Chapter Seventy-Five
Dylan
THE WAKE WEREN’T GOING TO AGREE TO ANYTHING NICOLE might offer them. Dylan knew that as deeply as he knew his own name. That had been what they’d once suspected their mother’s clues led to: information that would keep them safe from the Wake forever. Information to use to barter for their freedom.
But Dylan had never been convinced, and knowing how vicious the Wake could be … they wanted threats neutralised every time.
And his family was probably the biggest.
Part of him thought it was better that they’d all been taken. At least it meant they’d be together and they’d know if Nicole was all right.
But, if they were out, they could find Callum and stage a rescue. He’d know what to do.
The fact that something crucial and desperate inside Dylan veered towards Callum at a time like this was something he didn’t want to interrogate. But to even attempt to contact the other Empyreal they needed their goddamn phones, and those had been the first things to get confiscated.
Images of his mother’s death flashed through his mind.
He knew it was panic that clawed up his throat; knew he should try to clear his mind and think, but he couldn’t.
The drive was taking hours. Bells was still sitting with her eyes closed, but he knew they would be bloodied, seeking visions of death, seeking answers.
He’d received a hard smack around the head for Influencing Bells, but it had been worth it.
Since she was put to sleep it kept the Empyreal’s attention off her.
Still, sweat was gathering on his palms and his heart was beating so loudly he couldn’t hear anything else.
His dad glanced at him a few times. It’s okay, that look said. We’re going to be okay.
They weren’t. He knew they weren’t.
‘Just breathe,’ their dad said aloud, like he could feel the clawed spiral dragging Dylan deeper.
But if they went into the Wake’s headquarters, they weren’t going to make it out.
Dylan moved before he thought it through. In the next second, he had slammed his elbow in the Empyreal’s temple, stunning him.
The car swerved as their father saw and fought the Empyreal in the front.
Dylan was unturned; he was weaker. But with the sheer adrenaline, panic, and the years of rehearsal, he broke the Empyreal’s neck.
‘Dylan, grab the wheel!’ his father roared, as the Empyreal beneath his father’s grip bucked – then screamed.
Bells jerked, waking with a start as the car spun.
Dylan reached around his father, who had leaned over to the Empyreal in the driver’s seat, and stabilised the wheel as the Empyreal suddenly stilled. He caught his father’s snarling reflection in the rear-view mirror – the pure, wicked darkness in his bloodshot eyes.
Then, his father reached over the dead Empyreal and kicked him out the door, climbing into the driver’s seat. Wind ripped through the car until it slammed shut.
‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t let them take us in,’ Dylan panted, sitting back.
‘It’s all right, son,’ their father said, though his grip on the wheel was tight.
‘What’s happening?’ Bells asked, her eyes losing their bloody hue.
Dylan explained, collecting the gun from the dead Empyreal between them and handing it to Bells. But the swerving of the car and ditching of a body had tipped off the trailing SUV. ‘Did you See anything?’
‘I – yes.’ Her eyes shot to their father, anxious.
A pit opened in Dylan’s stomach. ‘What?’
She cut off when something in the rear-view mirror stole her attention and the blood seemed to drain from her face. Dylan twisted as the boot of the SUV behind them opened, other drivers around it swerving.
Then a creature crawled out the back.
‘Dad? What is that?’ Dylan demanded as something that could only be described as demonic loped after them down the road.
Their father cursed and slammed on the accelerator. ‘It looks like a Fomóir beast.’
Cars jerked out of the creature’s way, some shoved by one of its razored, monstrous arms.
Bells gripped her gun, barely containing her hysteria.
‘What’s the plan?’ Dylan asked.
‘We get to the Castlerigg stones,’ their father said, veering the car to the right and towards the A66. ‘Stone circles were safeguards against deadly creatures in the early days: you would get inside and wait for an Empyreal to rescue you. If we get inside, it can’t reach us.’
‘I won’t be able to shoot from here without hitting the other cars,’ Bells shouted, twisting in her seat to aim out of the back window.
