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“What’s the plan?” Nico looked toward Hudson as we walked.
“Let’s not show our hand too soon with our new magic. Stick to your own until we have reason to do otherwise.”
“I’ll be the bait.” I held up a hand to forestall any arguments. “Like it or not, Andras wants me as his next host. He’s going to come after me, so let’s use that to our advantage.”
“When Ty finally shows himself, we need to draw him back over the threshold,” Hudson said. “Hopefully he’s weaker on our side of it.”
Across the entire world, no one had ever seen a devil outside of the infernal realm. The fact that Ty had crossed at all must mean he’d gotten stronger than most devils, somehow, perhaps thanks to his host.
“Do you think he’s too weak to cross at all, now that we’ve shrunken the threshold?” Jax asked.
We’d all seized on to one fact: Even at his strongest, Ty had never broken contact with the infernal realm completely. Where most demons shed their shadows as they crossed the threshold, becoming more corporeal in our world, I’d witnessed how Ty hadn’t stepped far from the threshold at all. There had to be a reason why. And we needed to use that to our advantage.
“I hope so,” I said. “If we can push him across — perhaps with earth magic — he’ll be at our mercy.”
“Once he’s on our side of the threshold, then we throw everything we’ve got at him,” Jax affirmed.
Nico clenched his fists. “We make him suffer first.”
“No,” Hudson ordered. “If you see an opening, finish it. Anything less than a killing blow is too risky.”
The ground underfoot sloped upward before falling off sharply in a three-foot drop. I prepared to jump down but felt the rocks shift under my feet, carrying me safely back down to the ground on the other side.
“Jax!” Hudson shook his head, sending him a look that said,We just talked about this.
“Who says Nico wasn’t the one who did that?” But Jax was grinning. “I’ve always wanted to be an elementalist.”
“I’m honestly too scared to try any of your magic,” I admitted.
“You can only make us temporarily blind or deaf, don’t worry. And I can fix us right back. As for teleportation… yeah, it might be best if I help you practice drawing the circle properly first.”
I imagined what that would be like, with Jax stepping in close behind me, his breath on my neck as he moved my wand hand, helping me inscribe sigils into the earth. His roguish grin made me want to stop right there and kiss him, but we had a world to save.
“Speaking of teleportation… Think you can do it again, twice in one day?” Hudson asked. “We may need a quick escape.”
Before, Jax had always needed a few days to recover. But we’d all noticed our magic had become so much stronger than a normal coven’s should be.
“The four of us and Tempest?” Jax said, looking down at my familiar. “As long as we don’t use up too much of our magic beforehand, sure.”
“We’re not fleeing,” I said, clenching my fists at my sides in determination. “We’re pulling Ty across, killing him, and closing the portal once and for all. Nothing less than that.”
“Of course.” Jax glanced around at the apocalyptic landscape stretching for miles in both directions. Gently sloping hills made it impossible to see very far. “I just wish we had reinforcements.”
“Preta said they had no more infernal antidotes, but the OIB promised to send backup as soon as they could,” Hudson told us. “I don’t know when that will be.”
“No observers means more liberty to do what needs to be done.” Nico wore what could only be described as an eager expression.
All our banter died as the wall of smoke and shadows loomed over us. I stared right at the edge, where the tendrils of shadow seemed to creep a little further into our world, but I didn’t see it expanding. Or if it was advancing, it was in such tiny increments that I couldn’t detect movement, even with my sharper vampire eyesight.
“How does Preta even know…” I mused.
“They’ve got agents monitoring it,” Hudson guessed.
Nico shrugged. “It’s just not expanding right here.”
“It must’ve expanded somewhere, though, enough to panic him that bad,” Jax pointed out.
“True,” I said. Preta was one of the calmest people in the world. For him to sound as nervous as he had… “And it must’ve been a rapid expansion.”
