The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (46 page)

The bears were hurling their
bodies at the gates in pairs- a surprisingly organized move- and Ashlyn could
see that the already-weakened wooden gates would not hold up much longer. She
pondered freezing the gates to add some additional protection, but before she
could make a decision, she saw a cat pull itself up onto the wall a few feet
away. Several yards down, another cat was nearing the top.

Ashlyn ran towards the first
panther, jumped over a swipe from the big cat and threw a punch that landed in
the middle of its bony forehead. Ashlyn’s hand smarted from the impact, but she
gritted her teeth and followed up with a crane kick, her foot connecting
solidly with the animal’s lower jaw. The cat growled and shook its head before
charging. Caught off-guard, Ashlyn managed to collect herself enough to leap
up, dancing down the panther’s back and landing on the opposite side. Her last
step, with her foot at the base of the cat’s spine, threw the animal
off-balance, and it fell off the inside edge of the wall. Ashlyn couldn’t stop
to watch its descent, sprinting towards the next panther. When she got close enough,
she leaped into a spinning attack, the shuriken in one hand and her sword in
the other.

The cat never had a chance.

As its body fell to the ground
below, Ashlyn crouched on top of the wall, trying to keep her balance as the
bears continued their assault on the city gates. Amidst the writhing bodies
below, she saw Kou- unshifted and in human form. How were the
shift
monsters not attacking him? Did he
have that much control over his army, even when they were in animal form?

The wall shook again beneath her,
and there was the sound of splintering wood. The bears had broken the gates.

Clearly she wasn’t going to do
any more good up here. She stood and ran back towards the crow’s nest.

Hopping from the wall into the
crow’s nest was much easier than jumping up had been, and Ashlyn sprinted down
the stairs, trying to take stock of what was going on below her as she ran. The
Toryn army greatly outnumbered the
shift
monsters,
but she knew not to count on numbers as a match for experience. She saw the
flash of Skye’s sword in the front lines, and tried to pick out some of the
other members of FLD from the masses, but couldn’t find anyone else.

At the bottom of the stairs, a
Toryn soldier was trying to cut down a bear with his katana. Ashlyn took the
opportunity to use the railing as a vault, landing on the bear’s back and
driving her sword deep into its neck. The big animal shuddered and roared, but
fell to the ground beneath her. Ashlyn nodded to the soldier and rushed towards
the next creature she saw. She wanted to find Kou, but it would be almost
impossible to pick him out from everyone here, and the next best thing would be
to rid Toryn of as many of these monsters as she could.

“Princess!” Vargo appeared beside
her. Blood spattered the side of his face, and the sleeve of his jacket was
torn, but he grinned at her, clearly in his element in the midst of battle.

“Spartan!” she shot back,
ridiculously happy to see him. She ducked under his arm as he swung his baton
at the bear behind her, turning as she did and sending an ice spell straight up
the bear’s nose, freezing its muzzle. The creature howled and fell backwards,
pawing at its muzzle in agony.

A flash of black hair in the
sunlight caught her eye, and Ashlyn straightened up, trying to peer through the
crowds, aware that her Toryn soldiers were all wearing head coverings. She
glimpsed Kou, fighting his way through the throngs of soldiers- and moving away
from her. Where was he going? Ashlyn shoved past two soldiers and ran after
him. She leaped over a fallen bear and detoured around a pair of soldiers
battling a panther, frowning as she realized that Kou seemed to be headed for
her house. What could he possibly want from there? Maybe Tag was still in the
basement? Was Kou trying to pull off a rescue?

Kou shoved the door to her house
so hard that it almost fell off its tracks, and disappeared inside. Ashlyn
hesitated, wondering if she should take somebody in with her, and Vargo ran
into her from behind.

“What the hell are you doing?” he
demanded. “Party’s out here.”

“Kou’s in my house,” she
explained breathlessly, and glanced back. To her extreme delight, there didn’t
seem to be many monsters left. Could Toryn be winning?
This might be our chance to destroy the
shift
army once and for all,
she thought, and motioned to Vargo to
follow her. “We’ve got to catch him before he escapes.”

