Chapter Seventeen #2
I’m not the helpless waitress who got marked weeks ago. Not the victim cowering while monsters fight my battles. I’ve trained for this. Bled for this. Earned my place on this ride.
I take aim at a shade reaching for Chrome and squeeze the trigger.
The shot goes wide, shades are hard to target, their forms flickering, but the second one hits center mass. The creature shrieks, a sound that’s half wind and half dying scream, and dissolves.
“Nice shot!” Chrome’s voice crackles with approval.
Vex’s pride floods through the bond, warm and fierce, and I feel myself grin despite the terror and adrenaline.
We’re moving again, the convoy regrouping and pushing forward. But the attacks are getting worse. More shades, bigger animals, things that look like they crawled out of nightmares given frozen form.
That’s when Fury transforms.
I’ve never seen him shift before. Never knew what he was, though I’d suspected he was more than human. But this, this is beyond anything I imagined.
Fire erupts around him, melting snow in a twenty-foot radius. His bike doesn’t slow, if anything, it surges forward, flames streaming behind it in ribbons of red and gold. And then he’s no longer riding it, he’s beside it, hitting the ground on four massive legs, all muscle and fire and shadow.
The creature Fury becomes is enormous, easily the size of a grizzly, his fur rippling with darkness and flame, his eyes burning bright enough to cut through the blizzard. His roar shakes the ground, and even the ice shades recoil, skidding back as if instinct warns them to keep their distance.
“W—What is he?” I whisper, unable to look away.
Vex swears under his breath, low and vicious. “Fuck. Things must be bad if Fury’s taken on his hellhound form.”
Hellhound.
The word slams through me, cold and hot all at once.
Vex’s jaw tightens. “He’s not from this world, Tessa. He’s from somewhere deeper... somewhere hotter. A place even the cold won’t touch. He told you the Devil calls him friend.”
Fury crashes into a cluster of corrupted wolves, and they don’t stand a chance. Fire consumes ice, hell devours winter, and in seconds there’s nothing left but scorched earth and steam.
“Show off,” Chrome mutters, but there’s affection in his voice.
Fury’s presence beats back the cold, creates a bubble of warmth the shades can’t fully penetrate. We rally around him, using his fire as a shield while we press forward.
But the devourer isn’t done testing us.
A massive bear or something that used to be a bear, emerges from the tree line. It’s easily twelve feet tall, covered in ice that’s grown into armor, spikes jutting from its shoulders and back. Its roar is avalanche and earthquake combined.
“That’s new,” Blade says flatly.
The bear charges.
Fury meets it head-on, hellhound versus ice-bear, fire versus frost. They collide with a sound like thunder, and the shockwave knocks me forward against Vex’s back.
Prophet’s voice cuts through the comms, steady and clear. “The seal site is close. The devourer knows. It’s throwing everything it has at us to stop us from reaching it.”
“Then we break through,” Blade snarls. “Chrome, Vex, with me. Everyone else, hold this position. Give us an opening.”
“On it.” Chrome’s golden eyes scan the perimeter.
Vex revs the engine. “Hold on tight.”
We surge forward, Chrome and Blade flanking us. Shades materialize directly in our path, but we don’t slow. Chrome’s sawed-off shotgun blasting those in our path. Blade’s bike has some kind of built-in flame thrower that reduces everything it touches to water and mist.
And Vex is poetry in motion, weaving between enemies with supernatural grace, never slowing, never hesitating.
The mark on my shoulder burns hotter with every yard we gain.
Behind us, I hear Scout shouting coordinates, hear the distinctive crack of Rooster’s guns, hear Fury’s hellhound roar as he tears through another wave of creatures.
We’re going to make it. We’re actually going to—
Kyler’s scream cuts through the comms.
The prospect, barely twenty years old, a Dhampir making him fast but not invincible has been separated from the group. Three shades have him surrounded, claws tearing through his leather, frost spreading across his skin.
“Kyler!” Blade’s voice cracks with something I’ve never heard from him before, fear.
Vex is already turning us around, but we’re too far, moving too fast to stop in time.
Scout dives for him, silver light blazing from his hands, but a corrupted eagle, massive and twisted, intercepts him, talons raking across gossamer wings.
Chrome tries to reach him, but the ice-bear Fury’s fighting turns, massive paw swinging, and he has to swerve or get crushed.
Time slows down.
I watch Kyler go down, watch the shades swarm over him, watch the light in his eyes fade as cold invades his body and stops his half-human heart.
