"Yes." Ariana grabbed his arm, her hand trembling. "I can feel the magic."
"He's going to send them all in." The Ferals wouldn't die for days. But Ariana's friends would be dead the moment they hit the trap.
Below, the Mage sentinels and those Ilinas not caught within the bubble turned in perfect unison toward the stairs beneath where he and Ariana stood. As if they shared a single mind. And they did, didn't they?
Hookeye's.
Mage poured into the upper gallery from the two hall passages on the far side of the dome. Triple the number of sentinels that Kougar had believed were in the temple. They split their forces, circling in both directions, coming at Ariana and him from either side as more started up the stairs.
Surrounded.
Ariana glanced at him, her knives at the ready. "I don't suppose you have a plan."
"Only one. Find Hookeye and kill him." Which conveniently left out the part about fighting their way through several dozen Mage sentinels--Mage they shouldn't kill.
"Right," Ariana muttered. "All this time I didn't dare turn to mist. And now that it no longer matters . . . I can't."
"At least I can shift." But as he called on the power of his animal, as the magic swept through his body, nothing happened. The sparkling lights flashed and spit, then went dark, like electricity shorting out. "Scratch that. The Mage magic in this place has us both stuck in human form."
"You cannot stop me, Feral."
At the sound of the familiar voice ringing out across the dome, Kougar's gaze jerked toward the other side of the gallery as Hookeye stepped out from behind the advancing sentinels to stand at the railing.
"Opening wormholes into the old Daemon spirit trap is a difficult task," the sorcerer said, his expression preoccupied, as if he were talking to himself. "Mystery caught two Ferals. I've caught the rest. Except you." He nodded. "I'll catch you, too."
"Don't count on it."
Hookeye blinked in surprise. "The Ilina won't save you. Don't think she'll save you. She can't survive that trap any more than you can."
As the first of the sentinels reached them, Kougar drew his sword. If Hookeye said anything more, it was lost in the clang of metal on metal.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hookeye lift his arms high above his head, his eyes closing, his mouth moving as if he intoned some chant.
The spirit trap. He was opening the spirit trap!
"Stop him!" Ariana cried, coming to the same conclusion.
Kougar lunged into the fray like a madman, hacking at limbs and tossing sentinels over the balustrade in a desperate race to reach the soulless sorcerer before he completed his spell and took the lives of their friends.
Below, Lyon and the others watched, listening to the chant that spelled their doom, fury on their faces. Only Vhyper's face held little but the same flat expression he'd worn since he returned. As if he couldn't gather the will to care that his life was about to end. Or the lives of his brothers.
Kougar's stomach twisted with sick fury. If the sorcerer succeeded, there would be only two Ferals left. Himself and whoever the goddess marked to take Foxx's place. Unless Hookeye was lying, and Ariana was in no true danger from that trap and could free them.
And if Hookeye was telling the truth?
Goddess help us
all.
The rage had become Hawke's constant companion. His only companion, leaping up out of nowhere to consume him for minutes or hours at a time in a berserker's haze. If he were able to move, he was certain he'd find his fingers and mouth dripping with claws and fangs. And blood.
The pain had left him at some point in this endless night; but so, too, had the hawk spirit, or at least his sense of him. He wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd last heard him or felt him. Time had no meaning anymore.
Even the other animal spirits were gone.
Was this how the seventeen had died, then? This lonely, angry death? He'd always imagined them fighting together to find a way out. Perishing together, brothers in arms. Now he knew the truth. They'd died in darkness and isolation.
Just as he was about to.
Several of the seventeen had been mated, one with a young son. How much harder to be unable to reach the ones who would suffer most at his dying.
How much harder this must be on Tighe.
In between bouts of rage, he drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to tell sleep from awake. People ran through his mind, people he'd known long ago. His father. The friends of his youth.
Were they spirits come to deliver him to the beyond?
No!
There had to be a way out!
