by Lan Chan
“Sophie!”
Scrambling to get my sneakers on, I tried to find my emergency backpack. Being on the run had meant that I always had a kit on hand. Snatching it from the floor beside my ingredients chest, I followed Laila down the stairs.
“Where’s Hank?” I asked, scanning the bottom floor for him.
“Guards are being pulled to the perimeter.”
Without another word, she yanked the front door open. In the event of an invasion, the civilians were meant to make their way as quickly as possible to the laddered conference rooms. Aside from the Cabin, that was the place with the most heavily strengthened wards. It was also defensible on every side by guards who knew the terrain like the back of their hand.
“This way,” Amy screamed as she herded the civilians. “Hurry!”
Laila grabbed my hand. On either side of us, shifters of all shapes and sizes streamed from the living quarters. They abandoned everything besides each other and followed protocol to the very last.
Guards flanked the procession, moving with the precise hunting instinct they were born to utilise. At intervals, low demons came barrelling down on us. The guards intercepted them, taking them out before they could disrupt the evacuation.
As humans, we were slower than the very youngest of the shifters. We were running with the crowd to join those milling at the base of the staircase up to the canopy when a roar like impending doom cracked through the Reserve.
On any other day, that roar that was laced with unconstrained fury would have had the shifters cowering on the ground. Tonight, as the air filled with the damning scent of blood and death, it was their lifeline. My heart seized as the thunder in Max’s roar shattered through the Reserve like it was touching every leaf, every blade of grass, as though giving them strength. And then another lion’s roar rose up on its heels. Charles. This was followed by the echo of a dozen wolves howling and the chest-busting growls of a silverback gorilla.
All around me, the shifters’ vocal chords stretched and reshaped. They raised their heads to the red moon in defiance and joined in the song of their pack.
Laila’s grip was white-knuckled. I could feel the bones in my hands creaking, but I squeezed back as hard as I could. All of the hairs on my body stood up and I felt the overwhelming urge to flatten myself to the floor.
On and on the voices cried out until I knew I would wake on nights when things were too silent, and I would be able to dredge up this memory and feel comforted. When the sound finally subsided, a hundred glowing yellow eyes looked back at me.
We continued to scramble up the staircase. As the last of the pack chorus died, the sound of other creatures in the night could be heard. Creatures whose bodies no longer resembled what they had once been. Demons.
Somebody ran into the back of my legs. Turning, I found Edward and Lizzie attempting to weave past me. Cheyenne came stumbling after.
Her face was marred with worry, but when she saw me, she tried to muster up a smile. We went up the stairs in double file, parents clutching their children to their chests while older siblings guided the younger ones. Laila and I found ourselves in the huddle of humans. For a second, I allowed myself to find humour in the fact that a space had been made for us within the middle of the conference room. We were surrounded first by the pups and cubs, then the younger children, the juveniles, and then the adults.
I cocked my head to the side. “Doesn’t do much for the ego, does it?” Zoe asked. I gave her a small smile. Zoe was Wanda’s mother. Even though Wanda’s parents were both human, they had moved to the Reserve when she started at Bloodline Academy.
“Wanda?”
Zoe shook her head. “Max co-opted her somewhere when all of this began.” She pressed a fist to her side. “I’ve been complaining about missing her, but now...”
We both allowed our attention to be pulled to the floor-length windows. Up this high, we could see over the canopy of the lower trees and out onto the lawn of the ascension field where the portals had opened up. Outside, the portal, one of many now, was an ominous ring that cut off the rest of the world.
Below us, in a circle three shifters deep, the guards of the Reserve were taking their defensive places. Claws scraped against the glass in a sickening crunch that had me shuddering.
“Kate!” Brielle Cho snapped. “Stop it!” Brielle yanked her daughter away from the window before Kate could do more damage. The teenager’s face was a thunderclap of anger.
“Why am I stuck in here with the babies?” she railed.
“Because you’re a baby!”
