Chapter 43
“Everyone out,” I yell, dragging my mother from Fiona’s office.
In the darkened hallway, Nora’s pacing on the phone, but Fiona is nowhere to be found. Nora’s eyes find mine, waves of fear cresting in them. “She just took off—”
“You have to leave,” I tell Nora. “Now.”
“What about you?” my mother says.
“I’m going to find Fiona.”
“Me too,” Nora says, pocketing her phone. “She’s not answering my calls. But Astera PD is on their way.”
Somewhere, one story below, I can hear a group moving across the marbled halls. Not Fiona’s clacky heels or other archivists working late. Heavy boots thumping toward the new wing. The Chasm exhibit.
“Nora,” I say, grasping her arms. “Get Mom out of here. Let me find Fiona. I know this place better than you do. She’s probably turning on the emergency lockdown system and is safe in a panic room. I’ll be okay, I promise.”
Nora kisses me on the head and mutters, “Please find her.”
“I will,” I say. “Go. Both of you.”
My mother looks back at me once, tears still fresh in her eyes, before Nora drags her toward the emergency exit stairwell. Once they’re safely through, I bolt in the other direction. There’s another set of stairs that will take me down to the Chasm exhibit.
Bloodlust echoes through my bones. For a herd of deviants to break into the Windsor…
That requires time and energy and organization. It’s got to be the Brood. And if they took Fiona…As much as I may want to, I cannot fight them alone.
I could call Sophia or Elliot. Even Peter, but—
The realization hits like a sledgehammer: There’s no one I want to fight alongside more than Reid.
He’s older and wiser. Better versed in deviants than any of us students could ever be, because he is one.
I think back to last week, when he saved me from his own brother.
The steely resolve in his eyes. The juggernaut force of his strength.
He’s the only one I want to charge into battle with.
My fingers are already dialing his number when I hear the sound of glass shattering. I slip through the doors and into the darkened exhibit lit only by the red streaks of the flashing alarm light.
He answers on the first ring. “Hey.”
“Reid—”
“Where are you?” There’s an urgency in his voice. He sounds like he could chew through iron. He must be able to hear the alarms, or my fear.
“The Windsor. The Brood is here.” I move silently through the exhibit like an alley cat in the night.
Mounted maps of the Chasm and infographics of its many layers have been left untouched.
Artistic renditions by eighteenth-century neoclassical painters safe behind their double-paned plastic casings.
But the displays filled with artifacts found within Chasm sediment have been destroyed.
“Get out of there,” he instructs. I can hear him pushing through a door and out into whipping winter wind. “Now, Viv.”
But I’m trying to understand what I’m looking at.
Priceless jewels and vaguely Byzantine scrolls scatter the floor.
Texts rife with demonic symbols historians still think are Sumerian—torn to shreds.
Fiona is going to be apoplectic. But then other sections—the photography and the busts of the archaeologists who discovered Astera—are completely unharmed.
The Brood isn’t here to destroy but rather to find something.
But what? Low murmurs sound from the next room. “They might have my sister-in-law.”
Reid’s hushed curse is a deadly sound. “I’m two minutes from the gateway.”
“I’ll meet you by the volcanic rock,” I whisper.
I hang up and flatten myself against the wall of igneous particles found in the depths of the Chasm.
Trembling, I peer around the corner. Illuminated only by the bare-bones after-hours light and the flashes of pale red are five burly, lethal-looking men, each with the brand of the Brood.
I don’t spy Fiona, which I tell myself is a relief, not a death sentence.
No scent of human blood, either—if there were overnight security guards in this room, it seems they ran in time.
I pray the NTC police are slow tonight. If they arrive now, they’ll be slaughtered in seconds.
“Do you know what it looks like, Your Highness?” one demon asks.
I clench my teeth against a sudden, unwelcome chill.
There’s a sound like ice cracking on a frigid pond.
When I look down, frost has swept across the floor where I stand, over my shoes, and up the glass cases that house the artifacts.
It clings to my bare, goose-bumped legs.
I can taste it on my tongue—a bitter, barren cold.
A hooded figure in a decadent wool cloak slips into the room before me, moving across the exhibit so seamlessly, it’s as if he’s floating, carried on an icy, malicious wind.