Within his mind, he struggled against bonds he couldn't feel. Slowly, painfully, the fight inside him drained away. There was no fighting the dark. There was no way out this time. His animal spirit was all but lost to him. His own spirit nearly gone, too.
His life was ending, and he couldn't stop it.
When the fury blind-sided him yet again, blasting through his head, he let out a war cry that would have rattled the windows, had there been any. If he'd still had a voice. As that white-hot haze swept through his mind, stealing his sanity, his last thought was that perhaps it was better he never escaped like this.
Goddess knew what kind of damage he'd do in this state. What kind of carnage he'd cause, lost to the fury of a mindless, vicious rage.
Kougar fought like a berserker, Ariana at his side. Both hacked off limbs right and left, Mage and Ilina, alike. No longer were they careful not to hurt the Ilinas. Limbs would regrow. And if they didn't reach Hookeye before he completed chanting his spell to open the wormhole into the spirit trap, Melisande, Brielle, and nearly a dozen other Ilinas would die.
And goddess only knew how many Ferals.
Even through the clash of swords, he heard the rest of the enchanted army closing in on them from behind.
"I've got them." Ariana turned and they fought back-to-back as he pressed forward, desperate to reach Hookeye in time.
Sweat rolled down his back, despair licking at his nerves as he hacked through the attacking Mage. The sorcerer's chanting carried faintly through the clang of metal and the screams of the injured. A quick glance told him the magic wasn't done. But he had no illusions. He was out of time.
With a Feral war cry that rang throughout the dome with an animal ferocity, Kougar stabbed and slashed, heedless of the damage he caused, focused on only one thing. One person. One unimposing bastard of a Mage.
Dismembered hands and arms flew this way and that in a rain of blood that splattered his face and clothes, the metallic scent igniting a hunger inside him. In his cat form, he enjoyed the warm rush of blood in his mouth. But the only blood he craved now was Hookeye's.
The floor grew slick beneath his feet, but he pressed ahead, the sentinels unable to stop his forward charge and the Ilinas no challenge at all.
But as the Mage troops between him and his quarry thinned, something caught his eye on the floor in front of him--a shiny black substance that was beginning to bubble up with a sound like popping corn and a smell like rotting eggs. The hair rose on the back of his neck with the certainty this was another of Hookeye's plagues--one Kougar wasn't going to like at all.
Within seconds, the black ooze covered his boots and slid onto his bare calves beneath his pants like a cool, sticky goo. A goo that hardened within seconds of contact even as it continued to climb.
He stomped his feet, hearing the crack of the hardening tar. But more climbed his boots to take its place.
All around him, movement slowed as the vile tar attacked all equally--him, Ilina, the Mage.
"Goddess!" Ariana cried behind him, and he glanced at one of the Mage he'd sent sprawling to watch the black ooze slide over the man's head and cover his face. "Is this some kind of poison?"
The downed sentinel clawed at his face but couldn't seem to break the goo's deadly hold.
"Keep moving!" Kougar called to Ariana. "Don't let it harden."
As the dozen Mage between Kougar and his quarry yelled their own frustration, Hookeye continued to chant, his expression one of cool satisfaction. At any moment, the spell would be complete, the wormhole would open, and his friends would be gone.
Kougar struggled forward, every step more difficult as the tar crept over his knees and slid up his thighs. Sweating with effort, he broke through the constricting ooze over and over, forcing his legs to move, swinging his blade against the Mage still in his path, still trying to stop him.
The air shifted suddenly, a charge of electricity making the hair on his arms stand on end. The air pressure dropped, the light in the temple dimming.
They were out of time.
If only Ariana could turn to mist! But if she tried, she'd almost certainly become trapped in the floor as Melisande had.
A thought pierced his despair, an idea blooming with a burst of adrenaline.
"Ariana, turn to mist!"
"I'll sink into the floor."
"You'll sink
where you land
."
