Chapter Sixteen – “You Have To Let Me”Rynn flung out a hand, and one of the dogs was smmed backward, yelping. The other two charged forward, coming for blood.

  Midj smmed her hand down, and her mana hand appeared in front of her. The lead dog ran right into it, mashing its head. It sat back, blinking, clearly wondering what it had just run into.

  Tommy shifted, her clothes shifted with her, and she didn’t leap onto the dog, but jumped over it. Once behind it, she raked her cws down the dog’s backside. “You all run. I’m going to get to hire ground.”

  Settie was in the air, roasting the other three dogs, or trying to. The problem was, the crackling rift was spitting out more dogs, and they were trying to cmber onto the rim of the hole.

  Gray grabbed Ames and ran down the street with a dog following him.

  He led the Quelling girl into the temple he’d seen on his way in. But the entire roof had colpsed just beyond the pilrs, so they were trapped.

  “Dammit.” Gray dropped his stick, retrieved his sword, and flung the sheath away.

  Ames held her spear, sweat dripping from her face. Her scent, normally sweet, had turned musky. She was afraid. Well, so was he. But he wanted a chance to kill one of those dogs. It wouldn’t be poaching if he was merely defending himself. Then he could collect the mana—not that he knew how to do that.

  Ames growled at him. “I’m going to go kill the dog. You’re going to run back to the house. You have to let me do this.”

  “Sacrifice yourself? No. And you’re our healer. I should fight, you should heal, and we just might be able to get out of this.”

  Ames turned to him. “You can’t channel mana into your meridians. I can.”

  “You can heal yourself, right?” he asked.

  Ames grinned. “If I’m conscious, I can. Don’t run back to the manor. Run to our friends, give them mana, and remember me, Grayson Frade. If I fall, light a candle for me, on this day. I loved your sunlight, precious Gray. In my world of darkness, your sunlight was the most beautiful thing in the world, but a candle will have to do. It will be enough for me. If you are happy, and if you don’t burn yourself on the candle, then I will be happy. No more pain. No more burning. Just love.”

  She then charged out before he could stop her—he couldn’t catch her because she was using her mana.

  Gray raced after, cursing himself. All this power and he couldn’t protect his squad.

  Out beyond the pilrs, he saw Ames ram her spear into the chest of a sloth dog. The thing tried to pull the spear out of itself with its tentacles, but Ames was moving too fast. She had her sword in her hand, and with her muscles filled with mana, she chopped the head off the dog. Gray had admonished her for pulling punches during their rights, but she wasn’t shy about killing the demon in front of her. And she was surprisingly good at it.

  Another charged her from the side, and Gray raced forward. He sshed the thing on its snot, but it was quick enough to smack away his bde with one of its tentacles. It was too slow to stop Ames from driving her sword into its chest.

  Two of the dogs were on the ground, dead, but a third was coming.

  Tomi, Rynn, and Midj had formed a circle, with their backs to each other, fighting off a circle of dogs. One was slowed, though, which had to be from Settie, who must’ve been using one of her skills from her vast arsenal. The ground was littered with corpses, a few scorched by dragonfire. The pce stank of rot, dead dog, and burning hair. Settie flew down and ripped the backbone out of the one the dogs before soaring away.

  Gray fell behind Ames, filling her core, and filling it with mana.

  He was then able to pull the spear out of the dog, and when he did, he saw the thing was leaking mana as well as blood. Unlike the gore, the magical energy became a mist before dissipating completely. Was that the mist he saw from other demon kills? He remembered the Pride Serpent that Settie had killed. It had turned into a foul-smelling fog before disappearing completely. But that couldn’t be. He’d seen Yellow eat demons.

  No time to consider that. For one made moment, he thought of trying to channel that mana into the spear in his hands, but he had no clue where to start. Besides, he wasn’t going to let Ames sacrifice herself to save him.

  He ran forward and drove the spear into the back of the dog, but unlike Ames, he couldn’t enhance his strength. It shot forward, grabbing hold of Ames’s arm with its tentacles. It then ripped a chunk out of her arm, flung her down, and went for her throat.

  Gray hacked and hacked and hacked at the thing’s body with his sword, and while some bounced off the tough flesh or rubbery tentacles, a few of the sword strokes broke skin, spshing him in the face with scalding hot bck blood.

  It hurt, but it was nothing compared to Ames, who had been shredded by the demon.

  He went to her, and she smiled wearily. “There’s my sunshine. I hardly feel a thing.”

  He touched her belly, felt her core, and channeled mana into her. She took his hand in hers, and her skin was hot, sweaty, and even wounded, she was still so pretty. He felt the lust, and she felt it as well. “Oh, such a cruelty, Grayson Fade, that I feel your desire now, at this very unfortunate time. To feel it at all is such a joy.”

