Dark Cotillion (First in the Brenna Strachan Series)

Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chiron moved lightning fast. I wasn’t even sure Pendragon had stepped away from him when he kicked me square in the chest with his front hooves. I fell to the ground, gasping for air. He was on me again, trying to stomp on me. I rolled just in time and felt the sword fall from my fingers. I grasped at it and rolled again, his hoof brushing my ear. Blood was pouring from it, dripping onto the ground. I could hear it.

  I swung up with all my might, which didn’t actually take much effort. I felt the sword strike bone, hesitate for less than a second and cleave through it. Chiron screamed with rage and pain. I smiled and got to my feet. He had lost a leg, but it didn’t seem to impede him. I had always thought that if a horse broke a leg, you had to put it down, but I guess that didn’t apply to Centaurs.

  He came at me again. His hands and arms outstretched. I went to swing the sword, but he caught my arm. Chiron jerked me into him, not enough room to move the sword even with the other hand. His face was only millimeters from mine. He bit. I felt his teeth sink into the flesh of my cheek. I jerked, felt the skin tear away. Felt more blood. Something inside told me that I was losing. I couldn’t break free from his grasp. He slammed his forehead into mine and the world seemed to slide a bit on its axis. He did it again, I had just enough time to move down and tilt my head just a bit. He impaled his forehead on the tiny horns that my hair had successfully hidden since birth.

  It was his turn to jerk. He yanked his head off of mine, tossing me aside with one hand. I hit the wall of magic and fell down it. My head felt fuzzy. He was bellowing again, this time it seemed to be words, but the words were lost to me. If I blacked out, I was as good as dead. I struggled to maintain consciousness, struggled to get to my feet. The sword was gone again. The warm metal no longer in my hand. I tried to look for it, but my eyes wouldn’t focus on anything except the Centaur that was charging at me.

  I closed my eyes and felt magic. The circle was pure magic and under that, there was another type, it was Pendragon. I tried to pull it. Tried to pull the magic and couldn’t. Chiron was on top of me now. He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and brought me off the ground. My feet were dangling. I had lost.

  “Now then, Demon,” Chiron spat in my face. It was warm and smelled of blood. “Let’s see how the world gets along without you.”

  I reacted without thinking. I kicked out and found his diaphragm. The air rasped out of him and he nearly doubled over. His grip loosened some, but he didn’t drop me. I brought my head down on top of his. Felt my head fracture. If I was going to die, I was going to make sure he went with me. I rammed one horn into his eye and pushed up against the eye socket. I felt the horn start to break. Chiron dropped me, screaming. But I had grabbed a handful of his hair and was bringing him with me as I went to the ground. The horn gave a little more and I pushed up as hard as I could and felt it break. We were both bathed in heat. More screaming. I didn’t know whether it was Chiron, or me, or both, but I had a good feeling it was both. He came free of me. I fell to the ground and felt the flames hit the circle of magic. It shivered, but didn’t break. The fire died.

  I looked and Chiron was still moving. His skin was charred black, he had no hair and a missing eye, but the flames had cauterized the wounds on his face and he had stopped bleeding from them. He brought one of his back hooves down on my leg. I felt the bone snap. I felt the skin tear. Felt the warm blood flow into the earth. He raised up, brought it down again. The bone shattered. I could feel it turn to dust inside the skin.

  I threw up. Tears in my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the sword. I reached for it. Chiron stomped on my femur, shattering it. I screamed in pain.

  “Brenna, hurry,” Mammon’s voice came to me, “The Overlords, oh, God.”

  The Overlords. My mind instantly cleared. If I died, they died. I took a breath and when Chiron brought his hoof down a fourth time, this time on my kneecap, I was ready. I caught it in one of my hands and I twisted it with all my might and felt it snap. I wasn’t as strong as my father was, but I wasn’t a weakling, and while I might only be half-Demon, I was still stronger than your average Human. I grabbed the sword and plunged it into the leg I had just broken. Chiron went down for the first time. His legs collapsed, his body hit the ground with a thud. I raised the sword again and hesitated.

  I had never actually killed anything, let alone a being. I didn’t know how I felt about it. Sort of sick, my stomach churned at the thought of killing Chiron. Inside, I knew that the only way to end it was to kill him, but could I do it? Chiron answered the question for me. He sank his teeth into my shoulder. Reaching up, I let the sword plunge into the back of his neck. It slipped through his spine, his throat and into my body.

  It slid between my ribs and punctured my lung. I felt it collapse, felt Chiron collapse, and I went with him. The sword in his back, handle in the ground, the tip sticking out behind me. I hadn’t just killed him; I had managed to kill all of us. The last thing I felt was the magic of the circle break.