Page 23 of Cursed By the Dawn

“Are they dead?” I gasped out, horrified.

“No,” Erebus said briskly, dodging a leg as it almost clipped his shoulder. “They will wake in their beds tomorrow, bodies reset.” He ducked, narrowly missing the demon’s snapping teeth as he drew his sword, aiming for the demon’s muscled neck. I sent my own blast of shadow at the demon, willing the tendrils to act like snares. They volleyed into the demon’s bony legs, rendering it temporarily immobilized. “But it won’t wash away the sensation of having died.”

The demon lunged again, a few of its legs creaking like sticks from my snares. It closed in on a young dreamer who’d fallen to the ground in fear, while simultaneously using its rear legs—stretching impossibly longer—to strike at Erebus and me. Erebus cut at one leg as I slashed at the other, but the bone merely cracked; it didn’t shatter. The demon swept one leg fast and wide, slamming Erebus into one of the courtyard’s many metal lamps. He rose instantly, perfectly fine and utterly furious, but it was too late. His fall had distracted me. The demon brought down another leg, as a scorpion would its tail, aiming it at my skull. I stifled a scream, too stunned to move.

A shove sent me sprawling.

Ceveon.

He’d intervened without hesitation, pushing me out of harm’s way.

But that placed him directly in line with the demon.

The demon’s powerful leg rushed toward the green-eyed man, moreexplosive than lightning—but Ceveon expertly blocked it with a shield hewn from shadow. I shoved myself to my feet, elated he’d survived the blow, but a panicked scream sent me whirling in a new direction. The demon had ensnared a boy by his ankle and was dragging him closer with its knife-sharp teeth.

Messy red hair, brown eyes wide in fear—I instantly recognized him.

In his previous life, the boy had lived a life of illness and pain. He’d become feverish and was too weak to drink the elixir he’d been given. After he succumbed to Corruption, he’d been happy to arrive at our domain. He thought it was a second chance at a life lost.

The demon’s mouth widened in a gleeful roar, aiming for the boy’s head—just as I frantically willed a shadow spear to fly down its vile throat. It hit true, burrowing into the back of the demon’s fleshy maw. But instead of flailing in pain or cowering in defeat, the demon widened its throat, swallowing the spear whole. The demon instantly tripled in size, wrapping itself in my shadows and roaring in ecstasy.

“How revolting,” I heard Nephthys, the Water Weaver, say. She grasped the sapphire necklace at her throat, dark blue hair cascading down her bronze shoulders in miniature rivers. “Thatis their power?”

“Apparently so. They feed the dark,” Ceres responded, more thoughtful than disgusted. Her horned headpiece, wrapped in roses, cobwebs, and small skeletons, bobbed as she shook her head. “That wickedness cannot be Maker-given. Can it?”

“I don’t see how,” Fenrir snarled, eyes positively burning as he snaked a protective hand around Nephthys’s hips. The casual intimacy of the gesture snagged my attention; perhaps they were lovers as some tales suggested. “And they’re both so pitifully weak.”

“Are they lying, then?” Lelantos, the Air Weaver, asked. His half mask of bone framed part of his face, wrapping around full lips and pale eyes. “We may need to retreat and consider a new strategy.”

“Wait,” Theia, Weaver of the Future, said carefully, her silver hair crowned with diamonds. She looked more ghost than human, every inch of her softly shimmering with pale light. “Let us see what they do next.”

“This is ademon!” I yelled, decorum sliding from my bones as if I were shedding an uncomfortable skin. “We can’t purify it like we do our dreamers.”

Erebus shouted a warning, but it was too late.

The demon, now a hulking mass of skeletal legs, flung a limb into Ceveon’s chest, crushing his shield. It snarled—no,laughed—as its mouth widened, revealing a pit lined with sharp teeth. Teeth meant for tearing. Teeth meant for devouring. It lunged for Ceveon’s throat, mouth opening in glee—

Just as I sent another spear of shadow into the demon’s mouth, halting it.

The dreamers froze, no longer scrambling over each other to retreat. The demon craned its neck, eyes rolling back in their sockets. It was no longer breathing, no longer focused on attacking us.

But then it swallowed my spear whole.

“It can’t be stopped,” I sputtered, beginning to panic.

Its limbs ruptured as they grew, sounding like a forest of trees being cracked in half. It was growing longer, sharper, stronger. A behemoth with a spider’s legs, a scorpion’s tail, a horse’s body, and a dragon’s skull. No longer interested in the dreamers at its feet, the demon fixed its bloody eyes on the Weavers above, unleashing a terrible howl.

The Weavers recoiled, scattering like birds frightened by a loud noise.

“Esmer, here!”

Erebus sprinted to my side, grabbing my hand as he sent us flying. Black wings unfurled from our backs in a burst of shadow, shooting us high above the trees. We instinctively pushed our swords together, shadows twining around them in growing sweeps. Within seconds, we had a tempest at our disposal. The demon peered up at us, eagerly waiting for us to strike.

Itwantedus to attack.

“Enough playing,” Erebus snarled, his eyes a raging sea of cold fury. “Let’s end this demonnow.”

“How? Our shadows can’t kill it. We’re powerless—”