“We should be out there fighting!” She kicked out at the floor, but since we were so crammed, she ended up booting one of the wolf juveniles in the shin. The boy whined, his ears flattening.
Kate’s hackles rose. Literally. All of the shifters in the room were caught in some kind of half-shifted state. The aggression and fear in the air slapped against their self-control. There was more than one fully shifted wolf pup and cat cub huddled together for strength. Edward was not one of them. He stood at the very front of the window of spectators, holding Lizzie’s hand and petting her hair.
One day, I thought. One day he would grow up to be nothing but the fiercest protector. As the shriek of an airborne demon cut through the conference room, Edward hauled Lizzie into his arms and tried to cover her ears.
“Why is this happening?” I heard somebody ask.
I had a fairly good idea in my head. The image of Max squeezing the life out of Hugh came rushing back at me. When I relived the events of the arena in my nightmares, it was muted by the fact that I was injured and half-delirious. But even in that state the brutality of it stifled my breathing.
The Dark Trinity was nothing if not vindictive. And Agatha wanted revenge for her brother. She cared little that it was their fault we had been in that situation in the first place. It had never occurred to her that they were in any danger. How could they be when their magic was the most powerful in the supernatural world? It was just a bit unfortunate that Alistair and Shayla’s mating had produced two boys with the killing instinct of shifters and invulnerability to magic once they ascended.
None of that mattered to Agatha. She would get her revenge and destroy the Reserve. I kept my mouth shut as the question lingered in the conference room. It would do them no good to find meaning in the madness.
They were terrified. If things went completely south, like Kate, some of them would fight until their dying breath.
“Do you have any connection to the pack link at all?” I asked Laila.
She shook her head. “None of us do. It’s gone.”
“Then how do you communicate?”
She bit her bottom lip. “I can’t do it. I’m human.” Her eyes grew moist, and I knew she was worried about Hank. “But the shifters have their own ways to communicate. Scent and sound.”
I was about to suggest they attempt to use that to convey their safety to the soldiers when a boom rocked the Reserve. It shook the ground and I had to latch on to Laila’s shoulder to stay upright.
All eyes lifted to the centre of the portal in front of us. Something enormous and glowing a fiery red emerged from the heart of the portal. I squinted and thought I saw a figure ringed in purple light rise into the air. When she spoke, her voice wasn’t the deep, throaty thing I had despised from the first moment I met her. It was the voice of the thing inside my head that egged me to perform blood-magic sacrifices. My insides became chilled with apprehension.
“I gave you the chance to fulfil your promise,” it said. “Now watch your pitiful animals die.” Around me the shifters cringed. The voice seemed to be laced with some kind of magic that was painful for them to hear. But somehow, I knew those words were meant for me. I heard them as a whisper inside my mind at first. And then my sight was dragged into the chamber where the pools of my magic and the mating link resided.
A thread of ancient, ethereal magic sliced through my chest. I gasped and my knees buckled. Laila caught me, her
eyes swimming with concern. But I had no wherewithal for anything happening outside of my body, because inside, the misty smoke grabbed hold of the mating link and tried to crush it.
38
My eyes rolled back in my head. The floor rushed up to meet me. Arms reached out on either side of me. “Make some room!” I heard Laila shout. I fell on my ass into a seated position. Dragging my knees to my chest, I let my head drop and took a gasping breath. I felt like I’d just been electrocuted. A roar went up in the Reserve by the portal. At the same time, the blood barrier snapped back at the thing trying to invade my body. I’d set the trap at the beginning, as a safeguard against a magic user trying to remove the barrier while I was unconscious. The blood barrier grew spines and thorns, spinning like the teeth of a chainsaw. It cut through the mist and forced it to disperse.
“Sophie?” Her hand cupped my cheek. She lifted my face and inhaled. “Your eyes!”
My eyes. Out of them I now saw the world in a filter of beaten gold. My senses were dialled up so high I could scent the small creatures burrowing into the earth below us to get away from the monsters. I smelt the fear bathing the shifters in the room. I heard the sound of a heartbeat that was logically too far away.
