My rage burns bright as I take on beast after beast and watch as they turn to stone before dropping to the ground, until a damn heap forms beneath me. I scale to the top of their rotting frames and watch the chaos around me.
All of my rage, all of my love for Skyla, our people vibrates through me as I pull back my head and roar with everything in me, and just like that, I’m transformed into the celestial beast Candace designed me to be—the lion.
25
Wesley
Hell rains down on Paragon.
All of it. All at once.
“Laken”—her name cuts from me as I rip the bones from the beast in my arms—“Laken?”
The sky turns black as soot, a veritable midnight right here in the afternoon. Clouds begin to boil as if the sky were about to bubble over, and it’s easy for even the nonbeliever to see this is no mere weather front moving in. This is something birthed in Hell itself, something supernatural, something that spells out death and dying far more than the Grim Reaper or his sickle ever could. This is destruction on a nuclear level.
The entire field is filled with Valkyrie who have managed to tear their razor-sharp teeth into anyone they can find, and judging by the bloodied guests running for cover, they’re getting more than their fill.
I spot Coop slashing at a group of Valkyrie disguised as men, tall, demonic in nature, large eyes, red with rage, and I head in that direction.
The sound of sirens comes from behind, and both Coop and I pause a moment to look in that direction.
“Shit,” Coop bellows my way before continuing his rampage.
In less time than it takes me to land by Coop’s side, Dudley’s estate is crawling with men in blue jackets with the lettersFBIboldly written on the back in a shade of caustic yellow.
Gage heads this way, covered in blood, his eyes wild with surprise.
I’m about to shout and ask what the hell now, but it’s as if the entire scrimmage comes to a temporary halt in observance of the feds, at least two hundred strong.
Then, in a burst, every Fem, every enemy of all that is holy and right descends upon them, and in the blink of an eye, bodies are ravaged and the number of the dead grows significantly—not a single fed left standing.
I look to Coop, then Gage, and the fury that ignites inside of us is palpable.
A glowing creature, magnetic and fierce, appears above me. A lion the size of a tank lets out a powerful roar, so loud and violent the ground shakes beneath us.
Gage lets out a roar that rivals it. He holds his arms out and his flesh is traded for scales of iron and onyx wings stretch out fifty feet as he flies to the sky as that horrific beast, the dragon.
I spot Skyla in the distance on the ground, her pink dress splattered with blood, and I leave Coop to do his thing.
“Skyla!” I bellow, my heart lurching because for a moment I think she might be mortally wounded, but those glowing eyes of hers flicker my way and I see her cradling Dudley’s head. His eyes are closed, his inhuman body lifeless. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” I thunder just as a wild jag of lightning goes off in the sky. A roar comes from somewhere up above, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the rain that’s starting to pelt us. “Get the hell inside.” I hoist Dudley up to his feet with every intention of taking him into that mouse trap he calls a home, but Skyla takes him from me by force. She flies straight into the sky with wings that bullet from her back in a display of shimmering glory, and the sight mesmerizes me. She’s holding him, before sinking her mouth over his and it almost looks as if she’s giving him mouth-to-mouth, breathing life into him until that cocky oaf lights up from the inside like a jack-o’-lantern and a set of wings that rival hers in size and girth bullet from his back as well.
I take a quick look around, but it’s all blood and limbs and creatures not of this world.
No sign of Laken. A part of me wants to believe that’s a good thing, that she’s taken the kids and gone for cover. But I know every stubborn inch of that woman. She gave the kids to someone, and she’s doing her best to fight the good fight. That’s Laken in a nutshell, always doing her damnedest to fight the good fight.
“Come on, Candace. Show her to me.” I glance to the sky. “I’m positive your all-knowing ass is watching. Protect Laken. Protect us all.” Screw Candace. I cry out with everything in me, “Take this victory as your own, Lord! Do what you have to do to end this nightmare, for the good of the Nephilim, for the good of the planet.”
I charge six of those demonic bastards Demetri summoned here today, and I have no doubt my father is the biggest beast of them all. It’s a free-for-all, bloodbath, a gorge of flesh and dying for the ages. Fems rain down out of the sky before dissolving into the nothingness they are, the purveyors of evil they’ve become.
“Wesley,” a man’s voice calls to me, and I see Heathcliff trying to pluck a creature that resembles a wooly mammoth with wings off of Ezrina. Her skin is purple, turning quickly blue, and I make quick work of the bastard trying to kill my right-hand gal. But it’s Heathcliff who extinguishes the beast with his bare hands, his own rage far more explosive than mine—not an easy feat at the moment.
A couple of rounds go off from what sounds like an assault rifle.
“Shit.” I glance back, and sure enough, another battalion of feds has arrived. It’s the last thing we need. They’ll take us out and leave the Valkyrie to survive.
No sooner do I complete the thought than a dark, winged creature appears, looking immeasurably like Gage in his serpentine form—but this one is darker, rusted, far more demonic in every capacity. And by his side, each and every Fem we bothered to lock up in Tenebrous, including Barnabas, Belshazzar, and Micah. I knew they’d be back. I just never imagined it would be in such grand fashion.
A fire evicts from the rusted dragon’s mouth, incinerating the new batch of feds that showed before they could process what was about to happen.
