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Stryke shouldered past a few stumbling people. There! Crux! His little brother, his tawny hair matted with blood, was scrambling over bodies and dodging a demon’s sweeping blows and driving punches.
No! Terror clawed at him as he calculated the distance to his brother and the odds of the demon’s next two blows killing Crux. Motherfucker, he wasn’t going to make it.
As Stryke threw himself at the demon, knowing he couldn’t make it in time, Blade hit the thing from behind. He drove his fist into the back of the monster’s head, hisdermoireglowing with power usually meant for healing but now weaponized. The demon snarled, striking out and knocking Blade away.
Close enough now to smell the beast’s rancid, smoky odor, Stryke slammed into him, lighting up his own power and ordering a massive heart attack. The demon screeched as its heart seized. All four fucking chambers of it.
Stryke felt Blade’s power join his, causing tears in the bastard’s veins and bleeding him out from the inside.
The thing collapsed. Blade instantly went after another demon as Stryke, his body vibrating with adrenaline and fear for his brothers, scooped up Crux.
“Where’s Chaos?” he shouted, spinning around in search of the twin boy. Chaos!” he screamed. “Chaos!”
Clinging to Crux, he shambled through the ocean of bodies and overturned strollers, as he kept to close to the carousel, hoping to find Chaos hiding nearby. Logan, Blade and Sabre battled the remaining demons, the sounds of slaughter and pain filling the air along with the smell of blood and bowels.
Abruptly, a stab of pain shot through his skull and down his spine, as if he’d been impaled by a rod of white-hot iron. It burned and flashed away, leaving an emptiness inside, as if the rod had taken a core sample of his soul.
And had taken Chaos.
Stryke’s gut plummeted to his feet.
Crux screamed as the reality hit him too.
A hand came down on his shoulder, and he wheeled around to Sabre, whose expression conveyed sorrow, trauma, and disbelief. Sabre was a cousin and wouldn’t have felt Chaos die.
He probably saw it.
Stryke’s brain, which always crackled with energy, went numb. At some point, he must have set Crux down because Sabre had gone to his knees to hug the boy to his chest, shielding his eyes from the massacre around them.
The din of screaming and moaning grew dull as Stryke’s sense of hearing became a victim of shock. His balance went next, his legs watery as he stumbled toward Blade.
Blade, who knelt next to a pair of blinking shoes and…oh, gods.
Please, no. Please, no! he screamed inside his head.Take me. Take me instead!
Blade, his dark head hanging, his shoulders slumped, turned slowly to Stryke. Tears streamed from his eyes and cut paths through the blood splattered on cheeks gone pale with trauma.
“Where were you?” he rasped. “Where the fuck were you?”
The world spun and went gray. The last thing Stryke saw before he lost consciousness was Blade’s scorching, accusatory glare, and those brand-new flashing shoes.
