I no longer cared about what was going to happen next. I would have felt less agony if someone jabbed a burning rod into my broken heart. I no longer wanted to live, yet reason and logic demanded I care for and defend my other mates.
But how could I continue without my beloved Héctor?
Before we reached the top of the valley, the first wave of the monsters surged toward us, swarming us. Rage beat in me, vanquishing all fear. Some of them might be the ones that had torn my love apart.
The Void might have nullified my magic, but I still had a sword.
A rush of adrenaline pumped into me, lending me new strength. “Put me down!” I roared. “I’ll kill them all!”
There was no use running now that the monsters had outrun us. Zak let me down gently, and my mates immediately established a protective formation around me.
My knees didn’t buckle, as I thought they would. I snarled like a fiend and charged forward, my demon sword beheading a horned panther-like creature. The need to avenge my beloved burned in my blood, offering me the vigor I required.
Rage was a terrible thing, and I was riding it.
Zak, Axel, and Paxton swung their swords at the Void mutants, hacking and slashing, leaving piles of corpses. I screamed as I cleaved a troll’s horn then plunged my blade into its scaled chest.
Yet an ocean of them kept coming, mounting over their kind’s bodies to charge us.
My peripheral vision caught a giant tearing a piece of flesh from Axel’s shoulder. Axel roared in pain. He kicked away a mutant tiger and rammed his blade into the giant’s midsection, twisting his sword and slicing up.
We weren’t fighting enemies. We were fighting predators and brutal nature for survival.
I leapt into the air with a roar and impaled a lizard-like freak.
My hellhound crashed into a three-headed wolf, locking jaws with one of its heads, snarling and ripping. His claws tore into the wolf’s two other heads as his second head sank his fangs into his foe’s spiked throat.
My hellhound was just as nightmarish as the horrors of the Void.
“Angel, stay alive!” I ordered as I gutted a gargoyle.
Ten yards away, Lucifer and Ares swore. The stampede had caught up with them, which provided some comfort to me. I hoped the trolls ate every bit of the war god.
Reason gradually dipped into me, surmounting my rage.
My mates were mighty, but we wouldn’t last if we stayed and fought the endless supply of the armada of monsters. An instinctive need to preserve the rest of my men gripped my logic and my heart.
I embedded my sword into a beast’s wide mouth and shouted, “Stop!”
The horde froze, as if obeying my command. But I wouldn’t wait for them to unfreeze to test my theory.
“Run!” I yelled.
We burst into a dead run, fleeing the battlefield.
Lucifer and Ares also took advantage of the monsters’ sudden stillness, springing away from the battle. They reached the opening of the valley and shot left.
We were several yards behind them when the armada recovered from their daze, yowling in rage at their prey’s attempt to escape. They resumed the chase, their eyes glowing eerily yellow, their fangs dripping saliva and blood, and their hooves and clawed paws barely touching the ground.
“Faster!” Axel shouted, bringing up the rear with my hellhound as Zak and Paxton sprinted on either side of me.
I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure Axel wouldn’t suffer Héctor’s fate.
My love. My Héctor. My beloved mate, now lost to me forever.
Burning tears stung my eyes, but I forced myself not to dwell on him. If I did, I would collapse again and endanger the rest of my mates.
They deserved better. And Héctor deserved better.