Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
We're filing into the conference room when the compound's alert system triggers. The display wall flashes red. Four sensors at the Midtown hub, all at once.
"Coordinated breach," Julian says from the console.
Maximus is beside me before Julian finishes the sentence. His focus sharpens.
"The wards?"
"Down," Julian says. "All four layers. They punched straight through Seraphina's work."
Maximus doubled security at the hub. Moved the monitoring to a twenty-four-hour rotation. Had Seraphina ward every entrance. And they still got in.
Ethan pulls up the data. "Eight hostiles on the fourth floor. Hub security is down. Multiple casualties. The refrigeration core is still online but they've hit the east-side storage."
"How in the hell did only eight vampires breach the increased security?" Maximus asks. The room goes still.
"Get Erik's wolves on ground perimeter. Marcellus, south entrance. Ethan coordinates from compound. Elena on medical standby." His voice is level. He looks at me. "Julian, Celeste. You're with me."
We clear the compound gate.
Vampire speed through Midtown Atlanta is a different city.
Streetlights stretch into amber lines. The sidewalk crowds register as heat and heartbeat and the faint salt of human skin, gone before the scent finishes forming.
My feet hit pavement, then a fire escape railing, then the edge of a rooftop.
Maximus is beside me. Matching my pace across the gap between buildings, the night air tearing past us and re-sealing behind us like water closing over a stone.
Three blocks. Four. Him steady at my left shoulder.
When we reach the hub, the wolves are already in position. Six along the south perimeter, low to the ground, ears flat, breath misting in the night air. Kael is in wolf form at the service entrance. Massive. His teeth catch the security lights when he lifts his head.
Marcellus is on comms. "Wolves in position. We're ready on your go."
One breath in. One out.
Bigger ring. Same rules. Don't get hit.
Maximus takes the west stairwell. I'm behind him. Julian behind me, covering our back. The fluorescent strips on each landing cast the kind of light that makes everything look like a crime scene.
Fourth floor. We go through the door together.
The air in the corridor is colder than the stairwell. The refrigeration units hum through the walls, a low vibration that sits in my molars. Under it, copper. Fresh blood. And something else. Something acrid that coats the back of my throat and doesn't belong here.
What is that?
The corridor is a wreck. Two hub security guards on the floor.
One face down in a pool of blood that's still spreading.
The other propped against the wall, throat torn, eyes open.
Neither of them moving. A third slumped near the emergency exit, her fingers still twitching against the baseboard, a handprint smeared along the wall where she dragged herself away from the fight.
Smashed glass on the tile. Storage units along this corridor ripped open, bags of blood slashed and emptied across the floor.
They weren't just taking the hub. They were destroying the supply on their way to the core.
Two come at us from the far end. Fast. Faster than they should be.
The one on the left is mine. I sidestep and kick his knee. The joint folds with a wet pop and he pitches forward. I catch his head on the way down, redirect his momentum into the concrete wall. His skull hits the cinderblock. Plaster dust sprays from the impact. He slides down the wall.
He starts getting up.
The joint is already straightening. Vampire healing knitting it back together. He pushes off the wall with one hand, blood running from his hairline, and turns toward me.
I close the distance before the knee finishes setting. An elbow to his temple drops him to all fours. He reaches for my ankle. I stomp the back of his neck into the floor. He goes flat. I grab his head with both hands and twist until it separates. The sound is worse than the silence that follows.
Beside me, Maximus finishes his. One hand on the hostile's jaw, one on the back of his skull. A single motion. The head drops separate from the body.
Two down. Six left.
"South entrance sealed," Marcellus says through the earpiece. "Wolves have the ground floor. Nobody leaves this building."
Three more ahead. Two males and a female. The males rush. The female doesn't.
Maximus's shadows surge past us down the corridor. Black and silent. They hit the first male before he's within blade range. The darkness pours into his open mouth. His chest caves inward. He drops.
