A City of Lies Read online

  “Uh oh.” Zane’s low voice interrupted us.

  We all followed his gaze to find one of his brothers—a prince, to be specific—staring at us through his red lens from across the eastern hallway. Heat burst through me as my instincts kicked in. Hansa cursed under her breath, and I heard the screech of her broadsword leaving its scabbard.

  “Brother?” the daemon prince murmured. “I thought I’d heard your voice just now. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Cayn,” Zane replied, his lens still off as he stared at his brother. “I’m just… thinking out loud. Long day. Why?”

  “The outsiders! They’ve got you surrounded!” Cayn growled and drew his sword, coming right at us. I pushed a strong barrier out, knocking him back. He landed on the stone floor with a heavy thud, twenty yards away from us, groaning from the pain.

  “What? Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Zane replied dryly, then put on his lens and looked at me, lowering his voice as he briefly nodded behind Caspian and me. “Go all the way to the end, down the stairs, and out through the service door. It’s right at the bottom of the stairs. Follow that path; it will lead you to the back of the palace and onto the belt road. You’ll see three tunnels opening on the west side. The one in the middle will take you straight into the western plains. Now, go!”

  I nodded, and Hansa, Jax, Blaze, and Caia moved behind me. Zane gave me a brief wink.

  “Sorry about this,” he whispered, then raised his voice, feigning outrage. “You! You fiends! I’ve got you now!”

  He drew his knife and slashed at me, while his brother came back to his senses and jumped to his feet. We ran to the end of the hallway, and Zane and Cayn came after us.

  “You heard him,” I breathed as we darted across the black stone floor, the stairs just thirty yards ahead. Loud horns blared all around us, and I briefly glanced over my shoulder to see Cayn blowing into a dark blue crystal.

  “Swamp witch magic,” Jax said, as he followed my gaze.

  I cursed under my breath and picked up speed, with Caspian close by my side.

  Hatches opened in the ceiling above. Water poured down from them and splashed us, compromising our invisibility spells and making us all too visible. My blood ran cold.

  A flurry of footsteps and growls erupted behind us. Daemon soldiers poured in from both the east and west wings, joining Cayn and Zane as they chased after us, their weapons drawn and fangs bared. I would’ve been perfectly happy just with that increasing mass of soul-eating fiends headed our way, but my pulse quickened when several massive pit wolf statues rippled and became real, joining the chase.

  “Oh, crap,” I muttered. Ear-piercing shrieks echoed through the hallway, curdling my blood, as statues of death claws came to life as well, and flew after us. “Crap! Crap! Crap!” I shouted. “He didn’t say anything about the statues coming to life!”

  “I think this is what he meant by ‘new use for them’, the vague bastard,” Caspian hissed.

  We shot down the stairs, leaping down full flights at a time. My heart was throbbing, and adrenaline was coursing through me, my entire body shifting into survival mode.

  This was it. Our grand dash to freedom.

  Jax

  As we flew down the stairs, a horde of daemons poured from the main hallway, joined by massive pit wolves and death claws that had materialized from obsidian statues. We drew our swords, our instincts already sharpened by previous encounters with the creatures.

  My senses flared as we reached the ground floor, the daemons closing in on us.

  The death claws’ shrieks scratched my brain, tightening my muscles as I followed Harper toward the service exit that Zane had mentioned. She looked over her shoulder at us, then farther back, before she put her hand out.

  “Move aside!”

  We shifted to the left and right, and she pushed out a barrier and knocked back the first few rows of daemons coming after us. I knew it wasn’t going to be enough, so I slowed down a little, joined by Hansa and Caia—they quickly caught on, understanding what I wanted to do. I always carried lighters in case Caia ever lost hers, so I fished two from my back pocket and tossed them over to her.

  “We need to get out, now!” Blaze shouted.

