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Eli stood beside Crew as the beast turned its baleful gaze upon them. She raised a hand to send a forceful spell out, but the creature was faster than many of the others we’d fought. A tiger arm slashed out, slamming into her, and sending her tumbling away. Sharp, caustic fear bolted through me as she rolled and slammed face-down in the dirt. If that thing had killed her, I would never forgive myself. If not for Simon’s influence on me, we may have made the gate by now.
Flying into a rage, I leaped under a slashing clawed arm, joining Chelsey at the rear of the beast. We bit down hard on the thrashing serpent tail and dug our paws into the ground, preventing the thing from advancing on Crew and Wyatt. August, shaking off his terror, shifted and joined the other men.
To the right, I spotted a power pole that had been snapped off, leaving a jagged, sharp prong pointing into the sky. I sent a flash of a plan from my mind to Wyatt, praying he heard it and understood.
Chelsey and I grunted as the creature tried to rip free and go after the men. In the periphery of my vision, I watched as August and Crew dodged the claws again and jumped up, latching their jaws onto an arm each. The beast screamed in rage and didn’t see Wyatt circling at a full sprint. He leaped onto its back, raced up its spine, and jumped, shifting to his human form in mid-air. As he came down, he reached out and grabbed the great jutting brow bones of the sea serpent head, using all the strength of his body weight, along with element of surprise, to pull it down.
Off balance with two wolves on its arms and a surprise visitor on its head, the thing buckled, falling forward. Wyatt let out a shout of victorious rage as he slammed the head down onto the snapped pole. The point pierced the bottom of its jaw and then burst out through the top of the thing’s head, coated in blood and gore. The abomination twitched for a moment before going still.
Our victory was short-lived, as the battlefield had gone silent. The other shifter groups stared at us in awe. My wish would have been for them to accept our elevated fighting acumen and depart, leaving us to our mission. Instead, they all decided that we were a bigger threat than they’d first realized and converged on us.
Crew howled, calling us over, where we circled ourselves around Eli’s body. The shifters inched forward, growling andsnapping at us, forcing our circle smaller. There were too many. We’d never be able to fight our way out. The realization that we were about to die turned my guts to jelly.
“Damn, that hurt,” Eli muttered, pushing herself to her feet.
My relief at seeing her alive was quickly dampened by the thought that she’d beactuallydead in a few moments.
She glanced around at the encroaching shifter wolves and grimaced. Looking at Crew, she said, “Get ready. This is gonna be bad.”
Crew, still in wolf form, jumped on Chelsey, blocking her from gods knew what. Eli clenched her hand into a fist and, grunting with exertion, slammed her knuckles into the ground. An invisible, concussive blast burst out, slamming into the wolves around us. Dust, dirt, and debris spun through the air like we were in the middle of a tornado. Moving outward like a wall of wind, the blast sent the shifters tumbling, rolling, and cartwheeling away. Howls, yelps, and screams of terror echoed around us. When the blast died down, we were alone, our path to the gates clear.
We all shifted back into our human forms. “Good gods, Eli,” I said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
The angel looked pale and weak, barely able to stand. August stepped forward to put her arm over his shoulder. “It takes a lot out of me, but…” She shrugged and shot me a weary grin. “Better than being dead.”
At the gate, the lead operative called out to us before we could even reach the glow of their floodlights. “Halt right there! Turn around and go back where you came from,” he shouted.
“We need to get into the city!” Wyatt called back.
Even at this distance, I saw they were still wearing their typical uniforms, but instead of the Tranquility Council patches, they wore patches with the symbols of the First and Second Packs. These were operatives who’d shirked duty to be the toolsof the upper packs. I wanted to throw a rock at each of them and crack their greedy little skulls open.
Taking Wyatt’s hand, I decided to throw caution to the wind and pulled him forward. We stepped into the light amid shouts for us to get back and the chambering of silver rounds.
“Hey, they’ve got TO gear on!” someone shouted. “They’re Tranquility operatives. Hold fire!”
A sigh of relief shuddered out of my lungs.
“Well, that was ballsy as fuck,” Wyatt muttered under his breath.
“We both know I’m the one with the balls in this relationship.”
“I’m so glad you can still joke under this kind of pressure.”
The lead guard waved us forward. “Come closer. You two, not the others. Keep your hands where I can see them unless you want a silver round through your foreheads.”
Wyatt and I did as we were told, moving toward them slowly and with our hands held out. A dozen operatives gathered to join their commander to see what we were doing outside the gates. We were ten steps away when one of the soldiers gasped in shock.
“Yo, no shit. Danny, bro, do you know who they are? What the fuck? They’re supposed to be dead.”
“Hudson, shut the fuck up,” the lead op said. “What the hell are you going on about?”
The one named Hudson pointed a finger at me and grinned like a kid. “That’s fucking Kira Durst, dude. And that big son of a bitch is Wyatt Rivers.”
The rest of the operatives murmured in shock as they realized he was telling the truth.
Hudson stepped forward, ignoring his boss. “Guys, big fan. Like, huge fan. Team Kwyatt all the way, am I right? Ha! How the hell did you get off the island alive?”
“Fuck them!” another voice called out, and wad of phlegm was spat into the dirt at our feet. “They rigged the whole show, fucked it all up. You heard what Von said.”
