Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
MIKO
Icovered Orion with my body while glass sprayed into the flat, striking my back, shards jingling like a thousand bells as they hit the floor.
“Holy shit!” James cried.
Cold air licked at me, the outside sounds clear and alarming—voices and footsteps, the stench of blood magic wafting in, Orion smothered in it.
I grabbed his face. “Fight it. Please fucking fight it.”
Infuriating laughter drifted up from the ground.
Lance’s doing. Was he out there?
I glanced at the destroyed window, red energy glistening around its edges.
Lance had blood magi in his pack.
The werelynx was heading for a violent death by my hands, but for now I had to keep my cool and protect Orion.
The magi were clearly after his fae blood. To find the oracle? For something else?
I should have hidden you away…
James and Cate flanked me.
“I don’t know where they came from,” Cate said. “We were keeping watch and—”
Orion twitched, releasing a disturbing groan.
“Fight it,” I told him again, hoping my words got through.
“There’s several people outside,” James added. “Shifters and blood magi.”
I scooped Orion’s stiff body into my arms. “Time to evacuate.” God, he was so cold. “Get Paige and Trev and meet at Plan B.”
“Already here, sir.” Paige and the troll were in the hallway.
“Good. Let’s go.”
Blood magic wouldn’t affect us like it did Orion because our blood would have to be drawn and physically touched by the magi in order for it to be manipulated. Fae and humans weren’t so lucky. But there would be other tricks up those magical sleeves to do us harm.
We hurried down the stairwell, my panic rising. Beyond the fences at the front entrance, a gathering of shifters brandishing flaming torches waited as if coming to burn the monster out of its hideaway.
Pricks.
More of them waited at the back entrance, but Plan B was what we called the sewer exit hidden in the basement level of the tower.
Deep beneath the tower was an old Victorian sewer tunnel, blocked at the point of exit at the river, but running further south with plenty of exit points controlled by us.
Our only escape.
We entered the basement, the generators humming, pipes and wires everywhere. Everywhere I saw them I was so proud of James for his incredible engineering skills.
I’m getting you out of here, I thought at Orion, at all of my pack.
He seemed to be getting colder. If it weren’t for his hitched breaths, the slow thumping of his heart, I’d think him dead.
Don’t you dare die on me…
James opened the locks, lifted the hatch to the sewer, only to stare down the barrel of a gun.
“Hands up,” Lance said, holding onto the ladder with his other hand.
A menace rising from the dark, fucking up my escape plans.
James backed up, hands in the air.
Trust Lance to dabble in guns. It’d been a struggle for my pack to gather firearms. Not for him, clearly. A twisted angel clearly watched his back.
A woman stood behind him, her skin deathly pale, her head bald with red spiral tattoos inked on her scalp. Her eyes were as red as Orion’s, her lips stained red as if she’d been eating strawberries.
Magical mist danced around her bleeding fingers—one hand on a ladder rung, the bleeding hand flexing in the air.
“Cherry Boy,” she whispered.
Orion groaned again.
I growled, pulling him closer to me. “Let him go.”
“He is mine,” she answered in a spaced-out tone.
Lance smirked. “Absolutely, Chantelle.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded.
Lance climbed out of the hatch, never lowering his gun. As much as I wanted to rush him, his reflexes were deadly, and my pack would pay the price.
The blood magi followed, her eyes on the fae.
I growled at her, my nerves spiking with fear and fury.
“Cherry Boy,” she whispered again.
Two more shifters followed, also with guns.
Trapped.
“Of course I knew all about your little tunnel,” Lance said. “Silly Miko, thinking I wouldn’t come back to London fully prepared.”
Trapped and outsmarted.
Lance tutted. “Disappointing really. I expected better of you. But then, you were always such an unworthy alpha.”
“Shut your mouth!” Paige barked.
“No!” I snapped at her. “Keep quiet.”
Lance’s eyes widened, throwing her an arrogant smile. “Better listen to your master here. He knows best. Or does he?” He stroked his chin, then fired the gun into her kneecap. The crack of the shot boomed in my skull.
She went down with a howl. Trev roared, catching her.
“Paige!” James cried. “You fuck—”
“Any of you move and she gets it in the fucking head!” Lance snapped.
That bullet wasn’t just any bullet. It was silver laced with wolfsbane, its traces of absinthe burning my nostrils.
“Don’t fucking test me!”
James stopped.
Silver itself didn’t harm a wolf. But mixed with wolfsbane, it was poison.
I watched on, trying to think of an escape, a way to outsmart Lance. But those bullets, the guns aimed at us, this serious checkmate…
Oh, God. I’d fucked up. Again. I’d failed my pack, unworthy of being their alpha like the lynx prick said. I was going to lose them and—
“Cherry Boy,” the blood magi said again, moving closer.
Snapping out of my self-pity, I recoiled from the gnarled fingers extending toward Orion.
