So hetore, the flesh like tar splitting into his mouth.
The beast staggered, its neck gushing dark noxious liquid, and crashed into one of the stones, breaking its back on the way and the stone in the process.
The Empyreal inside him worked, spiralling through his body and dragging away the transformation.
Dylan tried to cling to the light – to consciousness – as the air around him shifted, and the scent that had driven him into this deep, goddess-given power evaporated on the wind.
As the darkness closed in, so did a spike of fear for his family.
He wasn’t done. He had to protect them still, he had to—
Bells
IT WAS DYLAN COLLAPSING THAT MADE HER REMEMBER HOWto move.
He’d become … Bells had no words for it. Whatever it was, it had been the clashing of two terrible monsters, and he was vulnerable now as his body transformed him back. His strange, over-long limbs began to shrink, pulling across the gore-splattered grass, his colossal form looking more and more human by the second, his clothes shredded to nothing.
Bells ripped off her jumper and threw it over him, but he wouldn’t reawaken. Not right after a first transformation. She’d learned that from Nicole’s experience.
She needed to protect him. But now the creature was dead, the wards were shattered, the other Empyreals were closing in.
If they got to her father first, they’d haul him into the car.
Bright panic built at the sight of both of them unconscious. Panic, andanger.
She fumbled with the phone Dylan had grabbed from the car and dropped in the grass. It was his, thankfully, which meant one of the last calls had been to Callum.
‘There now,’ one of the Empyreals shouted, while the others jogged over, one beelining for her father.
She held up the gun as she started to dial.
‘Callum!’ she cried when he answered the phone. ‘Callum, they have Nicole, they found us! Dylan is hurt—’
Something crashed on the line. ‘Where are you?’ he demanded.
The closest Empyreal got to her father.
‘Get away from him!’ she shrieked, hauling herself up on shaky legs and running, throwing the phone down to use both hands as she aimed the gun. ‘Stayback! Stay—’
They swiped at her, but she was small. Smaller than them. ‘That gives you an advantage,’ Nicole had told her once.
Bells didn’t know how much it would buy her against five of them. But she’d damn well find out. She knew how to use a gun, sheknew.
So, she fired.
Three fast bullets, one aimed for the face of the nearest Empyreal.
He didn’t move fast enough, and part of her flayed to pieces when the bullets obliterated his face and threw his head backwards in a spray of blood.
She screamed as she fired again, all her rage, all her fear flying with those bullets.
One to the leg of an Empyreal who had come closer.
One into the trio of others, resulting in a roar of pain.
One to the back wheels of their SUV in the hopes it could ping up to the fuel tank.
She shot until the bullets were gone.