The clang of his own blade drowned out her response, if there was one. A moment later, the shimmer of mist high above Hookeye's head caught his attention, and he knew she'd caught his meaning.
The temple grew darker as Hookeye's magic sucked the very light from the room. The sorcerer stood with his hands straight in front of him, his eyes closed as he fought to pull open the gates to the Feral's personal hell. He didn't sense the Ilina hovering above him until it was too late.
As the bottom of Ariana's feet grazed the top of the sorcerer's head, she turned solid. Hookeye jerked, trying to duck away, but it was too late. His own magic had the now-corporeal Ilina sinking into the surface where she stood.
Sinking down into Hookeye's skull.
The sorcerer screamed and flailed, grabbing her ankles and trying to pull her loose. But the magic was too strong. Her feet slowly disappeared inside his head.
Hookeye collapsed, unconscious, Ariana falling with him. She crashed into two half-frozen Mage, knocking them down even as they broke her fall.
Kougar struggled forward, the black ooze reaching his waist. The air in the temple began to blow in a spinning wildness as the vortex prepared to open. The spell had been completed, the magic engaged.
He reached Hookeye just as the bottoms of Ariana's bloody feet emerged below the Mage's jaw. Ariana struggled to sit up as the black ooze climbed her shoulders. But the fire in her eyes as she met his gaze was pure bloodthirsty triumph.
"End it, my beast."
With a roar that melded with the wild wind's, Kougar sliced through the bastard's throat, through windpipe and spine, and cut off Hookeye's head.
At once, the black ooze fell away, sinking back into the floor, leaving only the acrid smell of sulfur behind. Murmurs of confusion and cries of fear rose with the din as the Ilinas emerged from their enthrallment and the Mage sentinels, no longer bound by their leader's poison, turned toward Kougar, raising their knives to renew their attack.
"Roar!" Kougar yelled as he took on four Mage at once, standing over Ariana, who was unable to stand herself.
"We're free!" Lyon's voice carried to him on the roar of the wind.
A quick glance over the balustrade told him what he needed to know. The bubble was gone, the floor glowing, but not yet open. He caught sight of Ilinas stumbling free of the circle, while Ferals snatched others, slung them over their shoulders, and ran.
An unnatural, earsplitting scream nearly blew out his eardrums as a red glow erupted inside the temple, and the wind blew gale force, piping hot.
He didn't have to look to know what he'd find--a spinning vortex in the middle of the floor. A wormhole straight into the spirit trap.
"To battle," Ariana cried, her voice a command ringing over the vortex's howl. A command to her maidens. "Fight the Mage!"
The few Ilinas on the gallery walk shook off their confusion and turned on the sentinels they'd fought beside moments before. As two Ilinas dove in to draw off Kougar's attackers, he scooped Ariana into his arms, Hookeye's bleeding head still dangling heavily from her feet.
She slung her arm around his neck. "Get me to the door so I can save your friends."
"Wouldn't diving into the vortex be quicker?"
She looked at him askance. "Hookeye's vortex? No thanks. I'm going in the way that won't get me killed."
"The way he wanted you to go."
Her eyes narrowed. "He's dead. And your friends will be, too, if we don't hurry."
"True enough." Kougar turned and pressed through what was left of the battle, four of Ariana's maidens taking up guard positions around him.
"The poison?" he asked. "I can't feel it any longer."
"It's gone." Ariana's voice rang with a relief as deep as her eyes. "It's over."
That part was over. His own life no longer hung in the balance, and neither did Ariana's maidens'. But Hawke and Tighe were another matter. As, he feared, was Ariana herself. Not until he saw her emerge from the spirit trap would he breathe freely.
As he neared the second alcove where Ariana had said the door was located, Lyon and Wulfe barreled up the stairs.
Lyon eyed Ariana's feet with a lift of a brow.
"We're going after Hawke and Tighe," Kougar told his chief. Ariana was, at least. He'd help her as far as he could.
Lyon's gaze swung to Ariana, but words seemed to elude him.