Vex reaches him in seconds, but seconds are too long.
He tears through the shades with bare hands, ripping them apart with vampire strength amplified by my blood in his veins. But when he kneels beside Kyler, pulling the kid into his arms, I can see the truth.
We’re too late.
“Stay with me,” Vex says, and through the bond I feel his anguish. “Come on, kid. Stay with me.”
Kyler’s eyes find Vex’s face. He tries to speak, but blood bubbles at his lips—too much blood, turning to ice even as it flows.
“I’m sorry,” Vex whispers, and the grief in his voice tears at my heart. “I should have trained you better. Should have prepared you for this. Should have—”
Kyler’s hand finds Vex’s, squeezes once with failing strength.
Then he’s gone.
The light leaves his eyes, frost spreading across his features, and the boy who wanted so badly to be a King dies in Vex’s arms on frozen ground miles from home.
“No!” Blade’s roar is pure rage and pain.
Fury’s hellhound form blazes brighter, hotter, until the ice-bear actually backs away from the sheer heat of his fury. He tears into it with renewed savagery, ripping through ice armor until the creature falls in steaming pieces.
The shades retreat.
Not defeated, not even close, but driven back by the raw emotion, the grief and rage pouring off every brother present.
Vex lifts Kyler’s body, cradling him carefully, and the sight of this ancient vampire holding a dead kid breaks something in me. Through the bond, I feel everything he’s feeling, guilt for not training him better, rage at himself for not being fast enough, grief for potential cut short.
“We take him with us,” Blade says quietly. “No one gets left behind.”
Prophet rides up beside us, and for a moment, his eyes glow with that otherworldly light. He places a hand on Kyler’s forehead, whispering words in a language I don’t know. A blessing, maybe. Or last rites.
Blade reaches out and touches Prophet’s arm. “No brother. We can’t have you draining yourself. We are going to need you in the fight to come.”
“He’s right,” Vex says with a nod. “This is on me, I should have trained the half-blood better. Kyler didn’t deserve this end.”
Then Rooster takes the body, strapping it carefully to what’s left of his damaged bike. His face is hard, carved from stone, but his hands are gentle.
“How much farther?” Vex asks, his voice rough with suppressed emotion.
Prophet points ahead, through a gap in the trees. “There. The seal site.”
I follow his gaze and see them.
Stones.
Ancient beyond measure, half-buried in ice and snow, arranged in a circle maybe thirty feet across. They’re covered in symbols that hurt to look at, not because they’re ugly, but because they’re too perfect, too precise, too old for human eyes to fully comprehend.
And they’re humming.
Not a sound you hear with your ears, but something you feel in your bones, in your teeth, in the very marrow of you. The mark on my shoulder responds to that hum, resonating with it, and suddenly I understand.
This place knows me.
Or more accurately, it knows my bloodline. My ancestors stood here, in this circle, and gave their lives to trap the thing that’s been hunting me. Their blood is in these stones, in the earth beneath them, in the very air.
I am the last daughter of the wardens.
And I’ve come home.
“Tessa.” Vex’s hand finds mine, anchoring me. “You feel it?”
“Yeah.” My voice comes out barely a whisper. “It’s calling to me.”
“Can you resist it?”
I think about Kyler, dead because this thing won’t stop until it’s free. Think about Mandy and all the other people who’ve been attacked. Think about the shadow that will consume everything if we fail here.
“I don’t want to resist it,” I say. “I want to end it.”
Through the comms, Blade’s voice sounds, “Prophet, set up your ritual. Chrome, Fury, Scout, establish a perimeter. Rooster, you’re with me. We hold this position until Prophet says otherwise.”
“And us?” Vex asks.
Blade looks at me, and in his eyes I see acknowledgment. Respect. Trust.
“Tessa goes to the center of the circle. It’s where the seal is weakest, where the ritual needs to be anchored.” He pauses. “Vex, you stay with her. No matter what comes through, you keep her alive and conscious until Prophet can complete the binding.”
“Understood.”
We dismount, and the moment my boots hit the ground inside the stone circle, power surges up through the earth and into my body. The mark blazes with cold fire, and I gasp, nearly going to my knees.
Vex catches me, his arms steady, his presence through the bond an anchor in the storm of sensation.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
The stones pulse with ancient power. The mark burns with the devourer’s hunger. And somewhere beneath us, trapped but not destroyed, something massive and terrible and older than mountains stirs.
It knows I’m here.
It’s been waiting for me.