The second male swings for Maximus. Maximus catches the blade arm, snaps the elbow backward, takes the blade, and buries it in the hostile's chest. Through the heart. The body hits the floor before the echo of the elbow fades.
The female hasn't moved. Both her partners are down. She adjusts her grip on her blade. Balanced. Patient. Her weight shifts to the balls of her feet and her eyes track my hips, not my hands.
She's reading me.
She comes low and quick. I sprawl back. She's already moving with it.
Her blade catches my left forearm, deep, and the pain is bright and immediate.
Blood runs down to my wrist. She reverses the blade and drives for my throat.
I catch her wrist. She headbutts me. My vision whites.
She rips free and opens a second cut across my ribs before I can reset.
I throw a kick. She absorbs it on her hip and uses the momentum to circle behind me. Her blade comes down toward my shoulder. I get my forearm up to block. The impact jars my arm. I grab for her wrist and the blade catches my hand, opening it from knuckle to wrist.
Three cuts. She's landed three cuts in four seconds. None of the males lasted four seconds.
Adapt. She's better than you on the blade. So take the blade away.
My telekinesis catches her mid-thrust. The force rips the weapon from her grip and buries it in the ceiling tile above us. She doesn't freeze. She comes with her hands. An elbow strike that catches my jaw. I taste copper.
I take her next punch on my forearm and step inside her reach. Too close for her to generate power. I drive my forehead into the bridge of her nose. Cartilage flattens. Blood sprays across both of us. She staggers.
I grab the back of her head and slam her face into my rising knee. Her teeth break against my kneecap. She goes down to all fours.
The blade is still in the ceiling tile. I pull it down with my telekinesis. It drops into my hand. I drive it through her back and into her heart.
She goes flat. The corridor goes quiet.
I'm breathing hard. The forearm cut is closing but the hand wound is deep. I flex my fingers. They respond, but slow. My ribs itch where the skin is knitting back together.
Damn. That was close.
Maximus is already ahead. He pushed toward the core while I was fighting. I can feel the pull of him deeper in the corridor.
Behind us, movement. A blade scrapes against the wall. Julian doesn't call out. I hear the impact. A body hitting the floor. Then Julian's voice, flat. "One came from the east stairwell. He's down."
Six down. Two left.
Maximus's shadows push ahead of us down the corridor.
One more body beyond that. Hub security. He went down fighting. A blade still in his hand, a gash across his temple seeping red into the collar of his shirt. The wound is closing. Slowly. Still alive.
The door at the end opens into the cold.
Condensation billows where the air from the corridor meets the room, a fog that reaches my shins and smells like iron and antiseptic.
The units line both walls, floor to ceiling.
Half of them are dark. Glass doors smashed.
Bags torn from shelves and scattered across the floor, punctured, leaking into the drains.
The east wall is gutted. The west wall is still intact.
Still humming. Still holding what's left of the clean supply.
Two left. One at the control panel with a device in his hand. Black. The size of a deck of cards. A red light on the face, solid, not blinking. His other hand is on a switch. The second one is between us and him.
The one at the panel sees me. His fingers tighten on the switch.
Don't let him press it.
Maximus moves before I do. He crosses the distance to the second one in a step. A sound like wet stone breaking. The body drops.
I hit him with everything I have before his fingers can find the switch.
My telekinesis catches him in the chest and sends him backward into the shelving.
Glass shatters. Bags of blood burst and spray across the wall behind him.
A broken shelf bracket punches through his back and out through his chest. He hangs there. The device flies from his grip.
I catch it with my telekinesis before it hits the floor. Hold it steady in the air. Bring it to me slowly, carefully, and set it on the floor inside the doorway.
Don't drop it. Don't squeeze it.
"Ethan, relay to Seraphina," Maximus says. "Device recovered on the fourth floor. Unknown origin. Treat it as an explosive. Marcellus, get up here and secure it. I want it in Seraphina's hands."
"Copy," Ethan says.
"On my way," Marcellus says.
Maximus moves to the west wall. Checking what survived.
