Because that’s what it was.
A thing.
I could see it now, in the way its features were sharp—too sharp. I could see it in the wicked points of its teeth.
Maybe I really was dead. Maybe this reallywashell. I’d accused Sephtis of being a demon. If he was, the thing in front of us was the devil himself.
“Run.” The demand in Sephtis’s voice, hot and full of worry, streaked through me. Webothneeded to run.
“Oh,fuck.” I scrambled back, but I knew I wasn’t fast enough. Whatever the creature was—because it wasdefinitely a creatureand not human—it was too quick for me to get away, especially when I was trying my best to keep myself between it and the man I’d been hitting a few minutes earlier. The sensation of claws tearing into my chest was like liquid fire, agonizing in the way my world instantly flooded wet and coppery.
Cool arms wrapped around me, but I could tell by the way I couldn’t draw a breath that it was too late.
I was dying. Even as I fell back into Sephtis’s arms, I knew it… because behind the creature that attacked me, a manfell from the sky. Black wings spread out behind him as another man landed to his right.
“Angels, huh? Liar.” I tried to cough out the word, to tell Sephtis he’d been wrong and obviously angels and demonswerereal, so he could just admit what he was… but speaking was too hard.
Keeping my eyes open was too hard.
Breathing was too much… and it was almost strange to think that with him holding me, with him looking down at me pleadingly with those golden eyes…
I almost didn’t want to die.
Chapter 8
Sephtis
“What the fuckare you doing, Sephtis?” Wren’s voice came to me from a distance—I was trapped underwater, crushed by the weight of the ocean pressing me into the sand and stone.
Cole wasstillin my arms. I didn’t have to be a Reaper to understand this was more than him drowning, more than a wreck.
He was cut open, and my hands pressing against his chest were doing nothing to keep the blood from spilling out of him in rivulets of red that were pooling on the dirty ground.
Worse, the creature in front of me snarled, and I didn’t even have the strength to stand and fight it. I could have pulled a blade, I could have donesomething…
But that would mean letting Cole go, and I knew the instant I took my hand from his chest, the life would completely slip from him.
He was dying.
He was dying, and I didn’t want tobein this place to see it. I couldn’t.
I couldn’tlosehim. The frantic feel of the Ardor racing through my veins was agony, a thousand cuts ripping me openfrom the inside out. It tore me to tiny shreds, and I didn’t even have the blood to follow Cole to the grave.
“Please…” I whispered, carefully lowering him to the ground and putting my body between him and the Enmity behind us. “Please, just… wait.”
I couldn’t do anything right now—not until I was sure the creature was dead. I wasn’t sure I could do anything at all… but I had totry.
Behind me, I heard Wren let out a low grunt as he drew an arrow—my eyes were more focused on the man beside him. It took me a second to recognize him as the one who I’d seen the cupid holding in the alley, the one who’d almost taken Wren straight to the grave with him. I’d seen death hovering over themboththat night, wrapped and twined around them and telling me if one went, the other would follow.
But if one was strong enough… things were different when a human was tied to a supernatural being.
The thought sparked in my chest, even as my eyes roamed over the body of the new man. He stood tall and proud, and his fingers were tipped with dark claws that he used to dig into the chest of the Enmity so he could twist it around to face away from him.
It was a newly changed creature, barely capable of forming coherent thought, let alone fighting Wren and his soulmate.
The thread shining between them burned so brightly it was nearly blinding, and Wren didn’t hesitate to draw his bow and shoot an arrow straight into the creature’s chest.
When it roared, the man holding it slid his fingers up, grasping the beast by the lower jaw, using his other hand to clutch the top of its head.
