“The cult.”
The words were barely out of my mouth before a leader emerged, a tall man with unnaturally pale skin and a willowy, almost skeletal build beneath his plain black clothing. His hair was the color of ash, just like the husk doctor’s, and the dark rings around his eyes made me wonder if hewasa husk.
No… now that I had witnessed a living corpse in action, it was easier to spot the difference. The man in front of me might have been a macabre representation of life, but even his pale skin didn’t have the deathly pallor of a husk, nor the rot-stained fingertips. His light eyes shone with a decidedly human malevolence.
“We meet again at last,” he purred, his arms outstretched, nimble fingers spread like knives.
I realized as he spoke that he was the other cultist who’d stood out in my dream. I recognized his smooth, sultry voice even though it was no longer chanting the profane incantations of their practice.
A slow smile spread across his face. “My chimera.”
The word spread through my veins like ice, freezing me from the inside. It meant nothing and everything at once. All I could do was stare as he came toward me. Alistair put himself between us, a fierce snarl on his lips. The other witch flicked his wrist and sent him flying across the room.
“Alistair!” I cried, lunging for him. The same invisible force yanked me back across the room, and the only thing that stopped me from hitting the wall was the fact that the cultist grabbed my arm, lifting me a few inches off the ground. I strained, kicking and thrashing as I dangled from his grasp.
A deep, familiar roar shook the room, and the cultist hesitated. The doors to the gymnasium blew open, and the few students who had been too frozen in fear to flee scattered in the shadow of the hulking white wolf.
Dean's green eyes focused hard on me, then the cultist, blood dripping from his stained muzzle.
“I thought I finished you off outside,” the cultist mused, and only then did I notice the gash in the wolf’s chest. My heart sank.
“Dean,” I breathed. A flurry of movement caught my attention out of the corner of my eye, and when I turned around, I saw Alistair stalking up behind one of the witches who’d come through a different portal. The man barely had time to register his presence before Alistair plunged a knife into his throat. Blood sprayed the vampire’s face, but he didn’t react as the witch sank lifeless to the ground.
I realized only then that there were two more bodies on the ground. Another monstrous snarl told me Dean was in action, and when I turned, several droplets of blood hit my face from the spray of his fangs sinking into the nearest cultist’s shoulder. With clawed hands and fangs like blades, he was a formidable match for the remaining witches in the coven, but when I saw the ash-haired cultist’s hands glow with a strange green magic, I feared even he had met his match.
The cultist’s power morphed into twin blades on either arm, just as the first witch’s had, and he brought one up to force the werewolf back. Blood soaked through Dean's white coat, and I knew I had to find a way to help.
For the first time, I cursed my lack of power for more than just the social pariah status it had afforded me. I hated not being able to protect the people I loved.
And Ididlove them. Both of them. I knew that now.
I just hoped it wasn’t too late.
I ran for one of the bodies of the witches Alistair had taken out and searched the corpse until I found a long blade. It had the same hilt and serrated edges as the one from my dream, but it was shorter. It would have to do.
The moment I turned around to see another witch running at me, I held out the blade, shocked when it actually plunged into her chest.
Holy shit.
Holy shit!
I stared into her eyes as the life drained out of them and the magic in her hands faded to a dull glow, then nothing. When I pulled the blade out, my hands trembling, it all felt surreal. I searched the room to find Alistair and Dean both fighting the remaining cultists, and while the two men were alive for the moment, they were badly outnumbered.
Wardens pounded on the gymnasium’s main doors, but the cultists had warded them with magic that must have been specifically meant to keep angels out, and they wouldn’t budge even as the huge beings on the other side slammed into them, their angry faces visible through the two small windows. Even they couldn’t help. At least some of them were alive.
My heart seized in my chest as someone grabbed me from behind, and when I spun around, I saw that it was the witch I’d already knocked out. His left eye was bloodshot from the broken vessels caused by the blow, but he looked otherwise unharmed.
I brandished the dagger, but rather than attack, he tried to pull me toward the fire exit. “Come on. We have to go while they’re distracted.”
Confusion overwhelmed me and when I tried to shrug from his grasp, he held me fast. “Let me go! I’m not going anywhere with you!”
“Rozabel,” he seethed, stopping me cold.
Something about that name cut me to the core.
Myname.
His eyes were alight with intensity, but for the first time, I realized it wasn’t malice. It was fear. “I’m trying to protect you. Bramwillkill you.”
