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A huge shadow drops across the kitchen.
Lachlan sweeps in. His broadsword flashes once. The third thrall’s head hits the floor with a wet thud, rolling toward the fridge.
He doesn't even bother to glance at the body. Instead, he grabs my shoulder, eyes glowing gold. "Are you bit?"
"I melted a guy!" I yell, waving my sticky hand at the puddle of gray slime. "I turned his neck into soup! I didn't mean to, I just panicked, and now he smells like a dumpster in summer.”
Lachlan checks my hand, jaw clenched tight. "The bloodcraft. It’s answering your fear."
"Well, tell it to pick a less disgusting way to defend me, because I am traumatized. Also, we need a new name for it," I mutter, trying to still my shaking hands.
From the dark hole in the floor, a dozen more wet, slapping footsteps start coming up the stairs. Low hisses echo through the pipes.
Lachlan’s head snaps toward the cellar. The gold in his eyes blazes. His lip curls back, and his teeth are already too long, sharp points digging into his bottom lip.
"Foyer," he barks, the sound tearing out of his chest like gravel. "Go to the grand foyer. Now!"
"What are you doing?"
"Closing the door," he growls, stepping between me and the dark stairs as gray hands start clawing over the edge. "Permanently."
Thirty-Five
LACHLAN
Steel is too slow for a true Sanguine swarm.
I let the broadsword drop. It clatters against the wet tile, the blade splashing into sewer water, but I’m already moving past it. I reach deep into my ribs, into the dark Highland magic sleeping in my marrow, and I rip the door off its hinges.
The shift is violent.
It’s always violent when anger drives it.
My spine bows and lengthens with a rapid-fire crack of bone. The charcoal wool of my sweater tears down the seams as my shoulders explode outward, slabs of heavy, dense muscle knotting together. My jaw unhinges, human teeth splintering as six-inch bone shears erupt from the gums. Dark, coarse fur bursts through my skin, drinking in the freezing draft blowing up from the cellar.
My hands hit the floor. No fingers. Just eight-inch paws tipped with razor-sharp claws.
Nine hundred pounds of primeval bear hitting the kitchen floorboards.
I throw my snout back and bellow.
The roar blows out the glass transoms over the pantry doors, rattles the plates inside the cupboards, and knocks the first two thralls backward down the cellar stairs in a tangled heap of gray limbs.
I charge.
Strategy is for men with fragile skin. I am pure destruction.
I hit the threshold of the dark stairs at a dead run. A thrall scrambles up with a rusty iron cleaver; I swat him with my left paw, the impact caving his chest cavity inward and launching him clean through the kitchen doorway into the dining room table. The mahogany splinters like kindling.
Another leaper tries for my flank. I catch his skull between my jaws, biting down until the bone pops like a dry walnut, and whip my neck to toss the carcass into the wall.
More pour into the corridor—not just mindless thralls now, but Sanguine blood mages in stiff red leather coats. They spit rapid curses, hurling whips of coagulated crimson fire. One lash catches me across the shoulder, burning fur down to the raw meat, but the pain just fuels the beast. I barrel straight through the heat, drive two mages through the hallway plaster, and crush the third beneath my bulk before he can finish his next syllable.
Where is she?
I spin on my rear hams, blood dripping from my muzzle, and charge into the grand foyer.
Vivienne is on the grand staircase, halfway up to the landing.
