Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
Icarus felt marginally safer on the return trip to YB.
Yes, his life was more in danger than ever, but with two fewer tanks in their caravan, crossing the auto bridge didn’t feel like the same death sentence it had the first time.
Vincent had left one van of shifters behind to monitor the shellmound, had ordered one north to monitor Monte Corvo, and had taken the wheel of their van headed back to YB.
They were in the middle, Vincent riding the bumper of the lead van driven by Brock.
Vincent was paying little attention to the van behind them, unlike Atlas, who had spent extra time securing it before they’d left Encinal and was spending extra energy guarding it still, if the raised hairs on Icarus’s arms and the weakened cuffs around his wrists were any indication.
Maybe that was why Atlas missed it.
Or maybe it was Vincent, in all his awful alphaness, cursing the lead car for driving too slow.
Or maybe it was just the shitty, buckled road beneath their wheels.
Whatever it was, the other two beings in the car with Icarus missed the shimmer of green as they entered the tunnel, the water stains on the cement roof that had been dry less than an hour ago, the sway of the island itself.
Warning signs that would have cautioned against swerving out from behind the lead car and charging ahead.
Right into a wall of water that crashed over their SUV, that blanketed the windshield and sent them fishtailing across the bridge.
“Fuck!” Vincent cursed as he fought the wheel for control. “Hold on!”
But he was no match for her strength, for the coven she’d spared, for the spirits and ghosts who’d heeded her call and whipped the Bay around them into a frenzy.
Walls of water hundreds of feet high splashed onto the already uneven surface, the entire decaying structure swaying.
What had been a dark quiet night when they’d entered the tunnel had, a quarter mile later, turned into a maelstrom.
“We can’t make it across the span to the other side!” Atlas shouted. “Reverse! Go back!”
“Make this stop!” Vincent countered as he continued to fight the skid. “Do something!”
“Take your foot off the gas and your hands off the wheel!”
“Why would I do that?”
When Vincent didn’t comply, Atlas cut a look at Icarus in the back seat, and the next instant, the cuffs around Icarus’s wrists were gone. Springing into action, Icarus reached both arms around the driver’s seat from behind and clutched Vincent’s biceps, yanking his hands off the wheel.
Vincent tried to wrestle free. “Let me go!”
Icarus wrapped his arms fully around Vincent and jerked him higher in the seat, pulling his feet off the pedals too, the car decelerating but still spinning out of control. “I’ve got him! Stop the car!”
Atlas splayed a hand on the inside of the SUV’s roof and cast a spell that created a sparkling green dome over the vehicle.
With his other hand, he yanked up the parking brake lever, and finally, fucking finally, the car slowed its skid—until a blast of power pummeled Atlas’s shield, shoving their vehicle back toward the tunnel and the two other SUVs who’d wisely stopped before hitting the storm.
“Who’s doing that?” Vincent yelled, fear creeping beneath the shock and anger. “I can’t see!”
Atlas put a hand to the windshield, and a gap in the wall of water appeared.
So did the Devil.
Icarus had never seen a sexier sight.
Adam stood at the head of the pack, wind-whipped and rain-soaked, his arms extended, his hands flexed.
Despite the water, an aura of glowing orange and red swirled around him and over his skin.
Like the kid he’d rescued a week ago, but controlled, and at max power.
Another blast of that power rocked the SUV, stronger this time without the water filtering it.
Strong enough to slam their SUV back into the lead one Vincent had so foolishly passed, all three cars in the caravan piling up inside the tunnel.
“What’s he doing?” Vincent said, fighting against Icarus’s hold. “How’s he doing this?”
“You never wondered how he survived that fire?” Atlas said, voice deathly calm.
“The ultimate power was right under your nose for ten fucking years, and you never figured it out.” But Atlas had.
Same as he’d apparently figured out how to thwart his master’s thrall, if he’d ever been under it at all.
With one snap, he was gone, only green mist floating where he’d been a blink ago in the passenger seat.
Icarus twisted in his seat, leaving one arm around Vincent.
Sure enough, green light appeared in the rear car, and a second later, it was gone again—with someone else, Icarus suspected—but he didn’t have long to contemplate.
With Atlas and the mysterious person off the scene, the dome over their SUV shattered, and with it, Icarus’s temporary view of Adam, water and rain obscuring the tunnel entrance once again.
He reached out with his senses, found the heartbeat he’d know anywhere, and latched on.
A guide for Adam, a constant for Icarus, and a silent, shouted warning for any paranormal on the scene who dared lay a hand on his mate.
Vincent fought harder in his arms. “Let me go!”
Icarus did no such thing. He leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “You underestimated him too.”
Glass shattered, metal crunched, and the driver’s side door was wrenched open.
Vincent yelped. “It’s me, boss,” Brock shouted over the thundering storm.
“We gotta go.” He summoned a blue orb and flung it in Icarus’s direction.
Icarus released Vincent and ducked, barely avoiding the sizzling ball of magic, and foolishly turning his back on the door, which was yanked open by someone else.
Strong arms banded around Icarus and dragged him out of the car.
Icarus sniffed. One of Vincent’s shifters, a horse of some sort.
As soon as his feet hit the ground, Icarus bent at the waist, trying to leverage the shifter over him, but the horse had at least fifty pounds on him.
Icarus was also fighting at half attention, the other half on Vincent and Brock still arguing beside them.
“We stay!” Vincent wrestled out of Brock’s hold and lunged for his shoulder harness tucked in the side door compartment. “We can fight them.”
“We don’t have the power anymore.” Brock pointed toward the third car. “Atlas took him.”
What power? Whoever Atlas disappeared with? Was that the juice Vincent was using to keep Atlas and the rest of the paranormals under his thrall? How had Atlas broken through? Had the others? Was it just blind loyalty keeping Brock and the others by his side?
