I’d just committed theultimatesin.
And I wasn’t even done yet.
My hands slid through the bloody mess of his back, and I grabbed his head and bashed it against the ground, again and again and again, until I heard the crack of bone and felt his brains slipping out between my fingers.
Slowly, I got to my feet and gathered up his body parts—headless torso, pieces of broken skull, and those precious wings—and tossed them into the fucking moat.
The ghouls rose again. And this time, they didn’t bow. Didn’t vanish.
They fuckingconsumed.
Turning on my heel, I took a deep breath and locked eyes with Mad Marco, his mouth hanging open in utter disbelief, that gap-toothed fucking maw just begging for my fist.
You’re next,I warned.Any last words?
But before I’d even taken another step, Marco was in flight, Keradoc’s bitch-ass gargoyle right behind him.
I watched them vanish into the night sky. Cursed them for it, making a silent vow to end this, one way or another.
“Gargs?” Haley’s soft voice filtered through the mess of my thoughts, and I turned my attention away from the skies and back to the ground. To her. “I think I… I think I need…”
She was on the ground, clutching a gaping wound in her side.
Blood spilled out from between her fingers. Her face was the color of the first moon.
Only my fear for her life could quiet the rage inside me. As I knelt down beside her, that shit went stone-cold silent.
“It’s bad, right?” she muttered, barely forcing a smile. “You look like you just saw a ghost. I really… I really hope I’m not dead. I didn’t get to tell you—”
“Don’t talk, Haley.” With bloodstained hands, I lifted her up, cradling her against my chest, hoping like hell she couldn’t hear the terror thundering through my heart. “I got you.”
She met my eyes for a second—just a second—and smiled, real and true. And that smile was like the sun rising in a place that had never even seen such light.Thisfucking place. And then it was gone. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she went as limp as a rag doll in my arms, blood spilling out of so many wounds I was afraid she was more holes than solid parts.
Fuck.
“Hold on, babygirl. You fucking hold on, hear me?”
* * *
“Hudson, there you are. Where the…” Saint’s words fucking died as I marched in through the broken doors and he took in the sight of us.
Me.
Haley.
All that fucking blood.
He met my gaze, his own wide.
The look in his silver eyes just then… Hell. I didn’t know if it made me want to break something or just break, period. I was pretty damn close to doing both, and if she wasn’t in my arms in that moment, I was pretty damn sure I woulda smashed everything in my path as readily as I’d smashed Draven’s skull into the dirt.
I carried her into my bedroom—the one we’d been sleeping in since we took her bed out of commission. I set her down as if she were made of glass, because right then, that’s what it felt like. Like she was fragile. Like she’d been shattered.
“What… what the fuck?” Saint gasped, trailing on my heels. “What the fuck happened?”
I turned around and wrapped a hand around his throat—put him right up against the wall. And finally—after more years than there were ghouls in the damn moat—I gave him some of my real words.
Only two of ’em—all I needed to make the fucking point.
