“Look at you.” The grace and deftness with which Lilith spun the sword as she circled warned Moira this vampire queen knew the art of the blade. “Small and insignificant, covered with mud and tears. I’m amazed I wasted so much time planning your death when it’s all so simple.”

“You won’t win here.” Queen to queen, Moira thought, and blocked Lilith’s first testing thrust. Life against death. “We’re beating you back. We’ll never stop.”

“Oh please.” Lilith waved the words away. “Your lines are crumbling like clay, and I’ve two hundred yet in reserve. But that’s neither here nor there. This is you and me.”

With barely a blink, Lilith shot out a hand, grabbing the soldier who charged her by the throat. And snapping his neck. She tossed him carelessly to the ground, while slicing down at Moira’s swinging fire sword.

“Midir has his uses,” Lilith said when the fire died.

“I want to take my time with you, you human bitch. You killed my Davey.”

“No, you did. And with what you made of him destroyed, I hope what he was, the innocent he was, is cursing you.”

Lilith’s hand streaked out, flashing like the fangs of a snake. She raked her nails down Moira’s cheek.

“A thousand cuts.” She licked the blood from her fingers. “That’s what I’ll give you. A thousand cuts while my army feeds its belly full on yours.”

“You won’t touch her again.” On his stallion’s back, Cian rode slowly forward, as if time had stopped. “You’ll never touch her again.”

“Come to save your whore?” From her belt, Lilith drew a gold stake. “Gilded oak. I had this made for you, for when I end you as I made you. Tell me, doesn’t all this blood stir you? Warm pools of it, bodies not yet cooled waiting to be drained. I know what’s in you wants that taste. I put it in you, and I know it as I know myself.”

“You never knew me. Go,” he said to Moira.

“Yes, run along. I’ll find you later.”

She flew at Cian, then sprang up a sword’s length away to spin over his head. As she sliced down, her sword met air while he threw his body up and back, with the heels of his boots barely missing her face.

They moved so fast, that eerie speed, that Moira saw little more than a blur, heard the clash of swords like silver thunder. This would be his battle, she knew, the one only he could fight. But she wouldn’t leave him.

Leaping onto the horse, she drove Vlad up blood-slicked rock until she was positioned over their heads. There she shot fire from her sword to hold off Lilith’s men who tried to reach their queen. She vowed that she and the sword of Geall would stand for her lover to the last.

Lilith was skilled, Cian knew. After all, she had centuries to learn the arts of war just as he had. Her strength and speed were as great as his. Perhaps greater. She blocked him, drove him back, slithered away from the force of his attack.

This ground was still hers, he knew. This pocket of black. She fed off it, as he didn’t dare. She fed off the screams that echoed through the air and the blood that seemed to spew through it like rain.

He fought her, and the war inside him, the thing that struggled to claw free and revel in what it was. What she’d made him. Taking her advantage, she beat his sword aside, and in that flash of an instant he was open, plunged the stake at his heart.

It struck with a force that sent him staggering back. But as her cry of triumph echoed away, he continued to stand whole and unharmed.

“How?” was all she said as she stared at him.

He felt the imprint of Moira’s locket against his heart, and the pain was sweet. “A magic you’ll never know.” He sliced out, scoring across the scar of the pentagram. The blood that welled from the wound was black and thick as tar.

Pain and fury brought the demon to her eyes, the killing red. Now her screams rang as she came at him with a new and wild strength. He slashed back, spilled more blood, drove as he was driven as the locket seemed to pulse like a heart on his chest.

Her sword ripped down his arm, sending his clattering against the rocks. “Now you! Then your whore!”

When she charged, he gripped the wrist of her sword arm in his bloody hand. She smiled at him. “This way then. It’s more poetic.”

She bared her fangs to strike at his throat. And he plunged the stake she had made for him into her heart.

“I’d say go to hell, but even hell won’t have you.”

Her eyes went wide, faded to blue. He felt the wrist he held dissolve in his hand, and still those eyes stared into his another moment.

Then there was nothing but the ash at his feet.

“I’ve ended you,” he declared, “as you ended me so long ago. That’s poetic.”

The ground under his feet began to quake. So, he thought, it comes.

The black stallion leaped from the rocks, scattering ash. “You’ve done it.” Moira vaulted from the saddle into his arms. “You’ve beaten her. You’ve won.”

“This saved me.” He dragged her locket out, showed her the deep dent in the silver from the force of the stake. “You saved me.”

“Cian.” As the rock behind her split like an egg, she jumped down, and her face went pale again. “Hurry. Go, hurry. It’s begun. Her blood, her end, was the last of it. They’ve started the spell.”

“It’s you who beat her, you who won. Remember that.” He pulled her into his arms, crushed his mouth to hers. Then he was flying onto the horse, and was gone.

Everything around her was chaos. Screams and shouts through the haze, the moans of wounded, the rush of the enemy in mad retreat.

A gold dragon speared through it, Blair on its back. With the ground rippling in waves under her, Moira lifted her arms so Larkin could cradle her in his claws. She flew over the quivering land toward the high ridge.

On it, Hoyt gripped Moira’s hand. “It must be now.”

“Cian. We can’t be sure—”

“I gave my word to him. It must be now.” He raised their joined hands, and together they lifted their faces, their voices to the black sky.

“In this place once damned we hold the power, and we wield it in this final hour. On this ground blood was shed in blackest night, theirs for dark and ours for light. Black magic and demon here are felled by our hand, and now we claim this bloody land. Now call forth all we have done. Now through dark we raise the sun. Its light will strike our enemy. As we will, so mote it be.”