“Who?”
The stranger smiled wider.
“The marked one.”
Black veins raced from beneath his collar and spread across his throat. His body convulsed violently in Dax’s grip.
“The Charon will kneel for her,” he rasped.
Then whatever force held him upright vanished beneath Dax’s hand.
He died smiling.
Three rogues surged from the shadows, their movements snapping into a merciless rhythm that didn’t belong to feral creatures. Two were the males from beside the bathrooms—the same rogues Sule had ordered them to bring back alive. The third came from a recessed doorway farther down the corridor, unfamiliar but moving with the same unnatural coordination.
Dax moved first.
No hesitation.
He met the first attack like a storm breaking loose from the dark, his broad shoulders nearly clipping the walls as a rogue lunged from a side doorway with a rusted machete raised high over his head.
The male never completed the swing.
Dax caught the rogue by the throat mid-charge and slammed him backward so hard the concrete wall cratered behind his skull.
“Dumb fuck,” Cole muttered.
The rogue convulsed in Dax’s grip, black blood spraying from his mouth as Dax lifted him completely off the ground. His expression never changed. No rage. No effort. Just cold brutality as he drove his fist straight through the male’s sternum.
The body hit the floor twitching.
The other two rogues exploded out of the darkness.
One came low, twin blades flashing, while the other dematerialized halfway down the hall in a ripple of filthy black smoke, reappearing behind Malakai with animal speed.
Too slow.
Malakai pivoted sharply, his coat flaring around his legs as he caught the rogue’s wrist before the blade could connect. He moved with terrifying precision, every strike calculated, economical, controlled.
He twisted hard enough to snap the male’s forearm backward with a sickening crunch before driving the heel of his palm upward beneath the rogue’s jaw.
The impact shattered teeth.
The rogue staggered sideways, hissing through his bloodied mouth. Malakai drew one of his curved daggers in a silver flash and buried it through the male’s eye socket to the hilt.
The rogue collapsed instantly.
Cole had already engaged the third.
Unlike Dax’s overwhelming force or Malakai’s surgical efficiency, Cole fought by reading his opponent—absorbing each movement, finding the pattern, then answering with punishing precision.
The corridor became a blur of black leather, steel, and snarling teeth as he drove the rogue backward, his blade colliding with the male’s twin weapons so violently that sparks burst between them.
The rogue was good.
Too good.
Which meant heretic-trained.
