But the Prime of the wolves had stirred at last, and pointed an ancient, gnarled finger to the screen. To the feeds. And he said, “One wolf remains in the Old Square.”
Everyone looked then. To where he’d pointed. Whom he’d pointed to.
Bryce raced through the carnage, sword glinting with each swipe and duck and slash.
Sabine choked. “That’s Danika’s sword you’re sensing, Father—”
The Prime’s age-worn eyes blinked unseeingly at the screen. His hand curled on his chest. “A wolf.” He tapped his heart. Still Bryce fought onward toward the Meadows, still she ran interference for anyone fleeing for the shelters, buying them a path to safety. “A true wolf.”
Hunt’s throat tightened to the point of pain. He extended his hand to Isaiah. “Give me your phone.”
Isaiah didn’t question him, and didn’t say a word as he handed it over. Hunt dialed a number he’d memorized, since he hadn’t dared to store it in his contacts. The call rang and rang before it finally went through. “I’m guessing this is important?”
Hunt didn’t bother to identify himself as he growled, “You owe me a gods-damned favor.”
The Viper Queen only said, amusement coating her rich voice, “Oh?”
Two minutes later, Hunt had risen from his seat, intent on following Ruhn to Fury’s helicopter, when Jesiba’s phone rang. The sorceress announced, voice strained, “It’s Bryce.”
Hunt whipped his head to the camera feed, and sure enough, Bryce had tucked her phone into her bra strap over her shoulder, presumably leaving it on speaker. She wove around abandoned cars as she crossed the border into Asphodel Meadows. The sun began to set, as if Solas himself was abandoning them.
“Bring it up on the speakers and merge the call with the Aux lines,” Jesiba ordered Declan, and answered the phone. “Bryce?”
Bryce’s panting was labored. Her rifle cracked like breaking thunder. “Tell whoever’s at the Summit that I need backup in the Meadows—I’m heading for the shelter near the Mortal Gate.”
Ruhn vaulted down the stairs and ran right to the speaker in the center of the table. He said to it, “Bryce, it’s a massacre. Get inside that shelter before they all shut—”
Her rifle boomed, and another demon went down. But more swept through the Gates and into the city, staining the streets with blood as surely as the vibrant sunset now stained the sky.
Bryce ducked behind a dumpster for cover as she fired again and again. Reloaded.
“There’s no backup for Asphodel Meadows,” Sabine said. “Every pack is stationed—”
“There are children here!” Bryce screamed. “There are babies!”
The room fell silent. A deeper sort of horror spread through Hunt like ink in water.
And then a male voice panted over the speakers, “I’m coming, Bryce.”
Bryce’s bloodied face crumpled as she whispered, “Ithan?”
Sabine snarled, “Holstrom, stay at your fucking post—”
But Ithan said again, more urgently this time, “Bryce, I’m coming. Hang on.” A pause. Then he added, “We’re all coming.”
Hunt’s knees wobbled as Sabine bellowed at Ithan, “You are disobeying a direct order from your—”
Ithan cut off her call. And every wolf under his command ended their connection, too.
The wolves could be at the Meadows in three minutes.
Three minutes through Hel, through the slaughter and death. Three minutes in a flat-out run, a sprint to save the most defenseless among them.
The human children.
The jackals joined them. The coyotes. The wild dogs and common dogs. The hyenas and dingoes. The foxes. It was who they were. Who they had always been. Defenders of those who could not protect themselves. Defenders of the small, the young.
Shifter or true animal, that truth lay etched in the soul of every canine.
Ithan Holstrom sprinted toward Asphodel Meadows with the weight of that history behind him, burning in his heart. He prayed he was not too late.
85
Bryce knew it was stupid luck that kept her alive. And pure adrenaline that made her focus her aim so clearly. Calmly.
But with each block she cleared as the sunset deepened, her legs moved more slowly. Her reactions lagged. Her arms ached, becoming leaden. Every pull of the trigger took a bit more effort.
Just a little longer—that was all she needed. Just a little longer, until she could make sure that everyone in Asphodel Meadows got into a shelter before they all closed. It wouldn’t be long now.
The shelter halfway down the block remained open, figures holding the line in front of it while human families rushed in. The Mortal Gate lay a few blocks northward—still open to Hel.
So Bryce planted herself at the intersection, sheathing Danika’s sword as she again raised Hunt’s rifle to her shoulder. She had six rounds left.
Ithan would be here soon. Any moment now.
A demon surged from around a corner, taloned fingers gouging lines into the cobblestones. The rifle bit into her shoulder as she fired. The demon was still falling, sliding across the ground, when she angled the rifle and fired again. Another demon went down.
Four bullets left.
Behind her, humans screamed orders. Hurry! Into the shelter! Drop the bag and run!
Bryce fired at a demon soaring across the intersection, right for the shelter. The demon went down twenty feet from the entrance. The humans finished it off.
Inside the shelter’s open mouth, children shrieked, babies wailed.
Bryce fired again. Again. Again.
Another demon barreled around the corner, sprinting for her. The trigger clicked.
Out. Done. Empty.
The demon leapt, jaws opening wide to reveal twin rows of dagger-sharp teeth. Aiming for her throat. Bryce barely had time to lift the rifle and wedge it between those gaping jaws. Metal and wood groaned, and the world tilted with the impact.
