Witchlights flickered into being in their car, cast by a teenager whose wide eyes looked like dark holes in her face. The extra light allowed everyone to panic more now that they could see. Jono swore under his breath as passengers fought each other to climb out of the broken windows first, heedless of the jagged pieces of glass sticking out of bent frames. No one seemed to realize that leaving the train didn’t mean they were immediately safe.
Whatever had slipped through the veil and broken the protective wards wasn’t going to stay confined to the subway train.
Jono looked around, but he didn’t see Áltsé Hashké anywhere, the god having slipped away in the panic and darkness. Fenrir bit at the edges of his thoughts, but Jono ignored the god. Passengers struggled to safely exit the train, freezing in fear every time the train moved along the tracks as metal crunched farther down the train. The sound was getting worrisomely closer.
Wade yanked on Jono’s arm. “Are we leaving? Because it sounds like when I crunch a soda can, and I don’t want to be in the middle of that.”
“Yeah. We’re leaving.”
Jono headed for the crumpled sliding doors, using his preternatural strength to rip them apart. The teenager who had cast the witchlights scrambled out of the train through the doors rather than an emergency window, taking most of the illumination with her. Jono helped a middle-aged woman out the same exit and would’ve followed, but the sudden eruption of cold fog behind them had Jono twisting around, putting himself between the threat and Wade.
“Oh man,” Wade moaned. “You guys really need to teach me how to drive after this.”
Jono ignored him, eyes on the new arrivals. Fog drifted away from Zachary Myers’ tattooed and glowing hands as the Dominion Sect mage stepped through the veil into the damaged car with a trio of hunters and half a dozen god pack members led by Nicholas. The rotten stench of sulfur hit Jono’s nose, burning his lungs. The blackness of the Krossed Knights’ and god pack werecreatures’ eyes was proof enough of the demons they carried in their souls.
Jono didn’t smell any immortals traveling with the lot, which told him it was probably the demons that had banded together to rip open the veil. That wasn’t a comforting thought. He knew from Patrick and his own experience that crossing the veil took a lot of power and wasn’t easily done.
“Maybe we should run?” Wade asked, one hand slipping into Jono’s pockets to nick his mobile and keys.
“You won’t get far if you try,” Zachary said.
Jono’s attention zeroed in on the hunter standing to Zachary’s right. He’d seen the man back in February when the hunter had exited Estelle’s SUV during her ill-fated attempt to pressure Jono and his pack at Tempest after they’d returned from Chicago. The hunter was tall, ruddy face washed out by the glow from Zachary’s magic. The light couldn’t hide the scar that bisected his brown eyes over his nose, nor the blackened lines that traced the veins in his face.
Hesmelled familiar—like Cressida had back in London when she’d been trapped in Spencer’s magic as the mage sought to exorcise a Great Marquis of Hell from her soul.
Oh, bloody fuck.
No wonder Zachary and the others were able to travel through the veil. They had help from a high-ranking demon. Jono supposed it had been too much to hope that Andras had fucked off somewhere else that wasn’t here after the mess in London.
Red-black magic crawled over the tattoos on Zachary’s palms, cuts splitting open over the ink. Blood trickled out over his palms and down his wrists, dripping to the damaged floor of the train. The runes tattooed on his skull glowed with the same colored magic, but those ones didn’t bleed.
Jono yanked on the soulbond, flooding it with anger to warn Patrick. Neither he nor Wade had any magic between them, though Wade was certainly immune to most of it. Right now, his suggestion about running was the only route they had, even if Jono didn’t like it. But running would keep them alive, and that was all that mattered.
“Could’ve asked for a meeting rather than ruin everyone’s commute,” Jono said, bracing himself for the fight he knew was coming.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Zachary asked.
Jono couldn’t shift faster than a mage could cast magic. Heknewthat.
He still tried.
Jono shifted in the face of a maelstrom of magic that never reached him. Zachary’s attack spell crashed against a shield that smelled curiously of the fae, all bright, woodsy notes that were out of place in the subway. The force of the magic was directed elsewhere, blowing through the walls, floor, and roof of the train car as if they were nothing. Metal shattered as the train car jerked apart, splitting in half.
Jono couldn’t look to see who had come to their aid as his body twisted and broke from one form to the next. Agony lit up his nerves for a second before the pain abruptly disappeared. He lost his clothes in the shift, but better fabric than his life. Fur pushed through muscle as bone reset itself. When Jono finally settled on all four feet less than a minute later, he craned his head around to see who had cast the shield.
The fae busker from the last stop was leaning into the train through a broken window, one arm outstretched, magic twisted around his arm and hand like tiny rivulets of power. He’d shed his glamour, and an impossibly beautiful face looked back at them. He could’ve run, but he hadn’t. Jono would be forever thankful for his pack’s alliance with the fae.
“I can’t hold them off forever,” the fae warned, hand shaking.
Wade tugged on Jono’s fur, his fear sharp in Jono’s nose. “Let’s get out of here.”
Fighting in an enclosed space wouldn’t give them space to maneuver, but taking the fight out onto the tracks would put everyone else at risk. They’d have an escape route though, so long as Áltsé Hashké stitched the veil closed so nothing else could come through behind the broken protective wards.
That still left Jono with Wade, who couldn’t shift mass this far below ground, and a fae whose magic would always be weakened because of iron, facing off against demons, werecreatures, and a mercenary mage.
Let me out, Fenrir snarled through his mind.
Áltsé Hashké’s warning rang in Jono’s head, and he hesitated as he swung his head back around to stare through the shield at the enemy arrayed before them.
