by C. M. Owens
“Gavin shouldn’t have magic, right?” Ella asks.
“Gavin is probably aware of every move they’re going to make, so it’s likely he’s prepared and has his own way around the spell,” Slade says, pushing off from the wall, but not meeting anyone’s eyes. “The princess should sit this one out.”
Hesitation and animosity stifles the air around us, but Ella’s lips thin, and she finally cuts through the silence.
“If they’re planning on opening it tonight, they’ve obviously found a way to circumvent using me as their base.”
“So says you. It could all be a trap. They’ve set a few of those recently, and so far, everyone has run right into them.”
“You included,” Ella points out, a taunting smirk on her face.
His eyebrow arches, and he cocks his head. “Tell me, princess, what good will you do if you lose it and start hurting your own? I’ll have to abandon the fight to put you down until your head is right again. Do you think you’ll be helpful, or more of a hindrance?”
Ella looks like he just struck her, and Slade’s eyes narrow like he’s challenging her to argue.
“Alyssa could use more protection. Just in case,” Gage says quietly, looking to Ella.
Her lip trembles, but she masks her expression so quickly that I almost miss it.
“Right. Let’s do what he says, since he’s never once given us a reason not to trust him. I’m your strongest—”
“You’re their gravest weakness,” Slade says, cutting her off. “Everyone wants to protect you, and you try to kill them all when you get high on the power. Be smart, princess. Tonight’s not the night for trite mistakes.”
Ella vanishes without another word, and everyone glares over at Slade.
“I’m just saying what you’re all too weak to say,” he drawls unapologetically.
“Ella is our strongest. You better not be getting rid of her just so you can—”
“If you genuinely felt she was your strongest, you would have defended her. You know as well as I do that she’s pointless until she gets her power under control. Now you can stand around here with your dicks in your hand all day, or we can go fight. Personally? I’m not in the mood to play with my dick.”
He disappears with that, and I blow out a breath.
“That’s because his dick probably stays limp,” Dice says unexpectedly. “Hashtag—Impotence breeds psychos.”
My eyebrows go up, but he’s studying the map, acting like he didn’t just say that.
“We’ll take the north,” Gage says, motioning to him and Kimber. “Dice, you’re with us.”
Dice nods.
“Calypso and Drackus are staking it out now. They’ll be southwest.”
“We’ll take the south,” Thad announces, his fingers lacing with Roslyn’s before he kisses the back of her hand, exhaling a shaky breath.
“We’ll take the east,” Zee adds as he hands Leah another sword. The girl is packed to the guild with weapons.
Demon magic hurt her. They managed to trap her in the barrier with us with witch magic.
Her Aquarius blood isn’t stopping them. She was supposed to be our strongest weapon against them.
“That’ll put us at the west,” Chaz says, his hand clamping down on my hip.
“The others will remain with Alyssa and—”
“We’ll join Zee and Leah on the east,” Sierra snarls as she storms in, her eyes red-rimmed and tearstained.
Deke nods. “This one is for Amy.”
“For Amy,” Dice says on a quiet breath, tossing a tack into the map to signify where he’ll be. “And for what they almost did to my girl and my unborn child.”
“For all those scared, lonely children,” Kimber murmurs, sticking a tack beside Dice’s.
“For my niece,” Zee says, adding his own red tack.
“For Morgana and my brother,” Gage says, choking back any emotion as he stabs the map with his black tack.
“For my sister and me, and all the other slaves who were tortured,” I say, sticking my tack in.
A silver tack appears on its own, and my heart aches. Slade is still in here. He’s hidden in camouflage, but he put in his own tack, marking his own pain.
I don’t look around, not letting him know I just saw that. No one else seems to have noticed, and he’d hate it if anyone did.
“Here’s to the hopes of staying alive,” Gage says, lifting a shot glass.
One appears in front of all of us. My stomach tries to ignore my human night when that was a really bad idea and it all came up.
