18 Sloane #3
Finn didn’t give him the chance. Moving with lethal precision, he dropped to one knee, sliding cleanly under the Warden’s defensive guard. He brought his sidearm up in a smooth, brutal arc.
He fired three rounds point-blank into the Warden’s knee joint, exactly where the armor plates shifted. The Warden’s shield flared, but at that range, the sheer force shattered the plating.
The Warden went down on one knee, the whip dropping,
“Sloane, stay back!” Finn yelled. He drew a knife and drove it upward into the Warden’s exposed armpit.
The Warden roared again and swung his good arm, backhanding Finn across the jaw. Finn took the hit, spitting blood, but he drove the knife in deeper, twisting the blade with a vicious snarl.
“We can’t hold them in here!” Barrett fired a round from a shotgun. It grazed the Warden’s helmet, tearing a chunk of plating away and exposing the dark visor beneath.
“The wall!” Reed ducked a silver blade that sheared off a lock of his hair. He buried the fire poker in the Seeker’s ribs, twisting the iron before pulling it free. “Break the west wall!”
Through the pack link, Reed roared and sent images of old mining tunnels beneath the pack house.
Brann turned toward the west wall. He dropped his shoulder and charged the solid stone masonry like a battering ram. He hit the stone. The impact echoed like a cannon shot.
The stone cracked. Dust puffed into the air.
“Again!” Finn yelled, wrenching his knife free from the Warden to dodge a clumsy strike.
Brann backed up. He roared, a deep, guttural sound that vibrated in my chest, and hit the wall again. The masonry shattered. A huge section of the wall crumbled outward into the darkness. The smell of damp earth and old roots flooded the room.
“Go!” Reed shouted. “Everyone into the tunnels!”
Maren scrambled over the rubble. Brann shoved Wren through the breach, using his massive body to block the flying debris, taking a glancing blow from a silver blade to his shoulder without breaking stride.
Finn pushed me toward the hole. “Go! I’m right behind you!”
The Warden turned toward the breach. Blue energy gathered in his palm, condensing into a sphere of crackling light. The air temperature spiked. He aimed at the tunnel entrance. He was going to collapse the ceiling on top of them.
Stop him. My wolf demanded.
I hit the overturned stone table with my shoulder.
I drove my boots into the floor and shoved with every ounce of shifter strength I had.
My muscles screamed, tearing under the strain.
The stone gave way. It slid off its iron base, scraping across the floor, and crashed directly into the Warden’s legs.
The impact knocked him off balance. The sphere of energy fired wild. It hit the ceiling above the fireplace instead of the tunnel entrance, blowing the masonry into a shower of pulverized dust and flaming soot.
The Warden went down. The massive stone slab pinned his legs to the floor. He thrashed, the metallic hum of his suit whining in protest.
“Sloane!” Finn grabbed me and pushed me toward the hole.
The ceiling of the map room began to cave in. Dust choked the air, thick and gray. Huge chunks of stone fell around me. I dove through the rubble, hit the dirt floor of the tunnel, and rolled.
I came up beside Finn, coughing violently.
Reed and Levi dove through the breach just as the main support beam gave way. The map room imploded in a thunderous roar of falling stone, shattering glass, and choking dust. The concussion wave blew me off my feet.
We stood in the dark. The silence after the collapse rang in my ears.
“Is everyone here?” Reed coughed. His voice echoed in the tight, damp space of the tunnel.
“Sound off,” Brann rumbled from the darkness ahead. I could hear him breathing hard, the silver burn on his shoulder hissing in the damp air.
We named ourselves in the dark. Every wolf and witch.
I held my breath, waiting for a missing name, but somehow, we’d all made it out.
I leaned against the dirt wall. Finn’s hand found mine in the dark. His fingers wrapped tight around my palm, his pulse hammering against my skin.
“They’re going to dig through that rubble,” Finn said. “Or they’ll find another way down.”
“They brought the war to our house.” Reed stepped forward into the tunnel, the Alpha power radiating off him in waves. “Let’s show them what happens when you corner a pack in the dark.”
Somewhere above us, sound stopped.
The silence that followed swallowed the echoes of our breathing. It swallowed the drip of water from the tunnel ceiling.
Then came the cold.
It poured down the ruined stairwell behind us, a freezing, unnatural weight. Frost bloomed instantly across the dirt walls. My breath plumed white in the air.
Under the cold rode a smell I had prayed I would never encounter again. Deep earth turned over. The underside of a stone you shouldn’t have lifted.
Finn grabbed my hand. His fingers were like ice, but his grip was bone-crushing. I looked at him, and the terror in his eyes perfectly mirrored my own.
We had brought a mountain down on the Third Saint to stop it from killing us. A literal mountain.
And it hadn’t been enough.