The shades retreat.
Not defeated, not even close, but driven back by the raw emotion, the grief and rage pouring off every brother present.
Vex lifts Kyler’s body, cradling him carefully, and the sight of this ancient vampire holding a dead kid breaks something in me.Through the bond, I feel everything he’s feeling, guilt for not training him better, rage at himself for not being fast enough, grief for potential cut short.
“We take him with us,” Blade says quietly.“No one gets left behind.”
Prophet rides up beside us, and for a moment, his eyes glow with that otherworldly light.He places a hand on Kyler’s forehead, whispering words in a language I don’t know.A blessing, maybe.Or last rites.
Blade reaches out and touches Prophet’s arm.“No brother.We can’t have you draining yourself.We are going to need you in the fight to come.”
“He’s right,” Vex says with a nod.“This is on me, I should have trained the half-blood better.Kyler didn’t deserve this end.”
Then Rooster takes the body, strapping it carefully to what’s left of his damaged bike.His face is hard, carved from stone, but his hands are gentle.
“How much farther?”Vex asks, his voice rough with suppressed emotion.
Prophet points ahead, through a gap in the trees.“There.The seal site.”
I follow his gaze and see them.
Stones.
Ancient beyond measure, half-buried in ice and snow, arranged in a circle maybe thirty feet across.They’re covered in symbols that hurt to look at, not because they’re ugly, but because they’re too perfect, too precise, toooldfor human eyes to fully comprehend.
And they’re humming.
Not a sound you hear with your ears, but something you feel in your bones, in your teeth, in the very marrow of you.The mark on my shoulder responds to that hum, resonating with it, and suddenly I understand.
This place knows me.
Or more accurately, it knows my bloodline.My ancestors stood here, in this circle, and gave their lives to trap the thing that’s been hunting me.Their blood is in these stones, in the earth beneath them, in the very air.
I am the last daughter of the wardens.
And I’ve come home.
“Tessa.”Vex’s hand finds mine, anchoring me.“You feel it?”
“Yeah.”My voice comes out barely a whisper.“It’s calling to me.”
“Can you resist it?”
I think about Kyler, dead because this thing won’t stop until it’s free.Think about Mandy and all the other people who’ve been attacked.Think about the shadow that will consume everything if we fail here.
“I don’t want to resist it,” I say.“I want to end it.”
Through the comms, Blade’s voice sounds, “Prophet, set up your ritual.Chrome, Fury, Scout, establish a perimeter.Rooster, you’re with me.We hold this position until Prophet says otherwise.”
“And us?”Vex asks.
Blade looks at me, and in his eyes I see acknowledgment.Respect.Trust.
“Tessa goes to the center of the circle.It’s where the seal is weakest, where the ritual needs to be anchored.”He pauses.“Vex, you stay with her.No matter what comes through, you keep her alive and conscious until Prophet can complete the binding.”
“Understood.”
We dismount, and the moment my boots hit the ground inside the stone circle, power surges up through the earth and into my body.The mark blazes with cold fire, and I gasp, nearly going to my knees.
