Chapter Forty-Five
Kara
Maureen crushed me against her chest the second she reached me.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded, though my throat was too tight to say much more.
“How is everyone?”
“Holding up, but…”
Maureen lifted one hand—it was translucent. She’d strapped a weapon across her forearm to anchor it in place. A workaround. A delay.
“It’s okay. Same here.”
I held up my hand, the same pale translucence creeping in. It flickered as I clenched it, like a candle threatening to go out.
“I saw the blood on the Devil’s chest,” Maureen muttered, her voice low and sharp. She glanced in the direction he ran. “He’s wounded. Good.”
I wanted to tell her not to celebrate. But I didn’t. Not when I was the one who stabbed him.
Abominations, blades flashing, surrounded Luke as he cut them down one after another—barely flinching, barely breathing. He kept glancing around, eyes scanning the chaos as he edged closer to the split tree. He didn’t move like a hurt man. Maybe…maybe he wasn’t mortal yet?
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Maureen asked. Her tone didn’t match her words. She placed a hand on her hip, lips pursed in a way that meant she was thinking too hard and about to do something dangerous.
“He must not be mortal yet,” I said, dodging the real question.
Maureen shook her head. “He is. We all are. Even Harvest.”
She flicked her still-flickering fingers. “But those two? They’re monsters in the shape of men. They don’t go down easily. You’ll have to kill them twice, maybe more.”
A monster.
The pit in my stomach grew heavier.
“Here. Take Jerry. Your weapon’s with August.” Maureen unstrapped her transparent side, removing one of her twin blades, and handed it to me.
“I have one.”
“That dagger’s not big enough.”
She jerked her chin toward something behind me.
I didn’t want to look.
But I did.
A horde of abominations lumbered toward us through the trees—dozens of them, moving slowly but steadily, teeth gleaming, eyes hollow.
“Well, at least they’re slow,” Maureen muttered.
Then we ran straight into them.
???
My muscles burned. Everything ached. And still—they kept coming.
We’d kill a dozen, and a hundred more would take their place.
“There has to be a portal device Harvest’s using somewhere,” I shouted to Maureen, grabbing the back of her shirt and yanking her away from a creature’s claws an inch from her face.
I drove my blade through its neck, twisting.
Blood sprayed as I yanked the weapon free and kept moving, dragging Maureen along with me.
“Then let’s find it and destroy it,” she panted.
We ran together, hacking through the tide of Harvest’s abominations. They were relentless—never-ending. The area around the vortex was completely overrun. I couldn’t see Luke anymore. Or Harvest. Or even the rest of my family.
“Where are the others?” I gasped, panic lacing my voice. “Hades, we’re surrounded—”
As if Nova had heard me, the answer came.
From our right, hundreds of abominations suddenly exploded, chests tearing open in synchronized bursts of crimson. They crumpled in place.
Maureen and I shared a wide, breathless grin.
“Well, if that wasn’t a sign…” she muttered.
We took off down the freshly cleared path.
A massive wolf bounded in front of us, growling low. Maureen didn’t even flinch—she rubbed her face into his thick fur as he sniffed her.
Jackal.
The next moment, he shifted into a hulking gorilla and barreled forward, plowing through the next wave of enemies.
We followed close behind.
Through the broken trees and the endless rain of red leaves, I saw Sebastian first—cutting down enemies with brutal efficiency.
Then Nova and Isabella came into view, side by side, weaving magic together.
Their combined blasts shot into the sky, helping Joy and Payne as they wrestled dragons in midair.
Isabella had thrown a large, dome-shaped barrier over their group—but a few monsters had made it inside.
Barron shoved August aside, driving his sword into the skull of an abomination. August returned the favor, slicing the head off another that lunged behind him.
“Drop the barrier,” Sebastian called to Isabella. “You’re just going to wear yourself out. Some are still getting through.”
“Some is better than all,” she snapped back, her hands glowing as she reinforced the magical dome.
That’s when one of my brothers spotted me.
“Kitty!” August’s voice cracked with obvious relief—but we had no time for reunions.
He ducked low just as a mass of writhing tentacles shot from a creature’s back—only to be immediately charged by another, this one with the horns and bulk of a bull.
“August!” Nova screamed.
In seconds, hundreds of deafening pops echoed through the trees. My eyes widened as a fresh wave of abominations burst apart—black, ichor-like blood spraying from their chests in grotesque fountains. The scent hit a second later, and it was vile. Like rotted fish and festering wounds.
I gagged, covering my nose and mouth as the bodies dropped around us with dull, meaty thuds.
August whipped toward Nova, jaw tight. “I told you not to overexert your magic.”
He stalked over, wiping the blood from under her nose with his thumb.
She breathed deeply, in and out. “One was on top of you!”
“We have it under control.” August grabbed her arms, rubbing up and down. “You’re mortal. You’ve got too much power packed into this little body. It’ll kill you faster than anything out here.”
“I have the power to protect you—all of you. I won’t stand back and do nothing,” Nova said, and it was the wrong thing to say. The tight clench of August’s jaw, the glimmer of fear in his eyes—it wasn’t just frustration. It was terror.
“Shit,” Barron muttered.
We turned to follow his gaze, and my heart lurched.
The crossover was widening—like a gaping mouth splitting open. No force was drawing from it yet, so it wasn’t fully active…but it would be. Soon.
“We can’t stay here,” August blurted.
Sebastian pulled my weapon off his back and tossed it to me. “Where’s the Devil?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, handing Maureen her blade back.
“No time for waiting,” Maureen muttered, twirling her twin blades. “We’re surrounded again.”
“Hades,” I groaned as my weapon fell through my hand—phased right through it. My fingers were transparent again.
“Here.” Maureen bent, grabbed one of her own fallen weapons, and thrust it toward Barron’s chest. “Wrap the blade to my arm. I don’t trust our bodies to keep coming back to normal.”
A quick scan of my siblings confirmed it—everyone was fading again, and it always began with our hands.
“Freaking fantastic. Mortal and missing limbs because we’re fading,” I said with a tight nod. “This might be our worst odds yet—but we’ve got this.”
“Totally,” Prudence muttered—but her eyes, they were bright and determined. She wanted to believe in us. No matter what.
“Totally,” I echoed, and my siblings all smiled, sharing intimate glances with their mates.
The sight made my heart pinch tight, but the moment passed too quickly.
Beside Prudence, Shepherd shouted, “Duck!”
He shifted into his soul reaper form, a massive wall of smoke erupting around him as he surged forward.
The dark mist slipped through the abominations near his mate, tearing them apart limb from limb.
And just like that, the fight was all around us again.