Chapter 85
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Drago
The gates of Decadence don’t shake. They don’t rattle. They don’t bow. They stand tall and black and brutal against the daylight. Iron bars sharpened to a point, a promise to the world that this place is not meant to be taken.
And still… They come anyway.
The Preacher’s men push through the trees in packs, running up the long drive like a tide of bodies, rifles raised, faces hard with belief and adrenaline and the kind of blind devotion that makes men think dying for a lie is noble.
They want in. They want blood. And I’m standing between them and everything I love. I have to come through for my baby.
The air is hot with smoke and sirens and burning fuel. It clings to the back of my throat, thick enough to taste. The ground is scarred where the last explosion hit, chunks of dirt blown up into craters like the earth itself has been punched.
And just beyond the perimeter—off to the left, past the trees—Inferno is smoldering.
The club he built to lure monsters out of their hiding places.
Now it’s burning like a signal fire.
A gutted carcass of steel and glass, smoke pouring from the broken roof, flames licking along the frame. It looks like the underworld is exhaling.
A warning.
A sacrifice.
A goddamn prophecy.
Enzo’s voice crackles through my comms, clipped and cold. “They’re at the tree line. Ten minimum. More behind. They’ve got vests. They’re moving fast.”
“Let them come,” Declan says beside me, voice calm, eyes dead. He’s not shouting. He doesn’t need to.
He’s the storm before it hits.
Conan is on my left, gun braced, grin sharp and feral like this is the only thing that makes him feel alive. Reggie and Rowan are somewhere close but not in sight, moving through the chaos with that twin instinct that makes them unpredictable as hell.
Frankie’s at the front flank with his men, tattooed and ruthless, bodies carved into weapons, all of them ready to die before they let this gate fall.
Mikhail Volkov stands like a tank beside them, huge shoulders squared, face set in stone.
Jax is posted slightly back, eyes scanning, finger steady on the trigger like he’s waiting for the exact second someone makes a mistake.
Grayson is right of the gates, ex-military precision in every movement. He isn’t panicking. He isn’t even breathing hard.
He’s commanding. He’s controlling.
“Hold the line,” Grayson orders, voice low but carrying. “Wait for the gap. Don’t waste rounds.”
Because none of us are here to warn them.
We’re here to erase them.
The first wave breaks from the trees.
They sprint, boots chewing up gravel, rifles up, mouths moving like they’re praying as they charge toward the gates of Decadence.
One of them screams something about salvation. Another screams something about surrender.
They think they’re warriors.
They’re not.
They’re lambs running toward slaughter.
“Now,” Declan says.
And the world becomes gunfire. Bullets tear through the air in vicious, controlled bursts—sharp cracks that echo off iron, stone, and the glass of shattered vehicles. The sound is constant, relentless, like thunder that refuses to stop.
Bodies drop.
One hits the ground and doesn’t get up.
Another staggers, hands going to his neck, blood spraying bright against the gravel.
Another gets two steps closer, and then his head snaps back, the force throwing him onto his spine like he’s been punched by God.
The gates stay standing. Our line doesn’t move. Because this is not a negotiation. This is not a plea for peace. This is the end.
A man lunges toward the gate with a grenade in his hand. Conan shoots him mid-stride.
The grenade drops.
Grayson doesn’t hesitate, sprinting forward, booting it back down the drive like he’s on a fucking training field.
It explodes twenty meters away, shaking the ground, sending smoke and dirt into the air.
None of us flinches. We’ve lived our whole lives with bombs in our mouths.
This is just louder.
Frankie laughs, wild and vicious, blood splattering his cheek as he reloads. “These cult cunts really thought they had a chance.”
Mikhail answers with violence.
Because this is all or nothing. The final end. The last time we bleed for this life. The last time we let monsters think they can reach inside our walls.
A cult soldier trips over a body and tries to crawl backward.
Frankie steps forward and shoots him in the face without slowing down.
Another raises his weapon toward the gate—
I take him through the throat.
He drops, hands still clutching the trigger like he thought it would save him.
It doesn’t. Nothing saves them today.
The smoke shifts with the wind, and Inferno comes into view again, a dying beast.
Now it’s burning as if the world is cleansing itself. A final offering. A final lure, now fulfilled.
Enzo’s voice cuts in again, sharp. “They’re retreating! They’re pulling back!”
Good.
Run and carry the message to anyone stupid enough to keep praying.
Because there is no god coming to save them. There will be no other Preacher.
Reggie and Rowan appear at the gates like ghosts made of violence, dragging a chained body between them.
Maria.
The Preacher.
Her head lolls. Her skin is pale. Her blood stains the gravel like a signature.
Frankie goes still for half a second, his grin fading into something colder.
Mikhail’s eyes narrow, satisfied.
Grayson doesn’t blink.
Nobody speaks.
Because this…
This is the message.
Reggie slings the chain over the iron bars with brutal efficiency.
Rowan climbs, hauling her up, boots planted on the metal like he’s scaling a throne.
Bullets crack in the distance, but the cult soldiers hesitate now, because they finally see what’s hanging in front of them.
Their salvation.
Their preacher.
Dead.
Their sacrifices are for nothing. No one is immortal. Not even her.
Reggie yanks hard, lifting the body higher as Rowan secures the chain with a final jerk.
And then Maria is strung up on the gates of Decadence like a warning to the world.
Like an execution. Like proof.
I step forward, breathing hard, smoke burning my lungs.
I lift my voice so it carries over the gunfire, over the sirens, over the chaos. “THE PREACHER IS DEAD!” I roar. “LOOK AT HER!”
The cult soldiers freeze.
Declan watches them, his face unreadable. Then he murmurs, almost bored, “Pathetic.”
The remaining men retreat, scrambling back into the trees, abandoning the bodies, abandoning the drive, abandoning the lie they were ready to die for.
And Frankie and Mikhail’s men…
They don’t let them go. They peel off in silent pursuit, disappearing into the smoke and the woods like wolves—picking them off one by one, not in a rush.
Not in rage. In certainty. Because no one leaves this place to come back again.
Declan turns his head slowly, gaze landing on Inferno—the sex club the Quinns built for Enzo.
Declan’s mouth curves into a smile. To many, you’d think the world was caving in around us. But, to us? It’s the opposite.
Because it’s finally over.
Inferno did what it was created to do. It dragged evil out into the open. It forced the truth into daylight. It burned the rot from the world. And now it’s burning too—symbolic as hell, the last thing we need to leave behind.
Declan looks at the flames. At Decadence. At the dead body hanging from the gates.
Then he exhales, and so do I. My debt to the Quinns, even if it was never in blood, is over. I delivered what I promised. The end of the Preacher.
“And now we fucking live,” he says.
I believe him.
Because this is the end of the war. And the beginning of our peace. A life I never imagined would be possible. A woman by my side whom I will love until I die.
I just fucking hope by some miracle, there is someone up there watching over Lev. Surely getting rid of the true evil on this planet just earned us some sort of good.