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Beautiful. Ethereal. All deadly in their own unique way.
“Maya.” Max spoke her name with barely a breath, and once it was out he found he couldn’t draw another.
His sister was alive. MJ was alive, and she was right there, looking at him just like he looked at her. All this time…
All this fucking time.
Tears blinded him. A sob rose in his throat, clawing out and echoing into the now-silent tunnels. Nothing was left of the demons, their bones incinerated by the fire, the ground still hot beneath Max’s feet.
His sister’s fire. Maya had done this—saved him. His little sister.
Max blinked away the tears, watching with an eager heart as the caution on MJ’s face gradually subsided. Her flames cooled. Flesh replaced fire, and her hair settled down, tumbling over her shoulders in the same reddish-brown waves Max remembered, the hair she’d fought with every day before school, cursing the frizz and the tangles and wishing she had been born with more manageable hair.
Maya spoke so softly, the single word was nearly inaudible. “Max?”
That was when the bomb hit.
Shay had led the Hounds deep into the tunnels—toward the Well replica beating like a heart deep within.
Now, she ran back the other way, her lungs and muscles screaming, head pounding with a vicious headache.
Behind her, the Hounds continued their search. She’d managed to lose them in the network of tunnels, by some miracle. She likely had the Well replica to thank for that, its long, loud peals as effective on demons as they were on Shay.
She sensed that she was running out of time. The replica continued to emit those horrible, blasting calls, each one slicing through her bones and vibrating her blood.
Another call sounded now, louder than the ones that had preceded it. It sent her staggering into the wall of the tunnel, the magic protecting her face shredding against the stone.
She clapped her hands over her ears and kept running.
Shay, you’re slow, Roman had once told her in the desert. It was true—she had no hope of making it out of here alive. And she was so close to the Well replica, it would be a miracle if her suit managed to save her.
Still, she sent a quiet prayer up to the gods she had never paid much attention to before, hoping with all her might that they heard her now.
“Anna’s gone,” she croaked into the dark, tears burning her eyes as that horrible truth left her tongue. “I’m certain she would have prayed to you in her final moments, just as I am now.” She kept running, clapping her hands over her ears again as another blast rang through the city, the gap between pulses so much shorter now, like a clock ticking down. “I pray not for myself but for my…my friends.”
They were her friends, weren’t they? She hadn’t known them for long, but they had given more to her in that short time than anyone at the Riptide ever had.
Tears spilled down her cheeks, sparkling under the magic of the bodysuit as she whispered, “Give them a chance—please.”
Give Roman a chance, she added mentally. She was convinced she had never met a person who had suffered more than Roman, one who’d sacrificed so much for the people he loved and had been given so little in return.
She thought only of his handsome face as the replica detonated, heat and light blasting through the tunnels—
As quickly as it had brightened, Shay’s world went dark.
In the tunnels below the city, so close to the Well replica, Darien sank to his knees.
He sensed the replica’s power was coming to a head. It was only a matter of seconds now before it exploded. Before more than ten million people died. Including Darien. Including his family. His friends.
There was no other way out of here. No use in trying to dig through the rubble choking the tunnel. There was far too much of it, and far too little time.
Darien’s heart was pounding so hard, it hurt. Nausea ebbed and flowed in his gut, his blood alive with not just his own magic, visible once more, but the calls of the Well. Each toll as it counted down the seconds till his death clanged through his bones, his skull. He was so close to the replica, he couldn’t hear himself think, couldn’t move, as if this moment was no more real than a dream.
He thought of her, though—Loren. Pictured her beautiful face, her bright smile, in the whirlwind of his thoughts. He prayed Malakai had followed through with his promise—had taken her to safety the minute Darien had given him the warning. Prayed she was already miles away from this doomed city.
Roman, Jack, and Tanner continued to dig at the rocks strangling their way out, their skin shining with sweat, eyes feverish with determination. Darien didn’t have the heart to tell them it was no use.
The call of the replica grew to a blood-curdling shriek that blew up like a pipe bomb between Darien’s ears, sending him curling over himself on the ground. His shoulders tensed up from the hit, his hands shooting up to flatten over his ears. His mouth opened with a scream he couldn’t hear or feel, his eyes flooding with tears of pain. He ground his face into the stone, tasting dirt and blood, needing to get the fuck away from that monstrosity bellowing out its ancient song just behind him.
