Chapter 31
Dread formeda cold pit in the bottom of Nikolai’s stomach.
“Vedran is in New York?!” Mae said hoarsely.
Brimstone lowered his head on an angry sound, drool dripping thickly from his exposed fangs. Hellreaver hummed furiously where he hovered in midair.
“He has already slaughtered thousands of people.” The Reaper queen’s voice shook with rage, her knuckles white where she gripped her scythe. Her expression grew conflicted as she studied Mae. “I know this is the last thing you want to hear right now, but you must return to Earth.”
Mae’s eyes widened incredulously. Her gaze swung toward the invisible opening to Ran Soyun’s prison.
“But I—I can’t leave now! I have to see this through!”
Vlad touched her shoulder. “Alicia is right, Mae.” A muscle jumped in the incubus’s jawline. “Only you can save New York from Vedran.”
Cortes bobbed his head in agreement, his face tight with dread.
Azazel landed a short distance away. The shield he raised around them impeded Barquiel as the demon tried to attack. He turned his back on the crimson barrier and joined them, his brow furrowed.
“What’s wrong?”
Alicia updated him on what her Reapers had told her.
Azazel cursed. He scowled at the ground for a moment before meeting Mae’s harrowed stare.
“Alicia is right, Mae. You should return to New York.” The demon cut his eyes to Vlad and Cortes. “Take them with you. Nikolai will help us free Ran Soyun.”
Mae turned haggard. Tears filled her eyes. Hellreaver whined and pressed against her side.
“Na Ri.” She swallowed convulsively and clutched her belly, her voice trembling. “Na Ri needs to see her mother!”
Azazel’s expression softened. “And she will. You both will. I promise you this on my life.”
Mae flinched. “Don’t say that! I refuse to have you die on us!”
“Mae,” Azazel murmured, chagrined.
Nikolai’s pulse thumped heavily. He took a shaky breath. He knew he was the only one who could convince her to go.
“You need to leave, Mae.”
She recoiled, shock and hurt flaring on her face.
He closed the distance to her, grasped her cheeks, and took her mouth in a kiss full of love, despair, and a searing promise. Mae froze before clinging to him, her fingers digging into his back like she never wanted to let go.
Nikolai ended the kiss and pressed their feverish foreheads together.
“Azazel, Alicia, and I will save Ran Soyun. And you will see her.” He smiled tremulously. “Trust me.”
Mae closed her eyes and shuddered, her shoulders slumping. She bit her lip and nodded.
Nikolai looked past her to Vlad. “Watch her back.”
The incubus arched an eyebrow. “You don’t need to ask me twice.” He hesitated before coming over and patting Nikolai’s shoulder awkwardly. “Don’t die.”
“Give him a kiss,” Popo suggested salaciously. “Go on, you know you?—”
Cortes muffled the parrot under Vlad and Nikolai’s glares.
Azazel sighed and hugged Mae to his chest. “Look after yourself, my kind, wonderful daughters.”
Loud banging reached them. Barquiel raged as he slammed his demonic sword repeatedly on the barrier, trying to smash it apart.
Azazel narrowed his eyes at his nemesis before giving Mae a final, solemn look. “Remember what I taught you.”
He pressed a kiss to her brow.
Mae clenched her jaw and nodded. Her gaze lingered on Nikolai while Cortes prepared the spell that would take them to New York.
“See you soon,” she whispered.
The sense of loss Nikolai experienced when Distort magicked her away made his throat thicken. Alastair crooned comfortingly and nudged his cheek with a wing. He touched the crow.
“I know. We’ll see them again.”
A sound drew his gaze to the barrier. Barquiel was almost through.
Determination knotted Nikolai’s shoulders. Heat flowed through his belly and filled his veins as he invoked a spell that would augment Azazel’s shield, Alastair strengthening his magic with an angry squawk.
“Shield!”
The wall that blossomed into view crackled with a light that blinded the ghouls and devils crowded at the base of the bluff and caused them to fall back to a safe distance.
