"I've got him," Riley said, coming up behind Doryu with her hand on fire.
But another jumped out, a Leyak in the same battle armor. I couldn't see their face due to a helmet, but they turned on their own soldier and fired their gun, killing the one who would have killed us.
Removing their helmet and shaking out her hair, I gaped as Kelly stared at me. My best friend from the bookshop, who had stabbed us all in the back. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I never should've helped them. I want to come home. I'm fighting for the Unseen today, not the Leyak."
We gaped at her for a second before the battle pulled us back in and we soon lost her in the crowd.
The surprise addition of Dumadi's forces was turning the tide for us. We kept throwing fire, Riley teaching me on the fly how to make the balls and throwing them.
Laura Bates, leader of the magic users, appeared beside me. "They need help inside." She created a portal that we ran through quickly.
The warehouse wasn't nearly as full of babies as it had been. A smaller battle raged on one side of the warehouse while people ran back and forth, pushing the incubators out of the portals.
"What's going on?" I asked as we ran to help.
"Their army wants to kill the babies rather than let us take them," Laura said. "We're fighting as hard as we can, but it seems like they have a never-ending supply of soldiers. As soon as I destroy a portal, they open another and more soldiers come."
Terri and Tanya were in the front of the battle, both carrying a sword and a gun. Terri caught my eye as she lunged for a blue Leyak as he aimed for one of the incubators. A Dannan woman ran up and pulled the incubator away, but the soldier fired off a shot.
It happened in slow motion. Terri screamed, "No!" and jumped in front of the blast, taking the full force of the bullet straight to her chest.
Riley and I erupted into flames again, throwing fireball after fireball at anyone who got too close. I tried to keep an eye on Terri, but I couldn't get to her. The blue Leyak who had shot her was coming for me now, and I had to focus.
He threw a knife at me, and I ducked, but not before it sliced through my arm. I screamed in pain and anger, throwing a fireball straight at him. It hit him in the chest, and he stumbled back, but he didn't go down.
Enraged, I ran at him, jumping and tackling him to the ground. I started pounding my fists into his face, over and over. I wanted him to feel the pain that he had caused Terri. That he had caused all of us. I wanted him to die.
Someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me off the soldier, who was now unconscious. "It's not worth it," Laura said quietly. "You'll only end up getting yourself killed."
I turned to see Terri being carried out of the battle on a stretcher. Tanya was walking beside her, tears streaming down her face. "We have to help them," I said desperately. "We have to do something."
"The incubators are the priority," Laura said. "If we don't get them out, none of this will matter."
I nodded and turned back to the battle. I would think about Terri later. Right now, I had to focus on the task at hand.
We fought for what felt like hours until finally the last of the incubators was safely away. The Leyak had disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, no longer willing to fight once the incubators were gone. We were left with a warehouse full of dead bodies of various members of the Unseen.
I collapsed to the ground, exhausted. It was over. We won. We saved the babies.
Eventually, people started to filter out of the warehouse. Riley came over and sat down next to me. "Are you okay?" she asked quietly.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I was in shock.
"They're getting our dead and injured," Zander said. "We need to go through the portals. We'll be one less thing for the cleanup crew to worry about. We need to go before the Leyak decide to rally."
"They could come back," Roan said.
At some point, someone had handed me a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I’d burned off my clothes again. I let Doryu pull me to my feet and shuffled toward the portal.
Inside the warehouse on the Earth side of things, the babies were being pushed through more portals to the Junta headquarters. Witches were prepared to shut those portals down if any of the Leyak came through this side.
A line of injured warriors was on one side of the warehouse and a line of shrouded bodies on the other.
I moved to the injured and searched for Terri. She'd been injured saving one of the babies. One of my Alex's brothers or sisters, possibly.
There weren't as many injured as I would've liked to have seen. There were far more dead.
"Terri?" I asked, but then I spotted Tanya on the other side of the room. Hurrying over, I dropped down and saw who she was sitting between. Dumadi and Terri. "They were in love?" I asked.
