Lia was reaching for her phone when I grabbed her wrist. "No time to call," I gasped. "I can feel his terror from here, which means it’s bad, considering we're miles away."
"Fuck," Kota snarled as she moved toward the warehouse exit. "Michel had to go and activate his endgame when he escaped through that portal. The asshole is using his intelligence to coordinate strikes on the remaining bloodline members."
Kaveh's expression went grim. "I can get us to Claude's location, but the distance will leave me weakened when we arrive. After our first teleportation and then fighting Michel and his minions, I’ve expended significant amounts of energy already." That was the thing about the magical world that was a real pisser. Nothing was infinite. No matter how powerful, everyone had limitations. Of course, that often benefited us when we were fighting evil.
"Do it," Lia said immediately. "We can't afford to lose him."
Kaitlyn stepped forward. "I’m sending the coven to reinforce Willowberry's defenses. If this is a coordinated assault, they might hit the plantation next."
"Good thinking. Along with most of the bloodlines, Margaret, Sarah, and Thomas are already secure there," Kota replied.
A nervous chuckle bubbled out of me as I nodded my head. "It’s a good thing we evacuated them before. We would be in a world of hurt if we hadn’t."
“They owe you their lives,” Kaveh replied as his power built around us. As further proof of his fatigue, his djinn fire surrounded us for a brief second, making it feel like we were being hugged by controlled lightning. It was enough to make me disoriented when his teleportation magic kicked in.
One moment we were standing in Michel's destroyed warehouse, and the next, we materialized outside Claude Moreau's apartment building in the Marigny neighborhood. The scent of jasmine and old brick that normally made me love this neighborhood was completely overwhelmed by a vile spiritual stench. It was a cross between decomposition and dead fish.
"He’s on the third floor," I said, pointing toward the narrow staircase. "And everyone? Whatever's up there goes beyond harvesters. I'm picking up something... hungrier."
“That makes me feel good about this,” Kota quipped as we climbed.
Traveling down the building's hallway felt like wading through supernatural quicksand. My instincts were screaming bloody murder about predators lurking in the shadows. By the time we reached Claude's front door—or what was left of it hanging off its hinges like a drunk person clinging to a lamppost—I was wound tighter than a jack-in-the-box.
The apartment beyond looked like a hurricane had gotten into a fight with a poltergeist and both had lost spectacularly. But that wasn't the worst part. Oh no, that honor went to the writhing mass of creatures that had apparently decided Claude's living room was the perfect place for an impromptu rave. These things looked like someone had crossed a praying mantis with a starved vampire and given the result an extra set of arms.
They were tall as basketball players but thin as rails. They also had elongated limbs that ended in razor-sharp claws. Their faces were even more terrifying with their multi-jointed jaws, purple eyes, and mouths full of needle teeth that clicked together hungrily. They moved with jerky, insectoid motions, and were testing the boundaries of a golden light that pulsed from deeper in the apartment.
"Well, shit," Kota muttered as her magic already crackled around her fists. "Looks like we're crashing a party."
"Mr. Moreau?" Dani called softly. "It's the Twisted Sisters. We're here to help."
A muffled trumpet melody drifted from somewhere in the back of the apartment. A spark of hope pierced through the overwhelming terror saturating the place. The creatures recoiled from the music as if it hurt them.
"He's in the bathroom," I whispered, extending my empathic abilities toward where I could feel Claude's exhaustion and fear. "And he's using music to hold them back."
The golden light pulsing in rhythm with his jazz standard was the only thing keeping the skeletal horrors from advancingfurther into the apartment. Smart man. His music was where his magic was concentrated. It was clearly powerful against the supernatural nasties that looked like they'd crawled out of a bone collector's nightmare.
"Mr. Moreau, it's Dre," my sister called through the chaos as she began weaving magic between her fingers. "I'm here with my sisters. We need to get you out of here."
The music stopped abruptly. The creatures immediately surged forward like a tide of clicking, clacking bone and claw. That's when all hell broke loose.
"Oh, you did not just interrupt a jazz legend," Lia snarled, throwing a bolt of crackling energy that sent three of the skeletal things shrieking back into the wall with wet crunching sounds.
Dani's magic flared around her hands as she began casting protection spells faster than a card dealer in Vegas. Phi moved like a dancer as she created barriers of light that sliced through elongated limbs like a hot knife through butter. Kota, never one for subtlety, simply started punching the horrors with fists wreathed in magical fire. I had to duck the bits of pale bone she sent flying. That threw my magical bomb off course and into what remained of Claude’s recliner.
"How do I know you're really the Twisted Sisters?" Claude's voice drifted from behind the bathroom door. It was hoarse with exhaustion and terror.
"Because we're about to demonstrate something only we can do," I replied. Instead of targeting the creatures, I extended my empathic abilities toward Claude himself. I wrapped him in a blanket of calm, pushing away the terror and panic that threatened to overwhelm him. "And because we're currently beating the crap out of the things trying to eat you," I told him when I felt his heartrate slow.
The bathroom door opened to reveal Claude clutching his trumpet like a lifeline. His silver hair was disheveled, his clotheswere torn, and his eyes held the wild look of someone who'd been fighting for his life while trying to hold it together.
"Thank the Lord," he breathed. "I've been playing for two hours straight. My lips are about to give out, and those things were getting stronger."
"What happened?" Dani asked as she helped steady the elderly musician while the others continued fighting the remaining creatures. Luke, Noah, Kaitlyn, and Kaveh had remained close to the door, making it impossible for those things to get away.
"Marcus showed up with three other people," Claude explained, his voice shaking with exhaustion and betrayal. "Said he wanted to record some of the old family songs for preservation. The moment I started playing, those people... they started changing. Their skin went pale as bone, stretched tight over their frames as they grew taller and thinner. It was like some kind of horrible magic trick." He shuddered. "Their jaws cracked and reformed, sprouting all those needle teeth. They came at me, clicking and clacking like giant insects. I changed songs and the music—thank God—it held them back."
My heart clenched at the pain radiating from him. Discovering your own family member was working for an ancient evil had to rank somewhere between root canal and tax audit on the scale of awful experiences. "We need to move," I said urgently when my inner alarms bells started pinging. More hostile presences were approaching the building. "Michel is sending more to get Claude."
