CHAPTER 1
~ Locke ~
Outliersswarmedoverthesides of the watch tower like ants crawling up a dirt mound, and I spotted Garan and the gargoyles fighting as a unit, covered in blood and surrounded by monsters. Too many gargoyles had been lost, their bodies torn apart by massive beasts with six arms and fanged, misshapen mouths. Warrick hadn’t sent his outliers to persuade Garan and the gargoyles to join his cause. No, it was an execution, and I could have only guessed it was because the gargoyles didn’t swear allegiance to the vampire with a god complex.
I gritted my teeth as I flew under a night sky devoid of stars, the dark clouds blocking out the moonlight. My wings tingled as they battered against the icy wind, and I swooped down toward the fray. As I neared the tower, I thought of Raine and my brothers back at the hideout. Raine’s pleading expression filled my mind, her beautiful amber eyes alight with fire. “I’m coming with you,” she’d declared when I’d spoken of my intentions to respond to Garan’s call. At her words, crippling fear had gone through me, and I had clenched my fists to stop from reaching for her. I couldn’t handle her being taken again. Even now that she’d changed and become one of us. A monster. A beast. A shifter.Anda fae. So, I’d left her and my brothers even though flying away from them left a coldness inside me that I couldn’t banish.
“You’d better come back to us,” Raine had threatened as I’d turned my back, and despite her anger, there was a wobble in her voice that was absolute torture. There were few monsters I would fight for, and even fewer that I would die for. The beautiful little female didn’t know how much she’d changed me. But I owed Garan. Our childhood past was still vivid and damning in my memory, and Kade, Darian, and Asher couldn’t fly. By the time they would have reached the battle, it would have been too late.
I forced the thought of them from my mind. I had all intention of returning to Raine and my brothers, and to do that, I needed clarity. Unsheathing my swords, I stretched my wings wide as I descended to the rooftop of the guard tower, cutting through an outlier before it could sink its claws into Garan’s broad back. My blade sliced through the outlier’s head, cutting past its glowing red eyes and down through its torso, severing the creature into two.
Garan spun toward me as the beast’s body fell to the ground, his face hard and emotionless. He gave me a small nod of acknowledgment before driving his sword into the neck of another creature. Garan’s stone wings flared as he blocked the claws of two more outliers, the expanse of his wings acting like shields, and then he attacked, bringing the beasts down. I fought at his back, carving through the outliers that lunged wildly at us and clearing a small space. The remaining gargoyles moved closer, filling the area I’d cleared, but more outliers streamed over the tower walls.There are too fucking many of them.
“We need to leave,” I shouted at Garan before using my swords to sever the head of another beast. I was holding my own, but we were outnumbered, and the gargoyles were continuing to fall. “Warrick controls the towers now.”
“The gargoyles have used these towers to watch the city for over a century,” Garan replied with a grunt as he cleaved into another outlier. “We won’t abandon them.”
His arm bumped mine as he pulled the hilt of his sword toward him before driving it into a creature’s chest. The outlier let out an unnatural shriek and clawed the air until Garan used his wings to silence the beast.
In my moment of distraction, an outlier raked its claws across my arm, tearing into my flesh. With a snarl, I dispatched the creature and tossed it from the roof. “And the gargoyles will die tonight if we don’t take to the sky,” I reasoned.
Garan made a low noise of frustration in his throat. “Then so be it,” he rasped. As he said it, one of the gargoyles closest to him cried out as two outliers grabbed onto his wings and ripped them from his back. The gargoyle slumped to his knees, and another outlier tore his head from his body and let it drop with a thud.
Garan’s face contorted with fury, an anguished bellow leaving his throat as he beheaded one of the offending outliers while I took care of the other. But for every creature we dispatched, more climbed over the stone walls, slipping and clambering over one another to get to us like ravenous wild dogs fighting for scraps. Their eyes glowed red like beacons of hatred as if we were their cruel owners rather than the vampire who had mutilated their forms.
“Garan!” I yelled as the inky blood of an outlier sprayed onto my face. “This is a slaughter. Your monsters are dying. If we retreat, we have a chance to fight and reclaim the towers another day. If we stay, the fight will be over.”
Garan’s hard gaze swept over his unit as they continued to be overwhelmed by the outliers. Another gargoyle yelled as five creatures took him down, and Garan’s expression grew distant like he was struggling to come to terms with his reality.
