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Disappointment had her chest going heavy, an arsenal of adrenaline pumping through her body with no release. She’d been so confident in their ability to bring Tai back to his mother, naïve when she considered her history with Noxx. “I can’t believe it’s a dead end. I felt sure that with your connection to the place’s past that there’d be another message waiting for us.”
Alexei wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s head home.”
A banging behind them had them both spinning. Supernaturals charged through the door, cutting off their escape, but not like any demon hybrids, witches, or shifters she’d ever seen. No, these came from nightmares or hidden realms in dimensions best left to magical texts and fiction. Most seemed to morph the body parts of multiple species. She spotted three that had the wings of high-ranking demon hybrids or predatory shifters, but on the bodies of two-legged bears complete with claws and fangs. Another lashed a leopard’s tail behind an upright body covered with wolf or jackal fur.
“Abominations,” she whispered, having heard of the supernatural offspring that’d been prophesied to come from species never meant to mix.
“No.” Alexei sounded certain—and appalled. “I’ve seen those, and these aren’t the same. They’re Noxx’s Frankenstein creatures. Parts of us made whole, a horror made real.”
She looked closer, recognizing the face of a demon hybrid she’d healed again and again while held by Noxx. “I brought him back from torture after torture, but he didn’t come from shifter bloodlines.” Now, he’d transformed into something more beast than man, with scales left from his former self covering most of his left side and patches of long fur sprouting from his right. The horns on his head barely showed above a lion’s mane. “What has she done to them?”
“Changed them into real monsters.” He pushed her behind him. “I count twelve.”
“We don’t know that they’re enemies.”
“They’re her creatures, which means they’re enemies.” His voice went to a near growl on the last. He was right, and she hated it because that meant she’d led him here into a trap…again. He’d wanted to go home, and she should’ve listened.
“There are too many of them to fight our way out.” Not that she would do much good in a fight unless she unleashed the deadly power she couldn’t control.Ifshe could even summon it again.
“Not necessarily.” How could he sound so calm?
A whirring noise much like the giant door of the warehouse had her turning to check over her shoulder while Alexei kept his eye on the threat. Light spilled through a now-open loading dock, revealing a concrete floor like the section they stood upon, but this had been tracked with footprints, drag marks, and more. The locked door had been a decoy, a trick to lull them into false safety. Her mate had been right about the factory’s ownership. The Order had taken over this place and brought their supernatural army of perverse inventions. Chills skittered along her spine, spreading like a swarm of spiders through her until she shook.
More freakish creatures filed in, and she backed against Alexei’s hard muscles. “I count at least a dozen more coming through the back door,” she told him. “At the worst, I had expected humans and guns.” Those had almost killed them both on the ship. “Why couldn’t this have been another simple message?”
“Theyare the message. What she can do to us.” Alexei’s magic wrapped around her, a living, writhing rush of smoke and the promise of flames. He pressed a button on his radio. “We need backup now. Severe hostile situation. Take no prisoners.” Unleashing his wings, he looked down at her, his vicious demon general expression enough to scare off any sensible threat, but these creatures had lost their ability to reason with whatever experiments Noxx had performed. Nothing but growls and roars came from then now.
“What do we do?” she asked, wishing she had been a better student in Alys’s self-defense training so he wouldn’t be fighting for them both.
“Get to high ground. I’ll shield you for as long as possible, but you need to climb as fast as you can.Hurry.”
“You said never run from you.”
“Go.” He snarled at the threats around them. “I won’t chase. I have plenty of distractions.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“I can’t use my magic if you’re here.” He herded her toward the stairs with his big body, his wings stretching out to block her from the atrocities. “Head for the roof. The elevator’s probably out, but there’s a ladder that opens to the outside. I’m right behind you. Stay alive. Do whatever it takes. Promise me.”
Because promises had to be kept. “I promise.” With that, she took a last look at her mate—no, don’t think that way—and sprinted up the stairs to whatever new terror waited for her on the next floor.
ChapterThirty
Joelle dashed up the stairs, sprinting as fast as she could with the floor beneath her reverberating in a violent jolt much like an earthquake but flooded with magic. Alexei’s powers flowed from him as though he’d uncorked decades of leashed energy that’d been begging for freedom. Smoke rolled off him in waves followed by ribbons of lava. Actual friggin’ lava as she’d only seen in photos and videos. Streams of flame in red, orange, and gold unspooled from him in threads that licked toward Noxx’s supernatural army. He burned through the enemies one at a time, a god of war in his full glory.
Faster, faster. His intense stare on her urged her to hurry and forced her to tear her gaze away.
Hitting the top of the stairs, she scanned her surroundings, looking for the ladder that Alexei had mentioned. Drab cubicles lined the space in front of her, and offices with doors and windows covered by blinds stretched along the wall to her right. In the middle, a large freight elevator stood open, its gate of cross-hatched metal bars half-closed. Next to it, a ladder led up toward the roof. As her mate had said when shoving her to safety, the faint shine of light in a rectangle at the top suggested a way out.
She ran for it, coughing at the scratchy tickle of dust and smoke that coated her throat. The pounding of her footsteps matched the thudding of her pulse in her ears. The screams from below had her chest tightening, her lungs squeezing around the acrid air. Grabbing the ladder, she forced herself to climb, but she didn’t make it more than a few rungs up. She couldn’t leave Alexei with all those monsters, but he’d told her to go, to hurry, that he would follow. His wings had been out, and he could fly up in an instant. Still, running away felt wrong.
The radio strapped to her uniform crackled. “Joelle, can you hear me?” Alys’s voice came through in pops and starts. “Come in. Let me know if this makes it through, if Nita got the connection right.” Her voice lowered, softened. “Love, of course I know you’re a tech genius, but two-way radios aren’t exactly hacker territory. Now drive faster.”
Fumbling with the radio, Joelle lit her magic brighter to read the tiny print on the gadget, but the thing had so many buttons. She pressed one after another.
Alys continued. “Alexei called for backup, but he won’t answer. We’re headed your direction, just a few minutes away. Hold tight. Shit, you may not have used radios with your whole held-as-a-hostage childhood. Push the big button on the side while you speak.”
Crushing the sides as tight as she could, Joelle talked at the device. “Alys? Can you hear me? Hello?” Nothing happened. She let go.
