“Fuck.” Kade’s already moving.
My eyes cut to her, fear sliding through me. “The spider warlock. There’s more of them?”
“They turn into whatever they feel.” Kade sets her back to the wall, scanning the windows. “So it might not be a spider this time. Could be something else, something worse.”
Josiah doesn’t pull back from the windows. If anything he leans toward them, his face open and far away. “Their darkness—I can feel it from here. I understand it. They only want to feed on us so they can feel something again. I went two hundred years feeling nothing at all. We should talk to them. We could help them understand it, make peace with the pain they’re in?—“
“Jo.” Kade rounds on him. “Shut the fuck up and help me get us out of here. We’re not lecturing them on their feelings. We’re gone before they get their hands on us.”
The window nearest us bursts inward. I throw an arm up with a hiss, but Aaron’s faster—his magic flares out of him in a dome of blue-gold, curving over me. The glass meant for my skin shatters against the shield and rains down harmless at my feet.
Something pours through the broken frame and spills across the floor in heavy, boneless loops. From the chest up it’s a man—another warlock, his gray skin sloughing loose, his eyes filmed yellow. Below that he’s all snake, a thick scaled coil dragging the rest of him in. His mouth splits and a forked tongue tastes the air. Then he throws his head back and roars.
Josiah steps forward and lifts a hand, pleasant as ever. “Hi. I’m Josiah. I’m here to help.”
“Oh, Mother Fate.” Kade drags a hand down her face. “I am in hell.”
36
Aaron
The book drops out of my hand the moment more of them start coming through the windows. They pour in over the sills, hauling themselves into Eric’s study on too many limbs—what’s left of the witches who lived here, manifested into the shapes their own nightmares carved out of them. The snake-warlock from before is still coiled in the middle of the room, rearing over the wreck of the desk.
I throw a wall of blue-gold and it slams the nearest one flat into the shelves. Kade meets the next as a blur of vampire speed, right up until a creature plucks her clean out of the air and flings her into a case of journals hard enough to bring the whole thing down on top of her. She claws up out of the spilled books, spitting curses, and the one after that takes her legs out from under her again.
Josiah hasn’t so much as raised his voice. “I’m already formulating a plan to rehabilitate all of you.” He strolls through the middle of it with his hands clasped behind his back, in no hurry at all. “We’ll start small. Some structure. A little honest work, a sense of community?—“
The window behind him caves in, and what comes through it used to be a man, still is from the waist down, but his chest has split open from the inside. Out of the gap unfolds a nest of thin gray arms, more than I can count, every one ending in a grasping human hand. It hits the floor running and throws itself at Josiah’s back.
“Josiah!” My magic’s already up, blue-gold sparking across my fingers—but he doesn’t so much as turn his head. He just lifts a hand, palm out, and the creature stops dead in the air. It hangs there mid-lunge, over his shoulder, all those gray arms still grasping at nothing.
“What the—“ I don’t get to finish it. The snake takes the opening, its tail coming around in a gray blur and slamming into my chest. The room tips, the shelves rush up at my back, and the hit drives the air clean out of me.
“Aaron!” Mara’s voice tears across the room. I shove up onto an elbow with my ears ringing, and the snake’s already done with me, its head swinging around, those filmed-yellow eyes finding Mara, its tongue tasting the air between them.
She doesn’t run. She drops into the crouch I’ve watched her hunt from, claws out, her tail lashing low behind her. She’s all lioness now. The snake rears up over her with a hiss. She answers it, lower and meaner, and then it charges.
I get my feet under me and haul everything I’ve got up into my hands, but Josiah’s quicker. One hand stays raised, keeping the many-armed thing pinned in the air. The other lifts loose at his side, and he snaps his fingers.
The snake-warlock blows apart. Pieces of it splash all over the room, same as the others—but this time, none of it lands on Mara. My blue-gold shield drops over her before she can pounce, and the spray hits the dome instead of her.
She comes up out of the crouch furious—not at the creature, at me. She slams a fist against the inside of the dome, and theblow rings down through my magic.I had it,the look says.I didn’t need you.“Stay in there.”
“Jo.” Kade hurls a creature off her back and it crunches into the wall. “What the fuck are you doing? Stop playing and help us get out of here.”
“I don’t kill them unless they make me.” Josiah hasn’t dropped the many-armed thing. It hangs there over his shoulder, working all those hands, and he doesn’t spare it a glance. “These ones could use some love. Don’t you see it under all of that?” He tips his head, almost wistful. “I do.”
More of them burst through what’s left of the windows. I blast the closest one and throw another wall up across the doorway, but they keep coming, too many to hold back. The ones already inside go for Mara’s shield, clawing at the dome, raking gray fingers down the gold. My magic holds. But if even one of them gets a claw through to her, I’m going to fuck all of this up.
We’re getting swarmed. Even Kade’s buried under them, throwing one off only to get hit by the next.
Josiah sighs, bored with the whole thing. He watches the pack charge at Mara and me, shrugs, and brings his fingers up to his thumb. “Oh, well. I think most of these can still be reached.” His mouth pulls into a small frown. “But your mate, I’m afraid, is about to lose her patience, and so?—“
His fingers never close. Every creature in the room locks up at once, heads turning toward the windows, and then they’re scrambling for the broken sills—retreating, all of them, as if something worse than us is coming. Josiah lowers his hand, and the thing he’d been holding drops to the floor. It pushes up and bolts off after them. The room empties.
I drop the shield and cross to her, and her hands are on me right away, moving over my chest and arms, checking for bruises. “Are you okay, Aaron?”
“I’m fine.” I catch her wrists. “Baby. I’m fine. The bigger question is whether you are.”
