“He asked for my word. If we’re able to bring the spell into play, he asked for my word we not wait for him.”

“But we can’t—”

“It was the last he asked of me. Pray we won’t have to make the choice.”

Behind them, Moira stood with Cian. “Fight well,” she said to him, “and live another thousand years.”

“My fondest hope.” He covered the lie by taking her hands a last time, pressing them to his lips. “Fight well, mo croi, and live.”

Before she could speak again, he’d leaped onto his horse and galloped away.

From the air, Blair called out commands, directing her mount with her legs and scanning the ground for what would come with the dark. The sun fell, plunging the valley into night, and in that night, the ground erupted. They poured out of the ground, from earth, from rock, from crevice, in numbers too great to count.

“Show time,” she whispered to herself, swinging south as arrows from Moira and her archers rained down. “Hold them, hold them.” A quick glance to where Niall’s foot soldiers’ voices rose like chants told her Niall was waiting for the signal.

A little longer, a little more, she thought as vampires swarmed up the valley, as arrows pierced some, missed others.

She flashed the firesword and dove. As men charged, she yanked the rope on her harness, dropping the first bomb.

Fire and flaming shrapnel flew, and there were screams as vampires were engulfed. And still they spewed from the ground pushing their lines toward the Geallians.

Freed of his cloak, Cian sat his horse, his sword raised to hold the men at his back. Bombs exploded fire, scorching the enemy and the ground. But they came, slinking and slithering, clawing and leaping. On a cry of battle, Cian slashed his sword and led his troops into the firestorm.

With flashing hooves and hacking steel, he cleaved a hole in the advancing army’s line. It closed again, surrounding him and his forces.

Screams came in a torrent.

On her sloping plateau, Moira gripped her battle-ax. Her heart knocked in her throat as she saw the vampires break through the line to the east. She led the charge even as Hoyt led his so that they took their warriors in a stream of steel and stake to flank the enemy’s lines.

Over the screams, the crashes, the fire, came the trumpeting call of dragons. The next wave of Lilith’s army was advancing.

“Arrows!” Moira shouted as her quiver emptied, and another, filled, was tossed at her feet.

She notched and loosed, notched and loosed until the air was so full of smoke the bow was useless.

She raised the fiery sword and rushed with her line into the thick of it.

Of all she’d feared, all she’d known, all she’d seen in the visions the gods had given her, what came through the smoke and stink was worse. Men and women already slaughtered, ash of vanquished enemy coating the bitter ground like fetid snow. Blood spurted like a fall of water, painting the yellowed grass red.

Shrieks, human and vampire, echoed in the dark under the pale, three-quarter moon.

She blocked a sword strike, and her body moved with the instinct of hard training to spin, to pivot, to block the next. When she leaped over a low slash, she felt the wind of the sword under her boots, and with a scream of her own slashed for the throat.

Through the haze she saw the dragon that held Blair spiraling to the ground with its side pierced with arrows. The ground was littered with stakes. Grabbing one in her free hand, she rushed forward, then flung it through the back and into the heart of one who charged at Blair.

“Thanks. Duck.” Blair shoved Moira aside, and severed the sword arm of another. “Larkin.”

“I don’t know. They keep coming.”

“Remember your own hype.” Blair leaped up, striking with her feet, then rammed a stake through the one she’d kicked.

Then she was lost in the waves of smoke, and Moira was once again battling for her life.

As Blair hacked through the line, they closed in around her. She struck, sword, stake, fought to gain ground. And was suddenly soaked. As her attackers screamed from the flood of blessed water that rained down from above, Larkin flew out of the smoke, grabbing her lifted arm to haul her up behind him.

“Nice job,” she told him. “Drop me off. There, big, flat rock.”

“You drop me. It’s my time to have a go down here. You’re out of water, but there are two fireballs. She’s pushing in hard from the south now.”

“I’ll give her some heat.”

He leaped off, and she soared.

Through the melee, Hoyt searched with his eyes, with his power. He felt the brush of Midir’s dark, but there was so much black, so much cold, he wasn’t sure of its direction.

Then he saw Glenna, fighting her way back up a ridge. And standing on it like a black crow, was Midir. In horror, he watched a hand snake out of a fold of earth and rock and grab Glenna’s leg. In his mind he heard her scream as she kicked, as she clawed to keep from being dragged into the crevice. Even knowing he was too far away, he rushed through swords. Continued to run even when the fire she shot from fingertips coated what dragged at her.

Sensing power, Midir hurled lightning, black as pitch, and had her flying back.

Mad with fear, Hoyt fought like a wild man, ignoring blows and gashes as he worked his way toward her. He could see the blood on her face as she answered Midir’s lightning with white fire.

T he stake missed Cian’s heart by a hairsbreadth, and the pain buckled his knees. As he went down, he thrust his sword up, all but cleaving his attacker in two before he managed to roll. A lance dug into the stony ground beside him. He gripped it, heaved it up to strike at another heart. Then planting it, he vaulted up, kicking out to send another flying to the wooden stakes the Geallians had hammered into the ground.

He saw Blair through the smoke that billowed from the fireballs and flaming arrows. With a pump of his legs, he leaped up, grabbing her dragon’s harness to swing behind her an instant before she released another bomb.

“Didn’t see you,” she called out.

“Got that. Moira?”

“Don’t know. Take over here. I’m going down.”

She jumped down to the table of a rock. Cian saw her flip off, shooting stakes from both hands before the haze buried her. He swung his mount, aiming his sword, sending out fire. The ground continued to pull at him; its intoxicating scents of blood and fear driving hunger into him as keenly as a sharpened stake.