“There,” replies his distorted tone, low and sharp as a stab wound. “Fetch it for me.”
The voice does more than send prickles beneath my skin. It threatens to knock me to my knees. A voice filled with more power—more cruelty—than anything I’ve ever heard. It’s not human. It’s barely demonic. It’s something else entirely—
The High Thane.
I know it in my bones. Bracing myself against the aching need to tear his head from his body is like weathering a storm.
When a new vibration courses through my skin, I spin, daggers out, and press them to Reid’s pulsing throat. His skin singes with the contact, but he doesn’t step away from me.
“Shit,” I whisper, yanking my weapons back. There’s a burn mark on his Adam’s apple. “Sorry.”
“You’re okay,” he murmurs, relief shining in his shadowed eyes. His hand moves to cup my face, but he lowers it before making contact. Only then do I remember we’re supposed to be done. So dumb, all of it.
“The High Thane’s in there,” I tell him. “And five of his men. They’re here to steal something. I need to find Fiona…She ran when they broke in. I’d guess to protect the relics and the art.”
“Let me handle them.”
“I’m never going to run from a fight.” It comes out like an apology. “I know that terrifies you.”
He shakes his head, jaw ticking. “You have no idea.”
“I’ll go in first. Cover me?”
He nods, grim, and when I look down, I see his hands have been replaced with those treacherous, bloodred claws. Pointed nails as black as oblivion tip his gnarled fingers. A part of me wants to reach out and take one in my hand.
At the sound of glass cascading down to the marble floor, I peek out to get one more look at what I’m going into. The High Thane’s eyes—yellow and slitted—glow like a viper’s beneath his heavy hood. Beside him, another hulking figure conjures a door in the middle of the gallery. A gateway—
Adrenaline sluices through me as I rush for them, but the Brood’s warlock and the High Thane have already stepped through. The door vanishes and becomes a wall just as the remaining four Broods turn to me and glare.
Menacing faces. Fiendish claws. Punishing grins.
There’s no time to waste.
I drive my daggers into arms and leather and the odd marble podium when they’re too quick for me. Reid’s right on my tail, slashing and grunting with each blow. Roaring as the men dodge and weave past him.
I nearly drive my dagger into the neck of a thick-bearded Brood when he whirls around and shoves me to the floor.
He lands atop me, breathing raggedly in my ear.
I lash out with my knees and fists, using his weight against him as best I can, but his mouth is too close to mine.
I can feel the shift—the moment he’s decided to drink my soul rather than kill me instantly.
The way his body goes rigid with perverse, murderous want.
In the distance, Reid’s tearing one of them up, ripping demon flesh to strips between his claws. I try to call for him, but the Brood is on my windpipe. I can’t make a noise. Can’t shove him off me. I’m pinned. Not strong enough, not able to breathe—
No. No—
The Brood’s laugh is insidious as it curls over my mouth. I try to turn away, but his claws hold me by the cheeks. “Stay still, hunter girl.”
“Like hell she will,” a woman’s voice calls before a spear of silver plunges through his heart and splatters me in bright red demon blood.
I’m sputtering, scraping the iron-rich liquid from my tongue, when I finally look up and see—
“Professor Lisette?”
“Up,” she instructs. Her thin blond hair is pulled back, and she’s in fighting leathers more commonly worn by hunters back in the day. She fights with a two-sided spear, driving its silver points into demons on either side of her.
Still catching my breath, I store my confusion away for later and plunge my dagger into a demon who’s about to sink his fanged teeth into Reid’s neck. When I whip around to see who’s behind me, I realize the three of us are alone.
Four demon bodies lie on the floor of the Chasm exhibit, blood leaking slowly across the shiny granite floor. Our breaths sound ragged under the alarm that continues to blare. My head aches from the noise.
“Are you hurt?” Reid’s voice is a rasp. He’s standing before me, shirt shredded, doused in demon blood. After a quick scan of his body, I know, thankfully, very little of it is his own.
I shake my head. “I’m fine. You called Lisette?”
Now it’s his eyes that narrow in confusion.
“He didn’t,” a familiar voice says behind me. “I was here already, Viv.”
When I turn toward the sound, I find Fiona. She’s wearing Professor Lisette’s hunter leathers, her hand clutched around that same double-ended spear.
“What the fuck?”