‘It won’t kill it anyway; you’d need a demi-god or a transformation.’
If they needed more proof the Wake were Fomóiri, they had it.
‘Why would they unleash it?’ Bells cried. ‘They’re exposing supernaturals!’
‘Either it’s camouflaged, or they want to create mass panic,’ their father said, his face severe as he jerked the car, speeding past shocked drivers. ‘We’ll only know when we see the news.’
‘What happens when we get to the stones? We’ll be trapped,’ Dylan asked, kicking the Empyreal he’d killed out of the door, in the hopes it would distract the chasing monster. The car was momentarily whipped with air. He hauled the door shut again, regretting every damn decision he’d ever made.
But they were in control of the car now. If they could get away, they could contact Callum and find a way to get Nicole out. Dylan dived for the compartment where the Empyreals had stored their phones.
‘If we get in the stones and activate them with blood,’ their father answered, ‘it seals the protection so the other Empyreals will be trapped outside and forced to transform to kill the beast. Hopefully it’ll take some of them down and we can deal with the rest.’
‘It’s gaining!’ Bells shouted.
Despite their father’s skilled driving, they scraped several cars with searing metallic screeches and bright sprays of sparks. He slammed on the horn and blasted past, but most vehicles veered out of the way of the approaching creature.
Swerving onto country lanes, they narrowly missed colliding with other cars until the structure was in sight.
There were maybe thirty stones in the large circle, situated in the middle of a grassy field overlooking the rolling landscape.
But to get to it, their father had to punch the car through hedges.
Dylan threw his arm across Bells as they were slammed forward and dragged sideways by the force of his turns, until they were shooting through the grassy fields towards the stones.
‘Get ready to run!’ their father ordered, slamming on the brakes when they got close enough, the car spinning slightly. ‘Into the circle, now!’
Dylan grabbed Bells and dragged her out of the car.
They ran at a dead sprint, his legs pumping and heart screaming, their father ripping something open with his teeth. Dylan couldn’t tell if it was just his sleeve, or a pack of something. An antidote to the poison he’d been taking to keep his power at bay?
If they didn’t make it, it might not matter, because the demonic creature was faster.
It flung their SUV with a great curved limb, the vehicle spinning through the air before landing with an epic crunch of metal and glass.
Dylan turned to see their father blast the creature back with a pulse of dark power, giving them a last moment to fly through the bounds of the stone circle.
But it also allowed the other SUV time to pull up.
Gunshots cracked loudly as bullets spiked off the stones in a spray of shards and dust. As one pinged beside Bells, Dylan threw himself over his sister and bit deep into the fleshy part of his palm until he tasted blood.
A moment before his hand could meet one of the stones, another shot fired, and his father grunted in pain, staggering backwards.
‘Dad!’ Bells screamed.
Dylan slammed his slick hand onto the nearest stone and magic hummed through his arm at the circle’s activation, sending up an immediate shimmering forcefield that domed over them.
The creature threw itself at the wards and the boom of impact shook the earth and blasted the beast backwards. But it gave them enough time to see it up close.
Its body looked like some mix between a dragon and a rangy wolf.
It was at least fifteen feet tall, its too-long front limbs ending in talons like bent-back scythes, which it used to run on all fours.
Its head was featureless other than the mouth, ringed with two rows of razor teeth.
Its skin was a deep navy, as if it had been dragged from a pitch-dark sky: some mutated thing that could only claw through life on a lost planet.
Its otherworldly shriek seared his ears and vibrated his bones, every inch of skin crawling.
The boundary was supposed to hold, but this was no normal creature. As it slammed itself against the invisible wall, the wards began to splinter.
‘It won’t hold!’ Bells screamed as a great crack sounded, and the creature broke through.
Their father stood in front of them, bleeding, but steady. Before Dylan could haul him away, the creature’s arm swung.
‘No!’
Fear cleaved through his adrenaline as their father was flung across the circle into one of the stones and the kill scent blasted into Dylan.
The transformation dragged through his body despite the tonics he’d been taking: hauled up something buried and gnarled and impatient, all claws and keen destruction.