I was certain the gargoyle general would die that night, but he blinked, and his eyes cleared as his arms shot out, his swords spearing two outliers on either side of him. “This tower is no longer ours,” he growled to his team. “Gargoyles, to the sky,” he commanded.
His unit snapped to attention at his order, their expressions worn and haggard as they stretched out their wings and launched upward. I yanked my swords from the body of an outlier and did the same as Garan lifted into the air beside me. Beneath us, the outliers moved into the area we’d been holding and covered the roof in a sea of crawling black. The beasts roared and leaped, trying to grab us with their clawed hands and drag us to whatever hell was waiting for us in the afterlife. An outlier grabbed the leg of a gargoyle not far from me and began clawing its way up the male, so I threw one of my swords, my blade spearing into the creature’s neck. The distraction was enough that the gargoyle shook the creature off, and the outlier screamed in anger as it released its prey and fell back to its brethren.
I turned my head toward the sky, but leathery skin slapped against my ankle, an iron grip squeezing hard as a creature grabbed me. Cursing, I peered down to see an outlier attached to me, its fanged face triumphant as it hung on. Lifting my other sword, I went to slice the creature’s arm, but another outlier grabbed the leg of the creature, and their combined weight pulled me lower toward the tower. I flapped my wings furiously, straining against their hold as the outliers on the tower howled and snapped in a frenzy, watching me excitedly with red eyes.
“Fuck,” I snarled, cleaving through the arm of the outlier that was holding me as I continued to drop, but the creature below leaped from where it dangled, taking hold of my leg instead. Two more jumped from the roof of the tower, clawing onto me.
Cursing, I beat my wings so hard I felt the burn all the way down my back, and I lashed out at the beasts, twisting to slice through limb after limb. Garan bellowed from above, three of his knives soaring through the air and connecting with the eyes and faces of the creatures, distracting them, and then I was shooting upward, the air rushing past me as my wings carried me away from the tower.
Howling, the outliers piled on top of one another in their race to gain height and recapture their prey, but we flew into the night, leaving death behind us.
CHAPTER 2
~ Raine ~
“Heshouldhaveletus go with him,” I snapped as I paced, a trail of smoke leaving my nose. Lyr had ushered us into an empty training room soon after Locke left to help the gargoyles, and Kade and Asher were busy making use of the space, their muscles bunching as they tested out the various weapons lining the walls. Darian stood inspecting a rack of long spears made of gleaming metal, his inquisitive blue eyes taking in the intricate markings on the arrow tips.
I knew my monsters were as annoyed as I was at having been left behind, but their relaxed expressions weren’t helping to calm my agitated inner dragon. I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to focus on the faint metallic taste in my mouth rather than the possessive need I had to shift and fly after my vampire.Goddess, he’s still an asshole.I knew I wasn’t really being fair. Locke had a history with the gargoyle, Garan, or so I’d been told. No one would tell me exactly what had happened between them in the past, but I got the feeling it was something serious. Still, it didn’t stop me from cursing the vampire under my breath, and my thoughts darkened as my imagination got the better of me.If I lose him…I cleared my throat as my eyes started to burn.Nope, don’t think about it, Raine.
I hadn’t even seen Darian move until his long fingers pressed gently into my shoulders and his body closed in behind me. “He’ll come back, lovely,” my siren said softly in my ear, and I eased against him. “Locke can take care of himself.”
I knew Darian was right, but I’d also seen the damage Warrick’s outliers could do. I couldn’t stop myself from asking the question:What if he can’t?
The rattling of chains drew my attention to where Asher returned a mace to its rightful position before grabbing a massive ax instead. He hefted the weapon as though it was weightless, though I doubt I could have even lifted the thing if I’d still been human. Well…I mean not a monster, that is.Because I’ve never truly been human…Or not completely human, anyway. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was part fae.
Asher peered over to us, his violet eyes tracking Darian’s hands on me. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m sure Locke is hatin’ himself for leavin’ without us.”
“Yeah, sure he is,” I replied sarcastically. “He should have let us help. He didn’t even know what he was flying into! All he saw was images of outliers attacking the tower.” My shoulders tensed again despite Darian’s best efforts. “What if…what if the gargoyles are dead before he even gets there?”