Max’s heart beat too slowly. He felt the rage, as though it was slathered in a layer of soundproofing. Somehow, through his eyes, I saw what he had been doing. He’d been visiting Durin as a way to blunt the riotous emotions that might cause him to go against my will. And now it would hinder him when the Reserve needed him most. When would I ever stop being a liability?
Clawing at my backpack, I unzipped the front flap and drew out the foldable knife. Flicking it open, I carved a line across my palm, opening up by skin and bleeding in an instant. “Sophie!” Laila exclaimed. Around me, the shifters moved away, their fear suddenly spiking.
“Be quiet!” I snapped. The ice in my voice was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Ears flattened and bellies were displayed. Laila’s eyes grew wide.
Ignoring them, I grabbed the remaining health elixir vials and poured them against my bleeding hand. Swiping the mixture of liquid with my finger, I drew a circle on the ground and decorated it with the runes for health.
Closing my eyes, I tugged at the thread that somehow linked me to Max and transmuted the blood and elixir into a cold splash of magic that jolted him into alertness. With little care, it slapped at him and tore away the apathy until his mind became clear.
Free of Durin’s parasitic essence, Max’s fury blazed anew. I felt something kick inside his chest and saw the golden fire that was the magical half of him roar to life. And then he was shifting. Thrust out of his consciousness by the shift, my eyes snapped open to find the room had lapsed into eerie silence. All attention tracked to the far perimeter where the enormous fire demon was now standing in front of the portal.
The thing was a terrifying mix of flesh and elemental. It was twice the height of a normal man. Black horns protruded from its head on either side. They curled at the front into a structure that was meant for gouging. Its shoulders were broader than the wide stance of its legs. The sinewy muscles were unadorned by armour or weapons. Why would it need them when it was stoked in fire? It burned like the heart of a volcano, feathering out into flames that licked its shoulders and ran along its arms and legs. Every time the thing moved, flames dripped from its limbs and ignited in the earth, even where there was nothing to burn.
Other demons streamed out of the portal. The inner-circle shifters intercepted them as best they could. Goblins, trolls, and winged wyverns cut through the first wave of demons that tried to infiltrate the Reserve.
The fire demon swiped his arm out and fire fell from the sky in big droplets that burned everything it touched to ash. “Where are the elite guard?” somebody wailed.
Locked out or preoccupied with other problems, I would imagine. We could really use the services of the water Fae right about now. But it was a moot point. They weren’t here and focusing on it wouldn’t help us in any way.
A creature with scales of luminous silver entered our field of vision from the left. For a second, I did a double take thinking it was Doctor Thorne. The basilisk’s cheeks and stomach were bloated. He took a running start. Halfway to the fire demon, his wings snapped out and he lifted into the air. Water shot out of his mouth in a focused beam that splashed the demon in the head. It knocked the demon backwards, but the stream of water turned to steam almost on contact.
Several shifters in the room whimpered. Fire was one of the only ways to kill a supernatural. That kind of fire with a heat steeped in demonic energy wasn’t something they could fight against. And yet, when Max went for the demon, he did so with absolutely no hesitation.
In his new shifter form, Max was almost as big as the demon. In a half shift, he managed to maintain the dexterity a humanoid form provided combined with the powerful muscles of the lion. His head became a frightening amalgamation of man and beast, the mane that protected his head now glowing in streaks of blue and pink.
Not caring that he would be burned, Max slammed his fist into the fire demon’s head. They clashed in an inferno of rage and hate, their hits causing the air to rumble and the ground to shake. The fire demon snapped a kick at Max’s sternum, pushing him back as flames tried to eat into his chest. Max gave a low groan. My heart tried to stop beating, before the flames became blanketed in gold and snuffed out.
