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I twisted to find chaos engulfing the people behind me. The crowd shifted like something alive, and the movement was so varied that I couldn’t identifywhatwas happening at first.
It was violent, fast and coated with splashes of red.
After a moment, my eyes narrowed in on one grouping, on a tall female demon who raked her claws against the throat of another. She moved from one to the next, her motions fluid and lethal.
Her eyes, it took me a moment to realize, were black. They were the same as Olin, as Paul, as Troy when he’d been taken over. The only explanation was that the shadow washereand infecting immortals.
That was the piece I needed to fit the rest together. At least twelve other immortals in the group were in the same frenzy, casting chaos through the crowd, forcing others to defend themselves.
Still, in such a small area, there wasn’t much of a defense any one person could put up.
I backed away until something grabbed my arm. I twisted, fist drawn as if a punch from me would doanything, but Troy grabbed my hand.
The time to worry about what he thought about my revelation could come later as the screams increased.
“Let’s go,” he said, yanking me backward.
“Their eyes.”
Grant came up and nodded. “I saw. We need to go,now. Lucifer has already bolted and when the devil leaves a party, it’s time togo.”
And, for once, I couldn’t agree more. We rushed backward, past the thrones, past the tree, away from the bloody chaos of the immortals.
“Can’t you create a portal now?” I asked Grant.
“Lucifer hasn’t removed your tracer yet.”
“Of course he hasn’t,” I griped, feeling like it was yet another time Lucifer had screwed me over.
He was on my list of least favorite people.
“Gran,” I said, trying to pull to a stop.
Troy would have none of it, my useless objection nothing to his strength. “Gran can take care of herself,” he reminded me.
Which was true, I guessed.
We took the staircase up to put distance between ourselves and the violence, but as we turned a corner, a vampire I didn’t recognize but had seen with Kase and Colter appeared. Those eyes of his made me shudder, especially when they locked onme.
Kase moved past me, nothing but a blur, before he hit the vampire.
Troy didn’t give me time to watch or worry. He pulled me the other way, but our paths of exit closed quickly. A demon with wings landed on the edge of the walkway and Hunter took on that one. A creature stood farther down that Grant incinerated on the spot. A man who looked like the one who had tried to plant me forced Troy from my side.
Everywhere we went, more of those immortals with the black eyes stood in our way until only Grant and I rushed from one spot to another. He seemed breathless, and I recalled what he’d said about how magic worked.
What happened if he ran out? He could do away with most of the things that opposed us with a flick of his wrist, but his words became slower, clumsier, and when we turned a corner, he stumbled.
Two lumbering, twisted beings blocked our path.
Grant cursed, then opened the closest door and shoved me in.
I tried to go back, but he was quicker, closing me in. He uttered a quick spell and a shimmering light engulfed the wood. I knew before I even tried that he’d barred it, but I pulled anyway.
The idiot had put himself on the wrong side of that spell!
I knew, of course, that he’d done it on purpose. Grant, despite his failings, would have kept himself on the outside to give it every last bit of fight he had.
I screamed his name against the spell, the door, the frustration of being locked in withnothingI could do about it.