Fire razed his limbs with his scream.
He didn’t know what he was, he just knew his height extended and a terrible tearing sounded that could have been his clothes, his skin, his bones.
He knew his teeth sharpened with the great pressure in his jaw.
Knew his body scaled with sheaths of keratin that cut through his skin to layer over him like armour.
And then he was colliding with a beast lost to time and myth.
The force slammed through Dylan’s newly made bones. He felt the razor slice of the creature’s talons as they seared through his newly thickened scales to nearly pierce the vulnerable organs beneath.
Suddenly, there was only the kill, and the scent. The creature’s snapping maw and the epic, wicked hunger inside that obliterated all humanity from his mind.
He slammed into it, again and again. Keeping it from the beings he was protecting, using the arms that had turned into their own long blade-like limbs, noting that his body had turned pale blue, like a creature that had hauled itself from a sky-reflecting loch.
Dylan’s jaw unhinged as he bit deep into the creature’s neck. Its shriek of pain was near deafening, the vibrations of it razoring through his body.
So he tore, the flesh like tar splitting into his mouth.
The beast staggered, its neck gushing dark noxious liquid, and crashed into one of the stones, breaking its back on the way and the stone in the process.
The Empyreal inside him worked, spiralling through his body and dragging away the transformation.
Dylan tried to cling to the light – to consciousness – as the air around him shifted, and the scent that had driven him into this deep, goddess-given power evaporated on the wind.
As the darkness closed in, so did a spike of fear for his family.
He wasn’t done. He had to protect them still, he had to—
Bells
IT WAS DYLAN COLLAPSING THAT MADE HER REMEMBER HOW to move.
He’d become … Bells had no words for it.
Whatever it was, it had been the clashing of two terrible monsters, and he was vulnerable now as his body transformed him back.
His strange, over-long limbs began to shrink, pulling across the gore-splattered grass, his colossal form looking more and more human by the second, his clothes shredded to nothing.
Bells ripped off her jumper and threw it over him, but he wouldn’t reawaken. Not right after a first transformation. She’d learned that from Nicole’s experience.
She needed to protect him. But now the creature was dead, the wards were shattered, the other Empyreals were closing in.
If they got to her father first, they’d haul him into the car.
Bright panic built at the sight of both of them unconscious. Panic, and anger.
She fumbled with the phone Dylan had grabbed from the car and dropped in the grass. It was his, thankfully, which meant one of the last calls had been to Callum.
‘There now,’ one of the Empyreals shouted, while the others jogged over, one beelining for her father.
She held up the gun as she started to dial.
‘Callum!’ she cried when he answered the phone. ‘Callum, they have Nicole, they found us! Dylan is hurt—’
Something crashed on the line. ‘Where are you?’ he demanded.
The closest Empyreal got to her father.
‘Get away from him!’ she shrieked, hauling herself up on shaky legs and running, throwing the phone down to use both hands as she aimed the gun. ‘Stay back! Stay—’
They swiped at her, but she was small. Smaller than them. ‘That gives you an advantage,’ Nicole had told her once.
Bells didn’t know how much it would buy her against five of them. But she’d damn well find out. She knew how to use a gun, she knew.
So, she fired.
Three fast bullets, one aimed for the face of the nearest Empyreal.
He didn’t move fast enough, and part of her flayed to pieces when the bullets obliterated his face and threw his head backwards in a spray of blood.
She screamed as she fired again, all her rage, all her fear flying with those bullets.
One to the leg of an Empyreal who had come closer.
One into the trio of others, resulting in a roar of pain.
One to the back wheels of their SUV in the hopes it could ping up to the fuel tank.
She shot until the bullets were gone.
As one of the Empyreals ran for her, Bells threw the empty gun at his face and ducked, going for his waist, then changing last minute to grab the gun at his other hip and rip it from its holster.
But as she slammed to the floor and raised the weapon, the last thing she saw was the boot coming for her face, and the little golden creature on her wrist shooting off towards the attacking Empyreal.