Page 174 of Bound By Fury

A scream tears from me as they’re flung, skidding to a halt at the edge of the nave.

“Kai! Watch out!” I don’t know if he can hear me over the chaos of the Guardians’ shouts and the wind that whips around us, full of loose papers and tiny pencils and hard-candy wrappers turned projectiles.

I push off toward them, but immediately I’m torn away. I fight, my adrenaline waning, crashing as the world slows down, and I watch as Kai pulls something from beneath his shirt, coal black with a daggered edge—

And plunges the blade into Alastair’s stomach, before yanking it up, cracking through his ribs and sternum like spokes on a bike wheel, crack crack crack, splitting him nearly from naval to throat before the force of the blow sends Alastair soaring back several feet, knocking into the giant bronze cross at the helm of the pulpit.

He falls to the ground in a heap, guts spilling across the carpeted platform.

“Dad!” Lucas screams.

Behind me someone heaves, and the stench of vomit fills my nose.

Kai is on his knees, his head in his hands, shaking so violently that he can barely stay upright. Something swirls around him—from him—not quite shadow, not quite starlight.

I can feel it. His anguish. His terror. I can feel the guilt. The hatred. The vindication.

Everything he is, I am too.

I thrash against the Guardians trying to restrain me, Kai’s pain tinder to my own rage.

He kneels next to Alastair’s body, the cross above them swinging from side to side. The force of the impact must have knocked the bottom loose.

I see it play out slowly. The long, bronze nails as they wiggle free of the concrete wall. The metal scraping, a keening yowl echoing through the nave.

“Kai! Move!” I scream—or at least I think I do, but my mouth is screwed shut, too terrified, too frozen to make a sound. And yet he scrambles to his feet like he heard me anyway.

But he’s not fast enough.

Gasping, tears well in my eyes as I shock the hands holding me back. The chapel grows quiet as we all watch the cross fall.

It’s mere inches from Kai’s head when a braid of vines wraps around him and yanks him back, concaving his body as it drags him like a rag doll.

The cross crashes to the ground, burying Alastair beneath it.

On the other side of the room Lucas is panting, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Kai lands several feet away, his face pale but his eyes sharp.

I know what he’s thinking.

Why would Lucas do that? Why would he save him?

I’m confused, but it doesn’t matter. We’re still outnumbered, and I’m beginning to fizzle, the static dulling to pins and needles.

The hood in front of me grabs me by the collar and pulls me down. I reach for the void where their eyes should be and jab. When they draw back, I grab the feathered mask and rip at it until the strap snaps, the force of it loosening the hood as it falls back from their face.

Dr. Rogers stares at me, her vicious blue eyes like a crystal knife to the gut. When they widen, I’m confused until I hear the thud of a body behind me. I whirl around to find another mask on the ground.

Another exposed face.

Mr. Hyde has been knocked out cold. And standing over him, chest heaving, is Sam. Mahogany eyes red rimmed and framed by dark lashes, their glasses marred by a crack across the lens.

“What—?”

I don’t have time to finish my question as Sam pushes me aside, cocks their arm back, and releases their fist into Dr. Rogers’s face. She slumps to the ground too.

“Ahh!” Sam hisses, bouncing on their toes and inspecting their quickly bruising knuckles. “What the fuck! Jiujitsu did not prepare me for this!”