  I slashed my swords at the first daemons that reached us, drawing rich spurts of crimson blood. Hansa did the same, hacking at the creatures, while Caia flipped her lighters open and shot bright balls of fire at two pit wolves.

  We managed to push them back by several feet, before the death claws swooped down. We ducked, then raced after Harper and the others as they burst through the service door.

  “Let’s go!” I barked, then shoved one sword through the chest of a daemon, kicking him so he landed back against the others.

  We made it to the courtyard, which was wide enough for what could turn into a deadly fight for us. I could see the belt road ahead, approximately two hundred yards away. I ran fast, with Hansa close by my side. Caia was not far behind, sending fireballs over her shoulder and making it increasingly difficult for the daemons to get to us.

  “Out of my way!” Blaze growled.

  We all did as instructed and spread out, as he turned full dragon. I could never get over his majestic size, the amber-orange scales on his belly reminding me of what devastating fire burned in his throat.

  The death claws flew around, trying to circle him, while the daemons seemed to waiver, as did the pit wolves, not sure whether they should move ahead and keep attacking us. I saw the princes, all seven of them, along with several giant generals, at the far end of the crowd. Fear widened their red eyes, but something told me they weren’t going to give up that easily.

  Blaze, however, didn’t give a damn. He positioned himself between us and the daemons, leaving very few of them brave enough to sneak past him and come at us. He swatted away at the death claws with the single spikes on the tips of his wings and his tail, knocking the creatures down. They hit the hard ground, and only a couple managed to get back up, while the others were left looking like crumpled pieces of paper.

  He stomped and thrashed around, crushing daemons by the dozens. I could hear their bones snapping and their screams of horror as he brought his jaws down and chewed on them like they were candy—breaking them between his fangs.

  It made it a whole lot easier for us to fight back. Soon enough, Blaze started to spit fire, engulfing the thinning crowd of daemons in bright orange flames. They screamed and wailed as they desperately tried to get away, but Blaze wasn’t done yet. His long neck shuddered, and he released another obliterating heatwave, forcing the princes to step back and keep their distance.

  The alarms were sounding all over the city, and I could hear more daemons coming in—not just from the palace, but also from the surrounding areas. Soon enough, the enemies could end up outnumbering us, even with a dragon on our side.

  Hansa

  Blaze was relentless. He continued to decimate the armed forces of daemons, while Jax, Caia, Harper, Caspian, and I fought the bold dozen who had managed to avoid the dragon’s fiery breath. More death claws were coming in from the city, and I could hear the pit wolves growling as they snuck in from the belt road.

  Daemons roared through the neighboring streets as they made their way to the palace. The alarms were blaring, loud horns calling the people to take up arms and come get us.

  I dodged a hit from a rapier and brought my sword out to the side in response, lodging the blade deep into a daemon’s hip. It cried out from the pain as I jerked my sword hand and executed a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn and cut the creature’s head off with one swift blow.

  We’d made it this far, and there was no way in hell that I was letting these horned bastards get the best of me or my people. I roared as I thrust my broadsword right through the spine of another daemon, just as he was preparing to pounce on Caia from behind. The crunching of steel cutting through bone made my blood rush, and I pulled my sword out and moved on to the next soldier.

  I got rid of him
quickly, but the glimmer of light reflected on a curved blade slashing toward me caught my eye. A split second later, I’d already jumped back to get a better look at my opponent. My heart jolted as I realized that I was facing a prince. Somehow, this oversized lump of muscles and golden armor had made his way down to us.

  He carried two rapiers, which he brought down repeatedly with swift and effortless movements. I blocked most of his hits, and dodged others, before bringing my broadsword up at a forty-five-degree angle in an attempt to get his chest and throat. I missed him by inches, and nearly paid the price with my life, as one of his rapiers came hard from the left. I tilted my head back so the blade wouldn’t remove my head from my shoulders.

  My ears rang from a sharp clang, and I saw Jax’s blades intervene, blocking another of the prince’s hits.

