A smile touched her lips, and Gabriel dropped the mage’s dead heart and nodded.Take them down, moonflower. All of them.
Jacinda raised her arms, muttering a spell Gabriel couldn’t hear. He felt it, though; the concrete rumbled and cracked beneath his feet, the air so heavy with magic he could hardly draw breath. A hot gust of wind whipped through the warehouse, and all at once, the demons surrounding her collapsed, the black smoke of their souls floating out of their vessels, then vanishing, exorcized and obliterated.
The vampires and grays tried to mount an attack, blurring into her space, lunging and snapping, but they were no match for the ferocious witch and her arsenal of dark magic. With little more than a flick of her wrist, she turned them all to ash.
Gabriel smiled, remembering what Aiden had said the night she’d taken out the grays outside the hospital.
Jacinda Colburnwasfucking spooky.
Certain she was out of danger, he went off in search of the wolf, leaving Jacinda to dispatch the last few pathetic monsters.
Much of the warehouse’s interior now lay in smoking ruins, but the cages along the back wall remained intact, imprisoning more than a dozen shifters. Wolves, panthers, eagles, foxes, two black bears—some of them still in animal form, others in human, all of them near death. The worst though—the most gut-wrenching, harrowing sight Gabriel had ever seen—were the creatures stuck in mid-shift, caught between human and animal, moaning in abject pain.
With no way to save them—any of them—Gabriel granted them the only peace he could offer.
Instant death.
With a heavy heart, he made quick work of it, then moved on to the very end. The last three cages. He found a human corpse, likely dead for days. A young wolf who’d just taken its last breath. And there, in the last cage, tufts of dark fur poking out through the bars…
“Cole.” Gabriel blew out a breath, his heart in his damn throat. Cole was emaciated and weak, his eyes rheumy, fur matted with blood both old and new, but he was alive. Fucking alive. “Bloody hell, it’s good to see you, mate.”
The wolf lifted his head, pressed his snout to Gabriel’s palm.
“When I said we needed more intel, I didn’t expect you’d go full-on method acting.” Gabriel tore the cage door clean off, then reached in to stroke Cole’s head, blinking the damn tears from his eyes. “You must be dying for a smoke.”
The wolf yelped.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” As carefully as he could manage, Gabriel extracted Cole from the cage and carried him back to the main area, where Jacinda had just taken out the very last vampire.
“Cole!” she shouted, and Gabriel nodded, a wave of relief smashing right into him. His woman was alive and unharmed, the last of the magic dissipating in the air around her. His friend was severely injured, his breathing growing more erratic by the minute, but Gabriel knew he’d survive.
He fuckinghadto.
And his own heart was still beating strong—a miracle for which he’d never been more grateful.
Gabriel found a clean, unbroken patch of concrete and gently lowered the wolf to the floor. Jacinda knelt beside them, rubbing behind Cole’s ears.
“I knew you’d be here,” she told him, tears streaking through the blood and grime on her face. “I knew we’d find you.”
“Tell me you’ve still got the potion,” Gabriel said.
In addition to the poison she’d whipped up for Renault, Jacinda had also made a healing potion for Cole—something to counteract the more severe effects of the silver poisoning and stabilize his condition. Isabelle and Colin would need to finish the job later, but this should at least get him through the worst of it.
Nodding, Jacinda reached into her bra to retrieve the syringe.
Gabriel lifted an eyebrow.
“What?” She shrugged, the innocence in her eyes no match for the sultriness in her voice. “You can hide all sorts of things in there.”
“Hmm. Perhaps we’ll play that game later.”
Cole huffed out a breath and nosed Jacinda’s hand.
“Hey,” she said with a laugh. “I think Cole wants to play too.”
“Don’t get any ideas, mate.” Gabriel flipped the cap off the syringe and jammed the needle into the wolf’s hide, making him yelp. “Sorry. Colin got all the bedside manner in the family. I’m just the guy trying to save your life while you flirt with my woman.”
Jacinda laughed again, the sound of it soothing the last of Gabriel’s worries. On this long, dark night of bloodshed and violence, that laugh felt like pure sunshine. Like hope.
