“I beat you, motherfucker.” I spread my arms. “What exactly is confusing you?”
His face twisted. The confusion vanished beneath sudden panic, and he doubled over violently, fingers clawing at his chest as something inside him started convulsing.
Boom.
His heart detonated inside his ribcage. Blood sprayed outward while his body collapsed heavily to the floor in twitching pieces.
I grabbed the knife still lodged through my stomach and ripped it free with a harsh grunt. The wound sealed slower this time. Still healing. Good enough.
Across the hangar, Rack had the mage trapped inside a swirling sphere of air and fire. The thing floated several feet off the ground while flames spiraled through the cyclone.
The mage’s body thrashed wildly inside it. Skin blistering. Clothes burning away. Mouth stretched wide in a scream I couldn’t hear.
Rack had trapped the sound inside the sphere itself. The only one forced to hear those screams was the mage. Cruel and efficient, so very Rack.
“Stop playing with him,” I rasped while wiping blood from my mouth.
Rack’s eyes flicked toward me briefly, then Olivia screamed.
“Calix, MOVE!”
Her voice cracked loudly enough to slice straight through my skull, and I reacted before thinking.
My body launched sideways just as a bullet screamed through the space where my head had been a split-second earlier.
“Ahhh—” The vampire sniper hit the floor hard, tangled in one of Olivia’s compressed air traps. The net tightened around him violently every time he struggled.
I stalked toward him immediately.
He scrambled uselessly against the magical restraints while trying to reach for the gun that had landed on the floor, but I kicked it away, then slowly crouched beside him.
His eyes widened the second my hand pressed against his chest.
“Wait—”
I shoved my hand through his ribs before he could finish. His scream cut short when my fingers closed around his heart and squeezed.
Blood bubbled from his mouth while his body jerked wildly beneath me, but I kept crushing until he stopped moving entirely. Silence hit fast after that.
One minute. That was all it took for everything to change.
Olivia softly gasped behind me, and by the time my head snapped around, a hooded figure stood near the tunnel entrance with one hand wrapped around her throat. Her feet dangled above the floor while both hands clawed at his wrist. My entire body locked up.
The hooded man tilted his head while staring directly at me from the darkness beneath the hood.
“She’ll do.” Then he tossed something glowing onto the floor and a fae portal burst open.
Purple light flashed, and he stepped backward into it with Olivia still in his grip.
No.
I ran before the thought even finished forming. The portal was already collapsing inward, but I continued sprinting toward it at full speed.
Everything around me blurred. The only thought in my head washeras I launched myself forward at the last possible second and dove straight into the shrinking opening.
Please fit. Please let me make it through.
I hit dirt hard enough to knock the air from my lungs, and for one disoriented second, all I saw was darkness and loose earth.