  “You’re not getting away, little mice!” the prince sneered, relentless in his attacks.

  “You sound just like your father, and trust me when I say that’s not a good thing,” I shot back, and managed to cut through his shoulder. He hissed from the pain, but didn’t get a chance to respond, as Jax slashed at his hip, before Harper knocked him back with a barrier. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but it helped a lot.

  It was the small window we needed to fall back, as more daemons were starting to pour through from both the palace and the nearby streets.

  Blaze roared, then rained down a curtain of fire, covering the land around him in orange flames and screams of agony, while we all made our way toward the belt road. Once we reached it, our chances of survival would increase substantially, leaving only about fifty feet between us and the tunnel leading out to the western plains.

  Caia

  (Daughter of Grace & Lawrence)

  I gave Blaze all the backup I could provide, targeting mostly pit wolves that had managed to sneak past the flames, and the death claws flying overhead. They knew that his eyes were his weak spot, so I had to make sure that they got nowhere near them.

  Harper and the others kept daemons away as we tried to move back and head for the belt road. Fireballs were the easiest for me to shoot out, particularly where the death claws were involved, but the pit wolves were becoming more difficult to handle.

  Two of them came at me simultaneously, prompting me to shoot out fireballs with one hand and raise a thin curtain of fire with the other, but it wasn’t enough. Sooner or later, the beasts would find a way to go around that and get to me.

  It was time for something more drastic, as Blaze was left with only a couple of death claws to deal with at this point, while spitting tidal waves of fire over the daemons coming in from the palace. I summoned all the energy I had, allowing my body to channel it all into my hands. I brought them together, lighters in the middle.

  I’d only tried it a few times before—my last attempt had been with Vita, back on Calliope, but I had to give it another push, so I did my best to fashion a large broadsword made of pure fire. It needed to be strong and concentrated enough for it to work like an actual blade.

  The fire curtain in front of me was beginning to fade, and the pit wolves were snapping their jaws at me, shuddering with excitement. They knew they could soon attack. There was no time to waiver. No room for mistakes. I grunted, giving myself one last push, then gasped as my sword gained its full, incandescent form.

  One of the pit wolves got ahead of itself and charged me. I brought my flame sword up, aiming straight forward at the pit wolf’s charmed collar. The fire blade cut through it, and the beast stilled, its red eyes blinking as the swamp witch magic faded. It was no longer under the control of daemons. It had a mind of its own again, and it didn’t want to fight me.

  When the second pit wolf came at me, I lifted my flaming sword again, ready to cut its collar off and free it, but the first creature intervened and tackled it. They fought for a while, until the second wolf’s collar snapped off and hit the ground. It froze, its red eyes wide. It yelped at its companion, and they both looked at me, then started attacking the daemons slipping past Blaze’s flames.

  All of a sudden, we had two creatures on our side, sinking their incredibly sharp fangs into the soldiers’ throats. They were perfectly capable of breaking the iron of charmed collars; daemon throats were much softer and easier to shred.

  Other daemons came at me, and I blocked a couple of their hits, before slashing at them with my incandescent sword. It cut through so fast, so unforgivingly, that they fell to the ground in pieces, the smell of burnt flesh filling my nostrils. Those behind them realized what I was holding, and didn’t seem too eager to attack me anymore.

  This was a weapon made entirely from fire. With enough energy in it to cut like high-intensity lasers, the daemons didn’t stand a chance against it. Against me.

  “Fall back,” I heard Jax shout from behind.

  I looked up, watching Blaze as he rammed his jaws into the thinning crowd of daemons, before he let out another round of scorching fire. Harper, Caspian, Jax, and Hansa were already moving away, cutting down anyone who stood between us and the belt road just fifty yards ahead.

  It was time to make a run for it, as I could see the tunnel we needed to get through.

  Our way out.