“Here’s to ending this once and for all,” Chaz says, lifting his glass.
My immortal body doesn’t even flinch as I shoot the shot down.
Chapter 28
CHAZ
My stomach is in knots, and I’m also pissed that I let Ella leave. As much as I hate Slade, he’s right though. She shouldn’t be here. Not for this. It’s too risky in so many ways.
But we’d planned to let her down gently, not charge in and damn her feelings all to hell about it.
Kya’s fingers leave mine, and already I feel the dread. The beast inside me stirs restlessly as we silently take our positions. We’re almost a mile away from the center of the forest, close to the lake. I can see a lot of motion going on, but no Morgana.
All that’s there are a bunch of the creepy eyeless monsters.
An entire army waits at our back, people who are willing to die to ensure the world has a sun in the morning and air to breathe.
Kya crouches low, her eyes trained on anything and everything, searching for Morgana just as I am. It’s possible Hannah has found another body, but unlikely. Gage believes she’s been strengthening Morgana’s body for centuries, which would mean she’d have to start all over in a new body.
There’s also no sign of Gavin, which is one of our biggest concerns next to stopping the portal. The blood oath has been broken now, and he’s free. But free to do what?
The armored minions are watchful and ready, eyes trained on the land they’re encircling. But they’re guarding a vacant space in the middle.
“Wait for the signal,” I tell Kya, seeing her trigger-happy hands already wrapped around the handles of two daggers.
She wants blood, and I want it for her. But we can’t risk scaring off Morgana before we end this.
One conclusion has been drawn by everyone—Morgana can’t be saved.
She’s been stuffed into the darkest recess of an evil demon’s control for so long that she would come out insane or dangerous or both. Her body has been made more powerful, too powerful to exist, a shell of a person who may or may not wreak havoc on the immortal world as a result.
Finally, the moment we’ve been waiting for arrives. Hannah appears, wearing Morgana like a favorite suit and casting a wary glance in our direction. A dark cloak shrouds her, her head mostly covered, but I see it when her sinister grin appears.
She knows we’re here...
“Now!” Gage shouts before I can warn him.
A roar of motion slams from all sides, and I charge with them, spinning around Kya just as the first line of mutant knights attack us from all sides.
My hand smashes against the armor, but it barely dents. Holy shit! And Kya incinerated this armor... Fire...
My hands blaze up, and fire shoots across them, rolling into them and through them. Screams erupt, and the fire starts to melt the armor guarding their bodies.
Kya takes the cue and launches fireballs, as many as she possibly can. She can’t keep that up for long. Her last feeding—that she had after she shared with Karma—won’t supply her with enough energy to keep that up.
As I slam into a barrier, I curse, fighting myself away from it before I get pinned down. They knew we would come.
They were fucking waiting for us.
“You can’t stop me!” Hannah chides, laughing maniacally as something appears at her side.
As I fight, I only catch a glimpse, seeing a familiar man w
ithout the scars he adorns. But it’s not Slade. The elusive Alton is shackled and chained to the ground, his body contorted at an awkward angle, as his eyes stay closed.
If he dies, so does Slade. If Slade dies, our strongest link here becomes extinguished, along with our best chances of survival.
My eyes move through the throngs of armored soldiers fighting outside the barrier, and I spot Slade.
A murderous glare is in his eyes as he stares at his twin. With one hand, he forces out enough power to blow back at least fifty of their eyeless monsters.
One by one, gray-skinned beasts start appearing in a circle around Hannah as she moves toward the center. She jerks Alton’s head back by his hair, but he doesn’t so much as make a sound. His eyes open though, and he looks around emotionlessly at all the chaos.
All the fight in Slade’s eyes is absent from this broken man with nothing but hopelessness in his vacant gaze.
I spin, slamming my hand into the barrier, trying to absorb any and all energy I can from it. The firsts are appearing, and I refuse to look at the lycan that stole Amy’s blood, life, and energy.