She entered the house cautiously,
letting her eyes adjust to the darkness inside. The door leading to the basement
was wide open, so Ashlyn tiptoed over to it, careful not to make a sound. The
distinctive sound of a squeaking metal gate reached her ears. She’d been right-
Kou was trying to free Tag.

Ashlyn crept down the stairs,
knife and shuriken at the ready. It was perfectly dark downstairs, and she
paused, wondering if maybe she and Vargo shouldn’t wait for Skye.

Something grazed against her
legs, like a cord of some kind, and abruptly her knees were pulled together
before something hard smacked against her calf.

“Look out!” Ashlyn cried, losing
her balance and tumbling down the stairs. The weapons skittered out of her
hands as she landed, and she smacked her head hard against the stone floor,
dizzying her for a moment. The lights came on immediately, and Kou stood above
her, a second bola in his hand. He snatched the knife from its sheath on her
thigh, but stumbled forward when Vargo hit him in the back with the baton. He
recovered quickly, diving out of the way before Vargo could land a second blow.

Her head swimming, Ashlyn fumbled
clumsily with the bola around her legs, trying to untangle the leather cord
that had her restrained. Kou was swinging the second bola above his head now,
preparing to use it as a close combat weapon. He and Vargo circled each other like
two wild animals waiting to pounce. In the corner, Ashlyn saw Tag fumbling with
his armlet. He glanced at her, and his eyes suddenly began to glow green.

She realized that Tag was going
to transform
right now,
and she
twisted, looking around for her weapons. Her sword was all the way on the other
side of the room, but the shuriken was pretty close- maybe close enough for her
to crawl to.

Tag began to scream as he
shifted, the same primal howl that she had heard that first time, in this same
basement. Trying to ignore the throbbing ache in her head and sudden nausea,
Ashlyn rolled over on her stomach and inched towards the shuriken.

Kou swung the bola at Vargo, and
the Spartan ducked forward, striking cleanly at the base of the Toryn man’s
skull with the baton. Kou dropped into a somersault, putting some distance
between himself and the red-haired man. Vargo advanced, trying to maintain his
aggressive advantage, but Kou managed to swing the bola again and wrap the cord
around Vargo’s baton. Kou jerked hard, yanking the baton out of Vargo’s hands
and smashing it against the wall behind him.

Ashlyn reached the shuriken and
snatched it up, rolling onto her back again and trying to use the blades to saw
through the bola cord. The cord was wrapped so tightly around her legs that it
was hard to find an angle where she could cut the cord and not herself, but she
managed to get through one strand, although the bola still didn’t budge.

A shadow fell over her, and
Ashlyn looked up to see Tag looming above her, saliva dripping from his muzzle.
Her legs were still trapped. She had no way to escape.

Tag snarled and raised up on his
hind legs briefly, intending to come down and crush her with his front paws.
Ashlyn quickly rolled out of the way, moving until she hit the opposite wall,
and then scrambled into a sitting position.
Please,
please, please!
She sawed at the bola cord, willing something to give so
she could free her legs.

The Tag-beast lumbered towards
her, and Ashlyn knew there was no way she was going to cut the cord in time.
She readied herself to throw the shuriken, racking her brain for all the
different possible angles for a death blow.

Vargo suddenly leaped in front of
her and launched himself at Tag- completely unarmed and barely half the size of
the
shift
monster, Ashlyn realized in
horror. Vargo and Tag tumbled backwards, with Vargo ending up on top and
raining punches down on the surprised creature.

She flexed the muscles in her
legs on sheer adrenaline and desperation, forcing her calves apart just enough
to slide one of the shuriken’s blades beneath the cord. Glancing up, she saw
Kou coming for her.
Crap!
The cord
gave at the last moment, and she rolled aside as the bola in Kou’s hands
smashed into the wall where her head had been.