  Harper

  (Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)

  My energy levels were running a little low, but I still had plenty in me to fight my way out of here. I’d used a succession of barriers and sword attacks to strike down dozens of daemons. Blaze had successfully held Shaytan’s soldiers back, burning most of them to a crisp.

  There were more coming in from the city, and I could hear the screeching of death claws in the distance. We couldn’t stay here anymore. If we kept on fighting, we would soon be outnumbered again, and I feared that Shaytan himself would join the scuffle—and none of us were in any way prepared for him.

  Blaze started to move back as well, while we made a run for it, and headed toward the belt road. I dashed forward and slipped into the tunnel that Zane had told me about. He was still somewhere on the other side of the courtyard, with his brothers, who were probably wondering whether they would get killed if they came after us. They were already watching hundreds of their soldiers burn before Blaze—surely, they had some sense in them.

  Everything happened extremely fast from there on. I ran up through the tunnel, followed closely by Jax, Caspian, Hansa, and Caia. Blaze quickly shifted and joined us. Caia sent fireballs down at the daemons coming after us. It was a narrow space, and they had nowhere to go to avoid the flames.

  I heard their bones crackling like logs in a campfire, along with their screams of agony, as I kept moving forward. I could see the light at the end, and that gave me the push I needed to run faster and climb up to the surface.

  The sun was out, so I immediately pulled my hood over my head to shield my face.

  “Cover yourselves up,” I shouted over my shoulder, then turned around.

  One by one, the rest of my team came out. There were three tunnel openings in front of me, the one in the middle, through which we’d just come, and the other two on either side, with twenty feet of limestone between them.

  I summoned all the energy I could find and pushed out a barrier through each tunnel, enough to cause them to collapse. The daemons that were coming through all three were crushed, and I could hear them crying out as chunks of limestone rumbled and sealed off the passageways.

  We looked around, realizing that we had exited into the opening of the gorge, and we could see the western plains stretching ahead, their waves of green grass and thick forests waiting for us.

  The ground beneath trembled, not just from the collapse of the three tunnels, but also from the hundreds of daemons pouring in from farther inside the gorge. We could see them, little black dots getting bigger as they ran toward us, their weapons drawn and their fangs bared.

  “We have to hold them back,” Jax breathed.

  “I’ll handle it,” a very naked Blaze replied, then shifted back to full dragon form and started lash
ing a spiked tail at the gorge walls. Large chunks of dark gray stone crashed into the middle of the ravine, and Blaze used his jaws as well, chipping away at the walls and hurling rocks from both sides. The obstruction grew bigger. He climbed on top of the giant mound and spat more fire at the daemons coming in, enough to burn them alive and keep the others away.

  He continued to break down pieces of the wall, until the entire portion of the gorge was blocked, permanently sealed, giving us the window we needed to run out into the western plains.

  “Holy crap,” Hansa gasped. “We actually made it!”

  “Last one to reach the plains is a stinky Sluagh!” I grinned.

  I darted out of the gorge, with Hansa, Caspian, Jax, Caia, and Blaze hot on my trail.

  Seemingly endless fields of green opened out before us, and our feet sank into the tall grass. We ran as fast as we could, while the daemons were left behind, beyond sealed tunnels and the crumbled ravine.

  They were going to come after us, sooner or later. But, for the time being, we’d made it, and we could find a spot in the shade somewhere, catch our breaths, and regroup.

  Judging by the suns’ positions in the sky, it was shortly before noon when we reached the first patch of woods. I was the first one to stop beneath a giant tree and lie down, breathing in and out, as I relished the taste of freedom on the tip of my tongue.

  Caia

  (Daughter of Grace & Lawrence)

  Blaze slipped into a pair of pants, one of the several that the team carried in their backpacks. We’d lost ours when we were captured. We settled in the shade of a large tree, a couple of miles away from the gorge we’d just collapsed.

  It took us a while to simply refocus on what we had to do, while we all enjoyed the fresh air and just being back on the surface, out of that meranium box, and out of that damn city.