The fog from the open door curls around my boots. My blood is mixed in with the rest on the floor. The wounds on my forearm and ribs are knitting closed but they haven't finished. No movement. No sound. The floor is clear.
Maximus turns from the west wall. His gaze moves from my forearm to my ribs to my hand. His jaw tightens.
"You're bleeding," he says.
"Healing."
Maximus looks at the device on the floor. It lifts. Rises slowly, rotates once in the air, and floats across the room to the far corner. Away from the damaged shelving. Away from us. It sets itself down without a sound.
He didn't touch it.
The pen on the desk. Now this.
"Hub is clear," Marcellus says. "Perimeter locked. Wolves on the exits."
Julian's voice. Behind me. Sharp.
"Witch signature. Behind us. Move."
I turn.
The air warps. A ripple, like heat above asphalt, except this ripple moves toward me and the bitter chemical smell from the corridor intensifies until it burns my sinuses.
The strike comes low and hard. Invisible until it's almost on me.
Maximus's shadows launch from his body across the room. They hit the corridor between me and the strike.
And between the darkness and the strike, Julian.
He's already facing the strike. He's crossing the space between me and the witch-strike with his arms raised and his body turned sideways and the shadows wrapping around him like a cocoon that isn't thick enough.
The shadows absorb most of the impact.
The magic hits Julian in the head. A sound like a whipcrack. His body jerks. His legs give. He goes down.
No.
I'm on the floor beside him before the echo fades.
His eyes are open. Unfocused. Blood at his left temple where the magic burned through. His breathing is shallow and ragged and his skin has gone gray.
"Julian."
His mouth moves. He's trying to speak. Nothing comes out.
"Stay with me. Don't close your eyes."
My hand goes flat against his chest. My other hand goes to his forehead.
The wound at his temple is spreading. The magic is eating through his flesh, turning it black at the edges, slow and deliberate.
Ash where skin used to be. I can see the bone underneath.
The blackening is moving toward his eye. Reaching it.
He's dying. Right here. Right now.
Maximus is above me. His shadows are spread flat across every surface around us. The warped air is gone. Whatever hit Julian came and went.
The bond healed me once. After Konstantin's facility, when my ribs were cracked and I was dying, the bond pulled energy from Maximus into me without either of us choosing it. Bondmate to bondmate.
I don't know if the healing will work on anyone else.
I try anyway.
I pull from the bond. From the place where Maximus's energy and mine meet. I push warmth into Julian, against the magic that's eating him alive.
The warmth moves through my palms and into him. My strength goes with it. Arms first, then shoulders, then my legs start to shake.
My vision narrows at the edges. The light shrinks to a tunnel with Julian's face at the center of it.
The blackening at his temple slows. Stops. Then reverses. Ash becomes raw flesh. Raw flesh becomes skin. The bone disappears under new tissue, closing like a door shutting.
Julian's hand comes up and grips my wrist. His eyes focus. The right one is clear. The left has gone gray.
"Stop," he says. His accent is thicker than I've ever heard it. "That's enough."
The wound is closed. New skin where the ash was. Pink and raw but whole.
"Elena, I need medical transport at the hub. Julian is down. Fourth floor. Hub security casualties too."
"Loading the transport now," Elena says.
I let go of Julian's wrist. The floor tilts. The lights above me are too bright and everything is too loud and my arms are shaking from the elbows down.
I try to stand. My legs don't cooperate.
Maximus's arm goes around my waist. His other hand cups the back of my head, pressing my face into his shoulder. His shirt is cold against my cheek. He smells like blood and concrete dust.
I grip his shirt with both hands. He pulls me tighter. His mouth finds my hair. Neither of us lets go until Elena's team rounds the corner.
Julian is loaded onto a stretcher. He's conscious, protesting, his Scottish accent thickening as Elena ignores him. She puts a hand on his chest. She says something quiet. He stops talking.
They carry him out. I look down at my hands. Still shaking.
The edges of my vision go dark. Maximus's voice, somewhere far away, saying my name.
Then nothing.