“This is how it’s going to play out,” Lance addressed the room. “Miko here will hand over the fae and come with me. The rest of you will stay here like the good little bitches you are. You will yield. Okay? Got that? Need me to repeat it?”
Paige shivered in Trev’s arms, bleeding, her complexion shimmering in a sheen of sweat.
Time would help remove the wolfsbane from her system. Bed rest, werewolf healing, and some good hours of being still for both the poison and the wound. Her knee looked bad, but not unfixable. If I complied, the others could help her. They didn’t have to suffer because of me and the fae.
“Well?” Lance said.
No choice.
No choice.
I looked to my pack, wishing for another miracle in a world lacking in them.
With a heavy heart, I agreed to go with Lance. “But I’m carrying the fae.”
Chantelle cocked her head, snarling at me. “Cherry Boy is mine to play with.”
“No,” I returned. “I’ll comply, but he stays with me.”
Lance came at me, pressing the gun to my temple. “Trying to make the rules, are you? This moment isn’t yours to control. I say what goes. I give the orders.”
I resisted a headbutt attempt. “My pack will yield. I won’t try anything. I just want to carry my mate.”
Lance lowered the gun in surprise, his eyes wide with shock this time. “Your what?”
Why did I have to drop that in his lap?
Too late now. “My mate.”
“Your…” His throat bobbed, his right eye twitching. “Your…” Those lips I’d once kissed drew up into a grin. “Your…mate!” Lance threw back his head and howled with laughter. “Your mate! Your mate! Your mate!”
The other shifters laughed with him, but the blood magi’s attention stayed focused on Orion.
“This is too good!” Lance roared. “Too fucking good.” He raised the gun again, wiping his tears of laughter. “Fine. You can carry your mate. Out the front door. I’m not going back into that sewer.”
“Stinky,” Chantelle said.
What did they expect from a sewer?
The blood magi pawed at Orion, letting out a whine. “But Cherry Boy is mine.”
“He can be yours later. Let’s move.” Lance snapped his fingers. “Remember not to be heroes,” he told the rest of my pack. “Stay in your tower. Mind your business.”
“Listen to him,” I said. “For me.”
They obeyed, letting us leave the basement.
Shifters were tearing down the fences piece by piece, making a mockery of our security. They smashed open the front doors, taking down every piece of our hard work to make a safe space here.
“Move!” Lance barked.
He put me in point, Chantelle lumbering after me, constantly trying to touch Orion. She sniffed and drooled, smacking her lips.
The shifters lined up, creating a tunnel of bodies on either side of me up to the river wall. Two blood magi stood on the wall, holding their hands over the edge. Magic poured from their bleeding fingertips as crimson waterfalls, the pricks muttering their alien magical language.
“Keep walking,” Lance ordered.
I soon saw the magic spreading across the river to the other side of the water in a solid bridge of blood.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Lance said. “Blood magi are so underrated. Get onto the wall.”
I stepped up, glancing back at the tower so dark, a lonely monolith holding my friends.
Lance stepped up next to me. “There’s a horde approaching. We have to make it snappy.”
My chest tightened. “My pack…”
“Are not your problem right now.”
“You took down the defenses!”
“Then they’ll have to run or stay very quiet.”
“You—”
“Say another word and I’ll take your mate’s eyes out.”
“No!” Chantelle squealed. “Don’t taint Cherry Boy!”
I expected him to punish her for shouting at him. Instead, he stroked her head, full of apologies.
She closed her eyes, drooling under his touch.
Not a horde. Not when my pack were vulnerable, Paige hurt. Oh, God. I never should’ve yielded.
“Fuck,” I wheezed.
“Indeed, Miko,” Lance said. “Now, step on the bridge.”
I looked back at the tower. “Fuck.”
In the distance, I heard the calls and moans of the dead. The horde. Marching closer.
“Bridge. Now.”
What if I didn’t? What would he do?
I stepped off the wall, wracked with guilt, desperately reaching for an escape plan even though I knew it was pointless.
For now.
I had to believe in my pack’s capacity for survival. They’d get out of this and I’d bring Lance down. Get into the enemy’s nest, take out the master, fuck them all up. Make them pay.
Always better to deliver vengeance behind enemy lines.
This didn’t have to be hopeless, only tricky. I was sparing my pack worse suffering. Paige might be down, but the others would look after her. Better that than all of them riddled with wolfsbane bullets, Trev’s throat cut, drawing the horde to his blood.
Like Dad…
Like when he fought me when I went to end him. The blade caught an artery in his neck, blood spraying me in the face, his hands grabbing at me. Teeth bared, wanting to eat me, pick my bones clean.
I stopped him, bathed in his blood.
“Walk,” Lance demanded.
Be safe, I sent to the tower. I’ll be back for you.
The red bridge held like stone under my boots, squelching with each step. Blood dripped off its barrier-free edges.
The smell of it would draw the horde here, an intoxicating beacon to the fuckers.
“How does it feel to be powerless?” Lance asked behind me.
I didn’t answer.
“Horrible, right? And this is only the beginning. Mark my words.”