Hive Queen by Sinclair, Grayson (ereader iphone .TXT) 📗

stone floor, and they shattered, reveling his lava golem and a handful of bane wolves. “They’ll cover us, but we have to go now!”

“Do as he says, Sam,” Evelyn said, drawing her twin blades. “Getting Eris to safety is the mission. We can fight later.”

I nodded at them as Aliria cut one of Adam’s bane wolves in half. Blood gushed from the split wolf before it dissolved in swirling shadow. The five of us took off towards the dining hall door as Adam’s summons bought us a few moments.

“This house is a fucking maze, which way do we go?” I asked as the heavy wood door slammed shut behind me.

Raven stepped to the left and motions at us. “Follow me. I know the way.”

She took off around the corner as we all jogged to catch up. I held Eris’s hand in my left while Evelyn and Adam ran ahead of me.

“We cleared out most, if not all of Nicholas’s guards on our way in,” Evelyn said, turning to me as we ran. “We should have an easy way out if you can take Eris and fly out of here when we get outside.”

As we ran by a door, it flew open, and a man in heavy plate mail jumped out with his sword raised. I twisted, bringing my sword up as his came down. I caught it on the guard and grunted as I tightened my grip.

I let go of Eris as I and the guard had our swords bound. “Protect her!”

Adam grabbed Eris as I fought with the guard. I stepped forward and threw my weight into my blade, maneuvering both to the left near the ground.

The guard’s blue eyes lit up as he tried to compensate and bring his sword back, but I had my opening. I hooked the top of my foot around his heel and tugged, taking his leg out from under him. His head smacked hard against the doorjamb as he fell back. before he could rise, I thrust my sword through the gap in his helmet, puncturing his carotid.

His blood spilled around my sword as I pulled it free, his death rattle echoing in the empty room behind him.

Adam still held Eris as I turned and was about to join them when the clink of armor and voices sounded down the hallway behind me. “Go, take her! I’ll cover us!”

“What about you?” he asked, his eyebrows raised, lips pursed.

“They don’t want me!” I shouted. “I’ll be fine.”

“Sam,” Eris said, tugging on Adam’s iron grip.

“Go, love. I’ll be right behind you,” I said before turning away from her and walking around the corner.

Half a dozen men stood in the hallway, lambent torchlight reflected in their too bright armor. Give me Chitin Armor, Aspect.

“Of course, knight.”

It slithered over my skin, and I gripped my sword tightly as I activated Spider Limbs and Scorpion Tail.

Chitin pooled heavily at my back, forming my new appendages as I met the first of the guards. The hallway was too narrow for them to surround me, and my jagged black scorpion tail made it dangerous for them to try.

A few paled at the sight. A demon made manifest in front of them.

I raised my sword as a tall guard came forward, a mace clutched in both hands. It was heavy as he swung; it displaced the air with a soft whistle as it barreled toward my head. With a thought, Chitin Shield formed to meet the challenge. As his mace rebounded off my shield, I whipped my sword in an arc, following the trajectory of the mace as it flew back. I angled my blade, and its edge parted the flesh at Mace’s wrist, severing the fine tendons that let him control his weapon.

Mace dropped his mace and stumbled back, holding his dripping wrist. Blood welled through his fingers, and he groaned as his face scrunched in pain.

I lunged to end his life, but a second guard stepped forward and caught the tip of my blackened steel on the flat of his dagger, deflecting my strike. In his right hand was a short sword that came for my face as Dagger riposted.

Two of my limbs pulled me back as the blade licked the chitin by my cheek. I stepped back as my tail shot the tip of my stinger forward, its noxious poison trickling in a purple stream over the obsidian chitin. It punched through his steel chestplate hard enough that the tail lifted him into the air. Dagger choked as all the air was forced out of his lungs. He curled in on himself as he coughed, and blood splattered across the stone walls and floor.

I retracted my tail as Dagger slumped over, his lifeless head cracking hard against the ground.

“You son of a bitch!” another guard screamed as he leapt over the body of his comrade.

While he hung in midair, I stepped to him and brought the left side of my spider limbs up sharply to meet him. The man impaled himself on my appendages, two of them lodged in the upper part of his chest plate, but the third landed high, just under the man’s eye as it pierced through his bone and into his brain.

Two of the other guards slunk around and attempted to flank me, but I attacked with the remaining three limbs and my tail. I punctured their armor with just as much ease as the others, and they both died quick—if not painless—deaths.

The final man was wiser than his dead friends and turned to run. His brains kicked in too late as I flung the suspended corpse of the guard at him. It hit his legs, and he hit the stone tile hard as the body pinned him to the ground.

I stepped over the dead as the man tried to crawl for his