The Last Ward by Jessica Wayne

Author:Jessica Wayne [Wayne, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub

4

The heavy tang of copper hung in the air, and the closer they got to the training field, the more saturated the air around became.

Blood coated the stone stairs, and the area below them was completely silent. Until it wasn’t.

Screams, hundreds or perhaps thousands of them, echoed down the hall, and together the brothers picked up the pace, no longer concerned with their enemy hearing their movements.

They emerged into a blood-soaked room. Armored bodies lay, broken and wide-eyed, everywhere and the creatures—hundreds of them—had the survivors cornered. The few remaining Guardians fought valiantly defending the families, but they were losing—and vastly outnumbered.

Vampires and werewolves stalked toward their prey, sick smiles on their blood-smeared faces. A few dozen men in black armor, hands gripping the hilts of large swords, turned toward them.

“No! Leave us alone!” a woman screamed, gripping her two children behind her as a vampire moved closer.

Dax and Lawson charged, two men against an army of many, both with an entire family to lose if they failed.

He went for a vampire first, dodging a blade and fists and removing the creature’s head.

His body spinning to avoid another attack, the metal of his sword clashed with the blade of a man in black armor. The sound of metal against metal might as well have been silent for all the screaming.

Trying to stay focused, he dodged again, kicking out with a leg and knocking his opponent to the ground before burying his blade in the man’s neck where his helmet met the rest of his armor.

The man didn’t even budge.

What the hell kind of magick is this? But Dax knew the sickening answer. Necromancer. They were rare, but there were a few out there constantly hunted by the council for their abilities to bring the dead back to life—or re-animate would be a more applicable word, since there was nothing actually alive about the creatures.

The thing smiled at him from behind his helmet, and lifted his blade. Dax dodged, the steel whirring over his head, before he stood and brought his own sword over the thing’s neck, removing its head just as the Guardians above had done when they first entered the academy.

Stained with blood and whatever black ooze was inside the dead, Dax moved on to the next enemy—a werewolf in full form—who tore at him with claws sharper than the best-cared-for dagger.

“Daxon!” a woman screamed, and he turned in time to stop the vampire at his back from biting into his shoulder.

Dax scanned the room, searching for the woman who'd screamed his name. His gaze fell on a panicked Mariana, who clutched an unconscious and bleeding Theodore to her chest. Her own gown was soaked with blood, her face streaked with it.

“No! No!” he screamed, panic racing through him as the creatures closed in on his family. “Mariana!” The survivors’ numbers had been thinned, with only a dozen of the thousands still standing. It was a bloodbath—a complete slaughter, and Dax glanced around the room, his stomach dropping as he realized that he and Lawson were the only two left standing to fight.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.