill the creature though. Maddox wastes no time dropping the sledgehammer and conjuring a spear from thin air—such is the magic of demi-gods—and thrusts it down hard through what would likely be the abdomen of the wraith. This also would not kill it but instead pins the monster to the ground, which is a good thing because it starts to thrash.

It’s horrific watching as it squirms against the spear. To finish it off, Maddox has to penetrate the heart or the brain with iron. As of now, there’s no way to tell where either are under the tattered robes.

It was smart of Maddox to pin it to the ground. Smoke seeps up around the area where the spear went in, indicating the tip was made of iron. While iron in the abdomen wouldn’t kill the wraith, it would hurt and weaken the creature.

I release the dome shield over me—the only thing I’ve been able to learn how to do so far with my special angel powers—and stand straight. Maddox bends over the creature, then rips the robe’s material from the creature’s neck area and down the sternum. I still can’t see the head inside the hood, but Maddox easily exposes the torso, which is hard to look at. The spear is through the stomach center, which is gaunt and so severely hollowed out I can see part of the spine pressing against the skin. The ribs are protruding, and I see the spot just between the fourth and fifth rib where I was taught to stab a fae so that the heart would be pierced. I don’t have the strength to penetrate the sternum.

Maddox doesn’t have that problem. He conjures an iron sword, raises it high so the tip points at the wraith’s chest, and then drives it down hard. There’s a crunch of bone as the sternum shatters, a hair-raising scream from the wraith, and then it falls abruptly silent the second the iron breaches the heart muscle.

Swinging his head to look at me, Maddox grins. “You make good bait.”

“That was a little too close for comfort,” I say with a shake of my head. I had barely gotten my shield up in time. “What would have happened if the wraith had gotten to me?”

“He would have sucked your soul out of your nose,” Maddox replies calmly as he pulls the sword out of the creature. Rather than cleaning the black blood from the blade, he merely makes the weapon disappear.

“My nose?” I ask dubiously.

“Or mouth,” he replies mischievously. “Can’t quite remember which.”

We’re silent as the dark fae’s body turns dark and then starts to smoke. As the ashy tendrils drift upward, the wraith slowly disappears into the night sky.

“What exactly is a wraith?” I ask as we turn toward the mausoleum to check on Zaid. Now that we have a few moments where we’re not fighting for our lives, I’m curious.

Well, my life.

The wraith couldn’t have hurt Maddox. Dark Fae aren’t anywhere near as powerful as demi-gods, which was why the creature was focused on me.

“They’re one of those Dark Fae that were summoned out of the Underworld by old priests or witches, virtually powerless until they were bestowed a little soul-sucking power from stone wielders. They evolved, and their powers were refined.”

“So, they just hang out in cemeteries?” I press.

Maddox frowns as we approach the door of the mausoleum before shaking his head. “Actually, no. They’re most often employed to hunt someone down to kill them.”

I freeze in my tracks. “And what are the chances we just happened to stumble upon one, and it turned its attention to me?”

Maddox’s frown deepens with concern. “It would be too much of a coincidence it just happened to be here.”

“Shit,” I mutter, the realization hitting me. “You think Kymaris ordered this?”

Kymaris—Queen of the Underworld and my nemesis. The one who ordered my twin sister to be stolen and held captive in the Underworld and forced her to be a conduit to channel great power into her. Now Kymaris intends to doom the world when she obliterates the veil between her realm and earth, letting all her evil minions swarm and subjugate humans.