She spun and leaped up, using her
momentum to spin into a butterfly kick, one hand on the floor as she drove at
Kou with her legs. He leaped backwards, but Ashlyn followed the move with a
twist kick, spinning forward twice in a complete five hundred and forty degree
rotation, her legs lashing out with the motion. The second kick connected, and
Kou fell to the floor, dropping the knife. Ashlyn turned, ready to throw the
shuriken at Tag, but Kou’s bola wrapped around her weapon, yanking it out of
her hands.

She turned again, but Kou was
already moving up the stairs, and just then Vargo screamed behind her. Ashlyn
froze, unsure of what to do. Vargo screamed again.

She spun and ran towards Tag,
scooping up her knife from the floor as she did. The beast was on top of Vargo,
ripping and tearing, and the cries coming from Vargo were turning into
terrifyingly weak gurgles. Ashlyn drove her knife into the bear’s fur, as close
to his head as she could get. Tag shuddered and rose up on his hind legs,
knocking her backwards. Ashlyn managed to catch herself with one hand and
rushed forward again, stabbing blindly into the mass of fur. Tag batted her
aside with one paw, sending her crashing into the wall.

If he’d decided to attack again,
she might not have been able to fend him off, but for whatever reason, Tag
decided to run, dashing up the stairs after Kou.

The room was spinning around her,
but Ashlyn fell forward, clambering across the floor on her hands and knees to
Vargo. The sight was horrifying. He was gasping for air and sobbing openly, blood
bubbling from his mouth as he coughed. His arms and stomach were shredded so
badly that Ashlyn couldn’t tell what was clothing and what was flesh.

Why had she switched out the
heal
stane from her armlet? Why had she
let Kou take her shuriken? Ashlyn silently cursed her stupidity.

“Ashlyn,” Vargo gasped, and his
hand clutched blindly for hers. She took it, trying to think of what to do.

“I’ve got to get help,” she told
him. “You’ve gotta wait here, okay?”

“No!” His hand clamped down even
harder on her fingers. “Don’t leave me. Don’t…
hell.”
He coughed wetly, hacking up blood. “Don’t you…don’t you
dare leave me here alone.”

Ashlyn’s eyes fell on his armlet,
revealed now that his sleeves had been torn off. The armlet was smeared with
blood, but she could still see flecks of green from the
heal
stane beneath.

“Hang on,” she said, scrabbling
with her free hand for the stane. “Just stay still.” The gem popped out of the
armlet, and Ashlyn closed her eyes, praying as hard as she could for Drago’s
guidance as the stane began to glow in her hand.

Chapter 7

If Not For You

“Ashlyn.”

She bolted upright, teetering in
her chair, face numb from being smushed up against a book. “What?” Her
sleep-blurred gaze fell on Drake standing in the doorway.

He stepped into the room, moving
further into the lamplight, and she noticed that his hair was wet. Hers was
still slightly damp from her bath the night before, and Ashlyn ran a hand over
her hair self-consciously, remembering that it was still jagged and unkempt
from Skye’s hurried chop job back in the forest. Before that, it had hung
nearly to her waist, but now the longest strands of her ponytail barely reached
her shoulders.

“How is he?” she asked Drake. The
vampire had been working through the night, trying to heal Vargo’s injuries.

Despite her lack of skill with
heal
and her trepidation over using it
on injuries so extensive
,
Ashlyn had
done her best to fix the worst of his wounds, starting with his midsection,
which was torn open and gushing blood. She’d managed to knit his stomach
together, staunching the worst of the blood flow as Vargo drifted in and out of
consciousness.

The battle outside had ended
quickly, with the Toryn army emerging triumphant and only a few of the
shift
monsters escaping- Kou and Tag
included. Drake had found Ashlyn shortly after, and begun ministrations of his
own on Vargo, but as he had tersely explained to Ashlyn, the other man’s
injuries were so severe, and his insides such a mess, that Drake’s main goal
was simply to keep him alive. Healing Vargo completely was out of the question.

“He’ll make it,” Drake answered,
and sank into the chair opposite her.

Ashlyn felt a rush of relief and
gratitude- for Drake and for Vargo, who had undeniably saved her life. “Is he
awake?”