“Here.” Maureen bent, grabbed one of her own fallen weapons, and thrust it toward Barron’s chest. “Wrap the blade to my arm. I don’t trust our bodies to keep coming back to normal.”
A quick scan of my siblings confirmed it—everyone was fading again, and it always began with our hands.
“Freaking fantastic. Mortal and missing limbs because we’re fading,” I said with a tight nod. “This might be our worst odds yet—but we’ve got this.”
“Totally,” Prudence muttered—but her eyes, they were bright and determined. She wanted to believe in us. No matter what.
“Totally,” I echoed, and my siblings all smiled, sharing intimate glances with their mates.
The sight made my heart pinch tight, but the moment passed too quickly.
Beside Prudence, Shepherd shouted, “Duck!”
He shifted into his soul reaper form, a massive wall of smoke erupting around him as he surged forward.
The dark mist slipped through the abominations near his mate, tearing them apart limb from limb.
And just like that, the fight was all around us again.
Chapter Forty-Six
Kara
How long had it been? Hours? Minutes?
Sweat ran down my back and between my breasts as I sliced through an abomination with two bird demon wings sewn onto his head. The wings didn’t function—they were just limbs thrown together, a grotesque collection of parts pretending to be a body.
We had made no progress.
Isabella was our best chance at finding the portal and shutting it down, but I’d imagine it was hard to concentrate in the middle of a bloodbath. If we didn’t close the portals soon, we’d never make it to the crossover. We’d be fighting until we faded completely.
My translucent hand never returned to normal.
Thankfully, most of our enemies were Harvest’s wretched creations. There were a few demons among them, but we cutthose down easily. The ogre had proven toughest to kill—his hide nearly impossible to pierce—but my brothers had brought him down.
Still, it was the sheer number of them that was killing us.
Payne rained fire from above when he wasn’t clashing with the dragons, but it barely made a dent. Within seconds, hundreds more would appear.
My breath came in huge, ragged gasps. My lungs, chest, and throat burned with every swing of my blade. If not for our Reaper conditioning, our bodies would have given out long ago.
Then I noticed it—something clear.
The creatures were spilling in from two different directions.
“There’s more than one portal,” Barron said before I could.
His voice barely carried above the clanking of steel and the wet crunch of decaying flesh. I feared a million baths wouldn’t be enough to rid me of the stench baked into my clothes.
“And I found one!” Isabella screamed.
“Show us and I’ll destroy it,” Nova replied.
It was clear August’s mate hated being forced into restraint. If not for the risk to her life, she could have wiped out everything around us with a single wave of power. But as it was, she was clumsy with a blade, and August kept her close—always within reach. I only ever heard the burst of her magic when it was absolutely necessary.
With a flick of her wrist, Isabella’s magic split in two. One thin blue thread of essence raced west while the other veered east. The dense cluster of trees and demons made it hard to tell how far the portals were embedded in the forest.
Unease twisted in my chest.