  He wasn’t going to comment on their mutual lust. “Can you heal yourself?”

  “I already am. Go help our friends.”

  Gray helped her get up first, and yes, color was coming back from her face, even though blood was still coursing down her arm.

  “Ames, I—”

  She pushed him. “Go. Or I shall be very cruel to you, Gray. Very cruel. Or I might try and kiss you. Would you chance either?”

  He had to grin and flirt a little. “I just might. Your skin felt good on mine.”

  She just ughed. “Some skin feels better than others.”

  And then she fell into a defensive pose as another dog sprinted toward her, already snarling.

  Trusting Ames could defend herself, He ran to the rest of squad, trying to get close enough to them, so he could give them mana.

  He was about ten feet away, and he found Midj’s core, and filled it. He gave her so much mana, he was left feeling dizzy. She smmed her hand down onto the back of a dog, pinning it down, so she could hack open its throat.

  Rynn was next, and when he gave her mana, she sped up, slicing up the hellish tentacled dog she was fighting, and then dashing over and killing the dog Tomi was fighting. Tomi, her mana gone, returned to her normal cat girl form. She fell, but Rynn was there to catch her.

  Gray called out to the goblin girl. “Midj, shield us. Settie can keep the rest of the sloth dogs busy. We can get out of here.”

  Midj put down another shield, next to the one she’d already created, and then backed up, with Rynn carrying Tomi, who was bleeding from some wound somewhere. She was leaving behind long bloody tracks.

  Ames retrieved her spear, hurried forward, and touched Tomi, who stumbled even more once she was healed. That wouldn’t be a good sign.

  Settie nded next to the well, and when a dog tried to jump on her, she sshed it apart with her cws. The remaining dogs converged on her. She was drawing them away so her squad could make an escape. One got lucky, broke through her defenses, and tore a chunk off her wing with its jaws. It was unlikely she could fly with such a wound.

  Still, Settie roared, “Go! I’ll follow!”

  Gray was going to trust she could take care of herself. “Let’s go. Tomi, can you run?”

  The girl was white, her cat ears drooping. “I can run because the alternative is death, and I don’t want to die, so let’s run, shall we?”

  They hurried down that main, crumbling avenue, when Gray realized he’d left his stick in the temple. And he thought of Settie, fighting those things. As a dragon, she was unbelievably powerful, but there was a drawback to being a dragon. She had small core. She had to be running out of mana, and if she ran out completely, she’d turn human. She’d die.

  Gray didn’t tell his squad his pns. He wanted them to be safe, and if he said he was going back, they’d want to go back with him. He didn’t want them in danger, and he didn’t want them to see what he pnned to do with one of the sloth dog corpses.

  He tore away from them, sprinting back toward the Weeping Well.

  Settie had been right. It had been a bad idea vising in the gateway to hell. Had it been a coincidence that the sloth dogs had appeared right then? Or had they come through the cracks in the Weeping Well because they were drawn to Gray and his squad?

  Gray sped back to about ten feet from where Settie was fighting. He was running low on mana, and yet, he knew a way to get more. He thought of Ames running out to fight the dogs, thinking she had to protect him because he was so useless. The anger filled him, and with that anger came mana. He threw it all into Settie, who roared, and breathed fire onto the dogs, killing one instantly. One of the dogs raced away from the fmes and ended up falling into the Weeping Well.

  Settie would be fine, now, but Gray kept feeling the anger, nurturing it, and he found another way of getting mana. Envy. He thought of Rynn, growing up with magic, getting training, with her rich parents and servants. It was unfair. He’d been born into poverty and violence. And yes, he had magic now, but it was still so very broken.

  Fresh mana filled him, and it felt good.

  He ran into the temple—thank the gods of sea and storm that he’d spent the st nine months running his ass off. He was barely winded.

  He got his stick but didn’t put it away.

  Then, he was back to where Ames had killed that first dog. Blood was still dripping out of the thing, but there was no more yellow light. There was no more mana left there, so even if he wanted to poach magic from it, he couldn’t. He watched as the flesh started to disintegrate. It had to be the mana that kept the thing together, and once it lost its magic, its flesh turned into a disgusting mist.

  Gray winced.

  And then his squad was there, and they were pissed.

  Tomi grabbed him. “Come on, Gray. We are so mad at you.”

  Rynn didn’t say a word to him all the way back to Ruin Manor.

  A bloody, half-naked Settie was waiting there for them, in her chair in the living room, scowling. “And that, you curious little fuckers, is why we don’t go visiting the Weeping Well.”