Azazel’s eyes widened. He shot a dazed glance at Nikolai.
“You managed to fuse white magic with Moon Magic?!”
“Yes.”
“That won’t hold Barquiel off for long,” Alicia said bitterly. “He knows how to overcome white magic. That’s how he’s succeeded in keeping Ran Soyun down here for thousands of years.”
Nikolai’s voice hardened. “That’s not the only trick I’ve got up my sleeve.”
* * *
Dampness soakedinto Mae’s skin and hair when they emerged under an ominous sky outside the temporary headquarters of the New York coven.
Vlad swore. “What the hell?!”
Mae’s scalp prickled. She stared at the black clouds roiling above them. A light rain was falling across the city. It did nothing to mask the stench of magic and ozone imbuing the air, nor the suffocating pall of terror hanging over the deathly silent metropolis.
“What on Earth happened while we were away?” Cortes said numbly. “We were only gone for a couple of days!”
Na Ri’s anger flooded Mae’s insides. I can feel Davor’s soul. He’s close!
Mae dug her nails into her palms. “Vedran brought death to our doorstep.”
Her gaze found the shimmering dome rising above Central Park. She detected Bryony and Abraham’s cores and those of their allies inside the barrier.
They were fighting hordes of monsters.
Surprise jolted Mae when she clocked Gloria Espenoza’s core and the Illusion Sorcery she was wielding against the enemy.
More monsters approached across the sky from the east and south.
She narrowed her eyes. “Let’s go!”
The magic vibrating off Brimstone’s tails warmed her cold body as they headed across the road, just as Hellreaver’s newly awakened core filled her with a power that made her blood sing.
She just hoped it would be enough to fight Vedran.
“Hell.”
“On it, my witch.”
Her bond with the weapon grew so hot Mae was surprised it didn’t scald her insides. A thick, crimson aura laced with black magic whooshed into life around Hellreaver. He moved, his jagged blades slicing a doorway into the shield with an effortlessness that made Vlad and Cortes pause.
Mae closed the opening behind them and extended her magic to form a secondary shield outside the original barrier. A savage smile stretched her mouth when she felt dozens of monsters bounce off it, their attempt to enter the western boundary of the park thwarted.
They moved swiftly toward the sounds of a battle.
Vlad and Cortes cursed at the sight that met them when they emerged from under the trees. Mae clenched her jaw.
There were thousands of people inside the park. Non magic users clueless about the supernatural war that had been fought in their city for hundreds of years. Even now, their expressions were glazed and they appeared oblivious to the bloodied conflict taking place around them as the New York coven and the allies who had come to aid the city maintained a thin line of defense against the hellish creatures trying to claim their lives.
Mae frowned. She tasted a familiar magic around the subdued citizens.
“I can sense Anya’s Illusion Sorcery,” she told Vlad and Cortes. “She must have used her powers to calm them so they would not panic.”
And I suspect to help evacuation efforts.
Her gaze swiveled to where the Empire State Building once stood. Gold glinted high up in the sky.
Tension tightened Cortes’s jaw. “Is that where Anya is?!”
Mae nodded. “She’s safe. Violet, Miles, and Jared are with her.” She cracked her neck and knuckles and scanned the battleground with a calculated stare. “How about we wrap things up here?”
Arcane Magic bloomed around Cortes and Popo. “I’d thought you’d never ask.”
“Let’s go kill some monsters, Tarang,” Vlad said in a hard voice.
The tiger growled. The incubus energy that flowed from them had Mae and Cortes staring.
“What?”
“I think you’re gonna charm the pants off those ghouls,” Cortes told the incubus bluntly.
“Yeah,” Mae muttered.
Vlad curled a lip. “Like I want to see that shit.”
Tarang huffed.
The ground shook up ahead.
Spheres of power blossomed around their fists at the sight of the horde of hellish creatures charging toward them.