Sierra screams for Amy, still in denial that our friend is lost. Lost to Hannah. Lost for no fucking reason.
The barrier burns against my hand, and I press harder, pushing all I have into it to try and take it down.
Slade slams into it with launch after launch of power, barely acknowledging the armored goons whose numbers are starting to dwindle to a more manageable amount.
Dice slams a sword through the throat of one he’s wrangled to the ground, the mask gone to expose the charred skin and mangled face. It’s almost disgusting to look at.
It even bleeds acid, the black ooze dripping and burning the grass beneath it. Gage joins my side, punching the barrier in time with Slade.
“Drain it!” Kya yells at me, flipping backwards over one of the charging harbingers. She slams her dagger through the weak spot in the back, where there’s no armor between the shoulders and neck.
She rips the dagger out and spins, tripping up another one. Any other time she’d be one hell of a distraction, but the circle of firsts has formed, Alton is up there to play ground wire, and something is starting to happen.
The wind rushes and whines, whipping through the trees and whistling ominously. The sky grows darker, and thunder crackles as lightning starts to streak across the sky, warning us something unnatural is coming.
Hannah is chanting loudly, her hand out as her hood gets blown back. Wind can penetrate the barrier, which means all natural things probably can.
Desperate, I whirl by Kya, taking out two of the half-armored beasts behind her on my way, burning them enough to bring them to the ground. Then I turn and slam my fist into a giant oak tree, hearing the satisfying sound of it crunch. The crack, crack, crack sound, has me yelling at everyone.
“Incoming!”
Gage doesn’t move, and it lands on him, shattering around him as he stumbles away. Kimber grabs him and tugs him back, just as a black sword swings at his head.
The tree lands right on the middle of the circle Hannah has created, knocking down three of her firsts so that they’re viciously snarling and snapping at each other, no longer lost in the trance they were moments ago.
“You think you can stop me? With a bloody tree?!” She laughs just as a hole appears in the air beside her, and my stomach sinks.
“No!” Hannah shouts, trying to shove the tree out of the way as Slade continues to hammer his fist into the barrier.
A glass-splitting sound rides up the dome-like barrier in a branching pattern. Hannah struggles to do something, magic flowing from her body to the ever-growing hole that is swirling black.
It shifts to suddenly being glaringly bright, and she screams again, panicking like something is wrong. At the last minute, she cuts her eyes at me, and she mouths something that probably isn’t too favorable.
A loud, piercing scream of fury rattles the air, ripping from her throat as she glares at the sky. Then she disappears, taking all the firsts with her, but leaving her attackers as the barrier falls free. Alton is missing, though I don’t know where he went.
Did he get free? She didn’t have him when she left.
Slade stumbles forward, rushing toward the portal that is still growing larger and larger. I have no idea what she was pissed about if the fucking thing is open... Unless it’s the wrong one.
Just as Slade reaches it, his eyes widen, he curses, and he vanishes out of the way as dark shadows race from the portal. They move like ominous dark clouds caught up in a windy sky, racing away with an audible hum that grows louder and louder.
“How do we shut it off?!” I yell to Slade.
“What the fuck is coming out of there?!” Gage calls out over the roaring wind and steady hum, all of us staggering against the beat of the harsh wind.
Ella suddenly appears, and she slams her fist into the ground. A loud shock radiates through the air, and she does it again and again.
Roars sound above us, and I grab Kya, jerking her back as the shadows zoom around the sky, blocking out the small bit of moonlight.
A loud, angry cry jerks my attention back to Ella as she slams her fist into the ground again, right beside the portal. The hole suddenly closes up just as the last shadow shoots through. It’s then I stumble back, because I know what just broke into our world.
Kya clings to me, staring with the same disbelief as the shadows shift, their true form starting to show. My night vision hones in on the impossible.
Even the Harbingers of Death decide what they’re seeing is just too much, and they begin running in retreat, racing away at lightning quick speeds.