The look in Max’s eyes when he lowered his head was murderous. The shifters that were fighting close to his feet scrambled out of the way as Max pawed at the ground with his clawed feet. Thrusting out an arm, the demon shot a beam of blue-hearted fire at Max. Ducking out of the way, Max launched himself straight at the outstretched arm. His claws unsheathed and he drove them into the demon’s chest. The momentum pushed both of them backwards. Max rolled as they landed. The fire demon burned the earth as he touched it, flames springing from the ground like daisies. All around, the shifter and para-human guards were doing their best to put out the fires. Right now, they were as big a threat as the demon. With their attention split, more and more demons were able to break away and come screaming towards us.
The guards below were ready for them, tearing into them with a brutal efficiency that was both awe-inspiring and gut-wrenching at the same time.
Max and the demon came to a stop with Max on top. He drew his arm back, claws flashing in the light of the red moon, and drove it back down into the demon’s neck. The thing bellowed. Its whole body ignited. Grunting, Max held on as the demon’s body began to levitate from the heat of the flames.
A flash of purple light whipped through the air. I gasped, but Max managed to jump back just in time to avoid being struck by the dirty blow from Agatha. Overhead, the para-human guards were attempting to reach her. But every time they got close, she emitted a flash of purple like a bomb exploding and they were thrown aside.
With skin now coiling with smoke from where he had been singed, Max drew himself up. The fire demon leaped to its feet, a whip of pure flames appearing in its left hand. Knowing now that Max was slightly immune to its fire, the demon tried to keep Max at bay using the weapon. The first snap of the whip sliced through Max’s left thigh. He groaned as his leg buckled. My hands were clenched so hard I was going to be crippled if we got through this.
Another figure reared up on Max’s right. The demon blade in Charles’s hands was a riot of all the colours of the rainbow. Black threads of smoke wafted from where both his hands gripped its hilt. Charles’s face distorted even as he stalked forward.
Max stepped in front of him, seeing what I saw. The demon blade was treacherous. Even with Lex. It was trying to cut a path back to the Hell dimension. Without her will to subdue it, the blade was going to force Charles into the portal and leave him stranded. The thing was already making him jittery. His teeth snapped like he was in immense pain. And still he continued to nudge at Max’s chest.
Both of them evaded and rolled away as the whip cracked where they had b
een standing. Another whip appeared in the demon’s other hand. It used the weapon with deadly accuracy. One of the wolves was pushed into the fire demon’s line of sight by another low demon.
Max roared in warning and dove. He pushed the wolf out of the way. As a result, he took the full brunt of the lashing of the whip on his back, as well as the spine of the low demon in his ribs. Grating his teeth, Max slashed out and cut the low demon in two. He pushed himself to standing as the bite of the whip’s magic ate into the skin on his shoulder. It warred with the magic in the tattoo that Lex had given him, fizzling as Max’s immunity took over.
The twitch of Max’s nose was the only indication of the pain he was feeling. That he reacted at all said that it was immense. I shuddered to think what would have happened if he hadn’t pushed the wolf shifter out of the way. Max must have been thinking the same thing because a steely darkness seeped into his features.
Ignoring all common sense, he ran at the fire demon in earnest. The demon stepped back, unprepared for a kamikaze attack. It raised both whips and snapped them furiously. Every single one of them hit its mark. But Max kept on coming. Welts the size of my arm appeared on Max’s skin, too many for him to heal so quickly. I bit the inside of my cheek raw to keep from crying out. The pain must have been unbearable. Max’s right leg wobbled as the whip cut through the skin on his thigh. But it was too late for the demon.
Max reached out as his leg caved and snagged the demon as he went down. They crashed to the ground sending a shockwave that we felt all the way in the conference room. Bracing his enormous paws on either side of the demon’s head, Max’s claws pricked out and sank into the demon’s flesh. The thing gave an enraged bellow that was cut short by the cracking of its skull as Max crushed it to pieces. As he crashed to the earth, Max wrenched the demon’s head from its neck and then bashed it on the ground.