His heart, however, still beat.
Dadum.
Dadum.
Dadum.
Snapping arteries and vessels, I ripped it free of his chest cavity.
Blood rapidly pooled in my palms, trickled down my arms.
thelushinamurmured.
No longer a command but confirmation of a task completed.
As if waking from a monthlong slumber, I blinked open my eyes. The afternoon light filtering in through the glass-plated
window wall, largely broken out now, was too bright. Thetat-a-tat-tatof nearby gunfire was too loud but rapidly dying down. The earth’s shuddering rumbles were fading.
I blinked some more, and the office came into focus. With all the many Magnums now gone, the office was back to feeling cavernous.
Panic seizing me by the jugular, I searched for those who mattered most. The once luxurious space was more junkyard slaughterhouse than sophisticated office.
A few people were left standing: Orson and Porter, battered as if they’d fought in Armageddon; Armando and Yolanda, looking like they’d also fought a world-ending battle; and only slightly less battered, Sheriff Xander Jones and a scientist, still buttoned into her lab coat, a very blood-spattered white.
And Bobo. He’d reneged on his promise and was favoring the leg he broke when he and I were forced to jump from a runaway Clyde.
Beside Bobo stood a massive wolf, twice the size of my pittie, maybe more. His furry jaw was crimson-tinged, his legs painted with blood.
A few others around our age I didn’t recognize leaned against broken surfaces, exhausted.
Still cupping Magnum’s heart—no longer beating—blood dripped from my elbows and between my fingers. Slowly, I rose on shaky legs.
Once standing, I could better make out who lay on the floor. More bodies sprawled across the debris than remained upright.
My breath left me.
Entangled with Rich Connely’s body and Zoe’s, her alien head exposed—both still as only the dead were—lay Hunt, partially pinned beneath Zoe’s calves, a chair leg jabbed through his gut. His eyes were open but vacant.
I couldn’t breathe.
Brady lay nearby on his stomach. His empty stare pointed over a shoulder on a very broken neck. An arm stretched out to someone but didn’t quite reach her.
Layla.
My friends … my magical friends.
All that truly mattered.
Layla was crumpled in a heap, her legs bent the wrong way at the knees. Her arms pulled the wrong way at both elbows.
Her chest rose and fell with shaky, barely there breaths. It was crushed.
My feet moved all on their own while my stare swept for Griffin. It trawled across bodies in the paramilitary dress of Magnum’s zealous soldiers—and our similarly outfitted parents.
But Griffin—he was nowhere.
I stumbled, almost tripped over an upturned lamp, and when I slid to my knees in front of Layla, whose superior healing wouldn’t be able to work fast enough to repair this level of damage, I caught movement over by the hot tub.