One of the shadows turns, its eyes locking in on the retreating eyeless beasts, and it swoops down, spiraling so fast that I think it’s going to collide with the ground. At the last minute, it levels out, hovering just over the harbingers’ heads, speeding above them in time with their racing feet.
Without any warning, fire suddenly shoots free in a large, vast spray, igniting their bodies as they scream in pain. Kya jumps, her hands clinging to my shirt as all of us look on in shock.
“Holy fucking dragon,” Dice whispers, stumbling back into Gage before slamming into the ground. “I am not hashtag—slaying that motherfucker.”
The black dragon’s scales glimmer against the light of the fire trail it just created. The black, fiery eyes seem alive as smoke snorts through its nose.
It flies back over, burning the row of harbingers still standing. Two more spiral down, and they follow behind it, igniting their own flames over the remaining armored things who have lived this unfortunate amount of time.
My body turns to stone, ready to react, as it swoops over us. Instead of attacking, it surges straight up into the sky again before darting off like a fucking rocket.
The other two follow the exact same pattern, and we watch as the shadows in the sky split, going in different directions as they quickly disappear from sight.
“Please, someone, tell me we didn’t just unleash an entire fleet of dragonites into our world,” Kya says quietly, as though the words are less blasphemous if they’re not spoken above of a whisper.
“We didn’t. That demon bitch did,” Slade growls. “Someone want to tell me where Gavin is? Or where the fuck that bitch went? Or better yet, where the fucking hell is he?”
Alton. He’s asking about his twin, I think.
Kya clutches my hand, her fingers threading with mine and squeezing tight, as though she’s worried I’m about to become a volatile beast.
“Guess I’m not so worthless,” Ella says as she steps toward us, her eyes warily taking in Slade, who is more furious than I’ve ever seen him.
He launches a streak of power into the sky, and then another, and another as he yells at nothing, his chest heaving.
He casts one cold glare over his shoulder at us before disappearing, and Ella blows out a shaky breath.
“How’d you know how to close th
e portal?” Gage asks her, his eyes scanning the sky for any sign of the scaly, medieval fucking bullshit we now have on our plate.
Ella bristles. “The base was gone—which was Slade’s brother. The portal was supposed to close automatically but couldn’t because it stalled out, possibly because someone from the other side was holding it open. So I closed it by jarring the earth around enough to reset it.”
My eyebrows go up. “And you knew how to do that how?” I ask, studying her.
Her right eye twitches, and she looks back. “Sadie said something about it when we were discussing the possibilities of the portal.” She spins back around. “I got here just before Hannah bailed. I tried to trail her, but couldn’t.”
“Holy shit,” Thad says as he walks up. “Those were fucking dragons.”
“You think? I didn’t know what those scaly things were while they were shooting fire off at the mouth,” Dice says dryly, finally standing back up from the ground.
“Dragonites,” Kya corrects, looking between us. “Those are feral, lethal, deadly, brutal shifters of the worst kind. You’re not taking this seriously enough.”
“Chaz is part dragonite, right?” Gage asks, pointing at me while looking at Kya.
“But he’s not full dragonite. Hell on earth was just unleashed. The last time they were here, they almost destroyed our people. It was so bad the Lokies became the good guys. Still think this is amusing?”
My skin crawls with dread. I knew it was bad, but hearing the panic in her voice has my own beast stirring restlessly within. Instinctively, I pull her to me, and she shivers against me.
“I saw them through Slade’s eyes. He took me through his mind so I could come into contact with more immortals that way. It was terrible. They showed no mercy. Men. Women. Children... It didn’t matter. We think Hannah is bad? Imagine a bunch of demons with wings and the ability to melt thirty monsters in a few swoops.”
She points to the pile of debris that once was the form of the Harbingers of Death.
“Hannah even ran away when she saw what was coming,” she adds.
“Lovely,” Dice drawls, dusting his hands off. “We’re all fucked.”
