“Claudia? Claudia, fuck.” Noah’s voice reaches my brain. Beautiful, dark Noah. He’s here with me, too. Maybe I did something right, after all. Maybe this is what heaven is, having my princes with me as I pass into the afterlife – my guardian angels.
Noah rolls me over. The splintered coffin digs into my back, but it feels like a light massage. I stare up into his eyes, and something in those shadows reaches through the fog and grabs me, shaking me from the inside out.
He wants me to live.
He wants me to fight.
“Something’s wrong with her. I think they gave her drugs or something.” Noah slaps my cheek. It feels like a feather trailing across my skin. “Claudia, can you hear me?”
“Mackenzie got away,” Gabriel drawls from something in the darkness behind Noah’s shoulder. “I forgot that girl was head cheerleader for a reason. She’sfit.”
Eli’s face appears above Noah, shoving him away. “I’ll take care of her. Check Antony. I think he’s dead, but we’d better be certain.”
Something in the depths of my addled mind, I resurrect the lyrics of Gabriel’s song. They repeat over and over as I peer up at the impossible scene.
I’ve sharpened my steel. I’ve made my sacrifices. I’m unleashing war.
“Claudia.” Eli rolls me into his arms, cradling me against his body. Tears stream down his cheeks. A salty drop falls on my lips, and it rolls into my mouth. The saltiness dances on my tongue. And I know. I fuckingknow.
This isn’t a dream.
They’re here. They came for me.
The knowledge surges through my body like molten lava. My lips tear open a crack, and a sound escapes. “EEeeeeee…”
“That’s right. It’s me.” Eli touches my cheek. “Shit, shit, what have they done to you?”
“Trraaaaaan—” I can’t get the words out. The grey fog waits at the edges of my eyes, waits to claim me.
Eli’s brow furrows. He touches my forehead, lifts my sagging eyelid to peer into my eyes. “I think they gave her animal tranquilizer. I keep a bunch in my room for the lion. This is bad. We have to get her to Galen—”
“She threw up,” Noah says. “There’s puke all inside the coffin. It probably happened when I knocked it over.”
“It won’t make a difference if she’s been injected. We have to keep her awake.” Eli’s fingers continue to touch and press all over my body, like he wants to make sure every inch of me is still intact. “Claws, can you move at all?”
I try. I try so hard. I manage to straighten my middle finger and point the gesture in the direction I last heard Antony’s voice. I’m quite proud of myself, but Eli doesn’t see it.
“It’s really important that you try to stay awake, you got that? I’m going to get Galen over here to help you. But first, we have to take care of Mackenzie and your cousin.”
“Antony’s sorted,” Noah says. “We’ll come back and fill in the grave later. We need to get back to the house.”
Eli staggers to his feet and throws me over his shoulder. I can feel his hands on me, but they’re like bricks, they don’t feel like hands at all. I get a weird, upside-down view of Noah climbing out of the grave, his forearms streaked with blood. He shoves past Eli, raising a rifle in his hands.
I bob along the tunnel, the only sound Noah’s heavy footfalls and Eli’s ragged breath.
And Gabriel, humming the melody to his song.
We’ve sharpened our steel. We’ve made our sacrifices. We’re unleashing war.
We emerge into the drawing room. Noah’s already at the window, his rifle aimed outside as he peers across the grounds. Eli drops me into Gabriel’s arms and picks up his own weapon.
“She can’t hardly move or talk,” Eli says to Gabe. “I need you to keep her awake.”
Gabriel places a kiss on my shuddering eyelids. His rich, pagan scent reaches my nostrils, dragging me back from the brink of sleep. “Stay with me, beautiful. We’re here for you. We went to the docks because Noah had this feeling something would go wrong, and we saw Nero’s men and figured it was a distraction. We came straight here for you.”
He sings in a low voice, his lips pressed against my ear, the same lyrics running on repeat in my head. The song reaches deep into my bones, burrowing into the marrow and forging me anew.
They’re here.
