Page 128 of Ravenous

Then Co?tin easily hefted up the body and tossed it out into the Shallows.

Thud!

King Neculain’s corpse had just landed. In their boat. Would Co?tin have heard the wooden boom?

Blood from the severed neck slicked the water around them, chumming it. The current heaved; the canoe steadied, then lurched.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ven said. “If we smuggle this trophy out, we’ll neverhave to buy drinks again.” Not that they drank.

She and Eyrun paddled, yet they didn’t move.

“Uh, what’s happening?” Eyrun said.

Below them, something rolled, and they rose—up and up—on the back of a breaching kraken. They were trapped aboard the giant creature.

“Is it sleeping?” Chiyo whispered.

“It’s twitching like it is,” Eyrun whispered back. Muscles rippled along its spine, jostling the canoe.

Co?tin crossed to the balcony railing to gaze out with narrowed eyes. At that moment, clouds parted and the moon detonated white above them.

There sat Ven, Eyrun, and Chiyo with the body of Neculain in their boat and no way to escape without getting eaten.

Eyrun’s lightning flared across the moon.

But Ven kept a cooler head. “The three of us can handle whatever Bloodreach can muster.”

Co?tin traced away, demonstrating a new skill the Valkyries hadn’t suspected. A split second later, an alarm blared over the castle.

Suddenly, teleporting vampires appeared on forgotten ramparts with weapons drawn and intent gazes. More and more appeared. The castle was like an ant mound disturbed by a stray leaf, now boiling up with defenders.

Co?tin returned to his spot on Neculain’s balcony, peering down at them with a triumphant sneer.

Eyrun gaped. “Where are the soldiers coming from?” Contingents of swordsmen and archers continued to populate every old battlement, all wearing crimson and black, the ancient colors of Bloodreach. “And why do they look like they know what they’re doing? We would have seen vampires training!”

“You weren’t meant to. No one was,” Chiyo said gravely. “Co?tin is like a fox who buries a treat for later.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The crypt. He must have been stockpiling an army down there, always planning to usurp Neculain.”

Ven’s lips parted. “Then the Horde of long ago has returned.” In the past, teleporting vampires had given even Valkyries pause. Much less an army of them.

Eyrun frowned. “They’ll never follow Co?tin now though. The Horde revered bloodlines. Plotting an overthrow is one thing, but even the leechesfrown on regicide.”

“Kill the Valkyries!” Co?tin bellowed to his troops. “They have my father! Murdered!”

Eyrun murmured, “Fuckity-ugh. He just pinned the assassination on us, didn’t he?”

Arrows rained down, blotting out the moon.

Chiyo cried, “I think we’re in a pinch.”

“Dive!” Ven yelled. She snatched Chiyo and Eyrun as she sprang off the waking kraken into a whirlpool of blood and fangs…

Chapter 49Thane

“My beast is strong this eve,” he grated from his cage. “It claws me from the inside.”