“We don’t need him,” Vincent countered, the awful lust for power back in his voice. “Not if we can get the Devil. I want his power.” He finished readying his pistols and swung his gaze in Icarus’s direction. Nope, nothing lovely about those brown eyes anymore. “And we use him as bait.”
Icarus kicked and clawed to no avail.
“We need to go back the way we came!” Brock urged. “It’s the only way out.”
“Cirillo!” The Devil’s shout echoed through the tunnel.
Vincent stiffened, and so did Brock and the shifter holding Icarus, all of them turning toward Adam’s voice.
Toward the army bearing down on them. Adam stood at the center, a gun in one hand, a throwing star in the other, with Robin and Jenn in their massive coyote forms on either side of him and flanked by Abigail and Cormac in human form.
Ten more of the pack were behind them, some shifted, some not, the latter heavily armed.
Jenn and Abigail had salvaged a lot from Adam’s armory—guns, crossbows, knives, and more.
Compared to Vincent and his army of eight, the odds favored Adam. Icarus smiled, and Adam grinned right back before shifting his burning blue-gray gaze to Vincent. “You have someone I belong to. I need him back.”
“So trade yourself,” Vincent postured. “I’ll let him go if you come with us.”
“Not a chance, and not a chance you’re going anywhere either.
” He lifted the throwing star and twirled it between his fingers.
Icarus counted at least three bone-cracking shifts and as many guns cocking behind him, all aimed at Adam.
But Adam only had eyes for him. “Hey, baby, someone’s waiting for your SOS.
” He flicked his gaze to the ground a half second before the throwing star came hurtling the direction of Icarus’s captor.
In that same half second, Icarus blinked off his senses and prepared for the splatter of blood that coated the side of his face, avoiding the instinctive distraction so that as soon as the shifter’s arms fell away, Icarus could drop to a knee, flatten his palm on the ground, and ask his sister for help.
She delivered, shaking the ground so hard the rest of the bridge behind Vincent’s caravan collapsed into the Bay, the thunderous booms of cement and metal crashing into the water echoing through the tunnel and driving the waves over the remaining half of the bridge higher.
The span behind Adam stretching to YB swayed in an unsteady, disquieting fashion.
They didn’t have long to end this. Icarus spun, claws and fangs out, and hissed in Vincent’s direction. “Fuck being your bait.”
Vincent raised one pistol, but before he could pull the trigger, a bullet zipped past his nose.
Following the path of his shot, Adam and the pack charged.
With no way out, Vincent’s soldiers did the same, the two groups colliding just inside the tunnel opening.
Icarus rolled and came up slashing beside Adam, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the other vampire from Vincent’s crew.
Growls and snarls bounced off the cement walls, joined by grunts and shouts as soldiers fought in human form, and the occasional sizzle and pop of magic as Brock hurled orbs of magic from beside Vincent.
Icarus landed a roundhouse that caught the other vampire by surprise.
She fell to her knees, and a ready Abigail swung her sword, slicing the vampire’s head off, while Cormac shoved a stake into her chest for good measure.
The explosion of dust settled just as Robin and Adam neutralized the horse shifter.
With Adam in arm’s reach, Icarus blinked his senses back on and grabbed him by the coat collar, dragging him in for a quick, hard kiss, the hit of fire and whiskey intoxicating. “How mad at me are you?”
Adam smirked. “It wasn’t your worst plan ever.”
Robin butted his head between them, and Icarus could have sworn the massive coyote rolled his eyes. He jutted his muzzle Vincent and Brock’s direction. Message received. “How do you want to do this?” Icarus asked as Cormac joined their group.
“You two”—Adam gestured at him and Cormac—“distract the wizard long enough for us to get to Vincent.”
“Vincent’s thrall over them is broken,” Icarus said. “Atlas stole the power source on scene. The warlock with Vincent wants to leave. I don’t think it’ll be hard to separate them.”
“You don’t know what else Vincent may have over him,” Cormac said.
“I doubt it’s Armageddon.”
And fuck if the coyote didn’t grin. So did Adam as he dragged Icarus in for another too brief, drugging kiss. “Go be a fucking hero.”
Using the van as a shield, Icarus and Cormac crept behind it while Adam and Robin charged back into the melee, making steady progress toward Vincent and Brock.
“I can blind him,” Cormac said. “But with the wind whipping through here the way it is, it’ll only be for a couple seconds.”
Icarus nodded. “That’s all I need.”
They waited for Adam and Robin to be in striking distance before rounding the back of the car, putting them a few feet from Brock and Vincent while still covered on two sides.
Icarus protected Cormac’s other two while the raven closed his violet eyes and lifted his arms, murmuring in a mishmash of what sounded to Icarus like Gaelic and Wappo, words he didn’t understand but that had their intended effect.
A powerful gust of wind howled down the tunnel and on its heels a chorus of CAWs and KRAAs.
A wave of black undulated through the tunnel and spread like a blanket, unfurling more as the birds neared the intended targets.
Focused on taking shots at Adam and Robin, Vincent and Brock were too late in noticing the attack at their back.
The corvids swooped in between them and around Brock, disorienting the warlock and giving Icarus time to spring through the narrow opening they’d left him.
He wrapped his arms around the warlock and dragged him away from Vincent. “I will give you one chance to run.”
The warlock trembled. “He’ll come after me. After my family.”
Icarus should have known. Blackmail, thy name is Vincent Cirillo. But those days would be over soon. “He won’t live past tonight. Go!”
One snap—small yet sharp in the booming chaos—and all that was left in Icarus’s arms was blue mist.
Followed by two gunshots—louder and more deafening than any other noise—and all that was left of Icarus’s future crumpled to the ground.