She and the demon slammed into the cobblestones, her bones barking in pain. The demon clamped down on the rifle. It snapped in two.
Bryce managed to hurl herself backward from under the demon as it spat out the pieces of the rifle. Maw leaking saliva on the bloodied streets, it advanced on her. Seemed to savor each step.
With her sheathed sword pinned beneath her, Bryce reached for the knife at her thigh. As if it would do anything, as if it would stop this—
The demon sank onto its haunches, readying for the kill.
The ground shook behind her as Bryce angled her wrist, blade tilting upward—
A sword plunged through the demon’s gray head.
A massive sword, at least four feet long, borne by a towering, armored male figure. Blue lights glowed along the blade. More glared along sleek black body armor and a matching helmet. And across the male’s chest, an emblem of a striking cobra glowed.
One of the Viper Queen’s Fae bodyguards.
Six others raced past him, the cobblestones shaking beneath their feet, guns and swords drawn. No venom-addled stupor to be seen. Just lethal precision.
And with the Viper Queen’s Fae guards, wolves and foxes and canines of every breed flowed by, launching into the fray.
Bryce scrambled to her feet, nodding to the warrior who’d saved her. The Fae male only whirled, his metal-encased hands grabbing a demon by the shoulders and wrenching it apart with a mighty yell. He tore the demon in two.
But more of Hel’s worst thundered and soared for them. So Bryce freed Danika’s sword again from across her back.
She willed strength to her arm, bracing her feet as another demon galloped down the street for her. Canine shifters engaged demons all around, forming a barrier of fur and teeth and claws between the oncoming horde and the shelter behind them.
Bryce feinted left, swiping her sword up as the demon fell for her fake-out. But the blade didn’t break through bone and to the soft, vulnerable organs beneath. The creature roared, pivoting, and lunged again. She gritted her teeth, and lifted her sword in challenge, the demon too frenzied to notice that she’d let herself become the distraction.
While the massive gray wolf attacked from behind.
Ithan ripped into the demon in an explosion of teeth and claws, so fast and brutal it momentarily stunned her. She’d forgotten how enormous he was in this form—all the shifters were at least three times the size of normal animals, but Ithan had always been larger. Exactly like his brother.
Ithan spat out the demon’s throat and shifted, wolf becoming a tall male in a flash of light. Blood coated his navy T-shirt and jeans as much as it did her own clothes, but before they could speak, his brown eyes flared with alarm. Bryce twisted, met by the rancid breath of a demon as it dive-bombed her.
She ducked and thrust the sword upward, the demon’s shriek nearly bursting her ears as she let the beast drag its belly down the blade. Gutting it.
Gore splattered her sneakers, her torn leggings, but she made sure the demon’s head was rolling before whirling to Ithan. Just as he drew a sword from a sheath on his back and split another demon apart.
Their stares held, and all the words she’d needed to say hung there. She saw them in his eyes, too, as he realized whose jacket and sword she bore.
But she offered a grim smile. Later. If they somehow survived this, if they could last another few minutes and get into the shelter … They’d speak then.
Ithan nodded, understanding.
Bryce knew it wasn’t adrenaline alone that powered her as she launched back into the carnage.
“Shelters close in four minutes,” Declan announced to the conference room.
“Why hasn’t your helicopter arrived?” Ruhn asked Fury. He stood, Flynn rising with him.
Axtar checked her phone. “It’s on its way over from—”
The doors at the top of the pit burst open, and Sandriel entered on a storm wind. And there was no sign of her triarii or Pollux as she strode down the stairs. No one spoke.
Hunt prepared himself as she glanced his way, seated between a now-standing Ruhn and Hypaxia. The gorsian manacles lay on the table before him.
But she merely returned to her seat at the lowermost table. She had bigger concerns at hand, he supposed. Her attention darting between the screens and feeds and updates, Sandriel said, “There is nothing we can do for the city with the Gates open to Hel. We are under orders to remain here.”
Ruhn started. “We are needed—”
“We are to remain here.” The words rumbled like thunder through the room. “The Asteri are sending help.”
Hunt sagged in his seat, and Ruhn sank down beside him. “Thank fuck,” the prince muttered, rubbing shaking hands over his face.
They must have dispatched the Asterian Guard, then. And further reinforcements. Perhaps Sandriel’s triarii had gone to Lunathion. They might all be psychotic assholes, but at least they could hold their own in a fight. Fuck, the Hammer alone would be a blessing to the city right now.
“Three minutes until shelter lockdown,” Declan said.
In the general chaos of the audio feed Declan had pulled up, a shifter’s howl went out, warning everyone to get to safety. To abandon the boundary they’d established against the horde and run like Hel for the still-open metal door.
Humans were still fleeing, though. Adults carrying children and pets sprinted for the opening, hardly bigger than a single-car garage door. The Viper Queen’s warriors and a few of the wolves remained at the intersection.
“Two minutes,” Declan said.
Bryce and Ithan fought side by side. Where one stumbled, the other did not fail. Where one baited a demon, the other executed it.
A siren blared in the city. A warning. Still Bryce and Ithan held the corner.
“Thirty seconds,” Declan said.
“Go,” Hunt urged. “Go, Bryce.”