They went down, Sage’s teeth in the man’s face before he could curl his finger around the trigger. When she lifted her head, there was blood on her teeth and lips that she didn’t bother licking away. Jono’s attention was on her for only a second, but that was more than enough time for a demon to cause trouble.
“Jono!” Wade screamed.
Jono heard the whistle of something cutting through the air behind him. He tried to dodge the attack, but demons could move fast, even when taking up residence in human bodies.
Sage was faster.
A blur of orange and black slammed into Jono with enough force one of his ribs cracked. Jono skidded across the gold-and-white marble floor, claws raking furrows in the stone. Sage took the blow meant for him, the hunter’s aconite-laced and spelled silver machete sinking into her lower body instead of his.
The sound she made as the hunter gutted her would haunt him for years.
Jono howled, his wordless protest drowned out by Sage’s agonized roar as she collapsed to the ground. The hunter wrenched the machete out of Sage’s body with a vicious twist of his hand, raising it again for a killing blow. Jono was on him before the blade could descend, mouth clamped over the man’s head and biting down with enough force he chipped several fangs.
The hunter’s skull popped in his mouth like an over-ripened berry, brain matter and fluid slipping past his lips. The demon fled, leaving behind the bitter taste of hell that washed away every other taste in his mouth. Jono spat out blood and bits of bone, globs of brain stuck between his teeth, but he didn’t care.
All he cared about was Sage.
“Sage!” Wade yelled, his voice breaking on her name. “Sage!”
The remaining hunters weren’t going to survive Jono’s rage as he crouched over Sage’s writhing body.
Neither would they survive Tiarnán’s.
The fae lord stepped out of a lift, cane clenched in his hand like a sword, violet eyes shining with magic. The very air vibrated with his arrival, but Jono barely felt it as he shifted back to human now that Tiarnán had arrived. Even with the twisted, melting colors that assaulted his changing vision, Jono could see how all the gold veins in the marble that made up the floors and walls of the lobby burst into light and broke free of the expensive stone.
The floor undulated like in an earthquake while the precisely cut slabs of marble on the wall cracked and shook, some falling off their mountings. Every bit of brilliant metal called forth by the Lord of Ivy and Gold wrapped around the remaining hunters—cutthroughthem—tearing them apart in a burst of shining gold and bright red blood.
They ended up in so many pieces that Jono knew identifying them would be practically impossible.
But he couldn’t care about that, not with the gaping, bleeding wound in Sage’s side taking up all his attention once he was human again. Aconite glistened against the ragged edges of her flesh and over the organs sliding out of the wound. Worse than that was the smell of black magic that had settled all around her.
Jono placed his hands against her heaving chest, Fenrir clawing at his soul, and poured everything he was into the order that came out of his mouth. “Change.”
He forced Sage to obey him despite the agony it put her through, her pain all he could smell, all he could taste. When she was finally human beneath his hands, Jono choked on her name, the syllables lodging in his throat.
She looked at him with tears in her wide, shocked eyes, blood trickling out of her mouth, the wound in her gut still gaping open, not even close to being healed.
Tiarnán knelt on her other side, taking off his suit jacket to drape it over Sage’s naked body to help stave off shock.
“I’ll call for an ambulance,” Tiarnán said.
Jono nodded tightly, his hand finding Sage’s beneath the suit jacket as Wade hurried over with a frantic look on his face.
“Stay with me,” Jono said, trying desperately to make it an order she had to obey.
* * *
Bellevue Hospital wasa Level 1 trauma center that had specialists on hand to handle anything that came through the emergency doors.
They were not exactly prepared for being inundated by a group consisting of werecreatures and the fae, every single one of them waiting for an update on Sage’s and Deirdre’s condition. Legally speaking, the only one allowed to receive a report on her status was her husband, but Marek had Jono’s wrist in a viselike grip, ensuring he’d know she was out of surgery the second Marek did.
Because she was coming out of surgery. Jono refused to believe otherwise.
He closed his eyes and tipped his head back until it hit the wall. The lunch hour had come and gone, but he wasn’t hungry. They’d all given their statements to the PCB who’d followed them to the hospital, because Jono hadn’t been willing to stay at the scene. He and Wade had been driven to Bellevue in Tiarnán’s private car, the driver skirting speeding laws to get them there mere minutes after the ambulance arrived.
Patrick always complained about how the hurry up and wait aspect of missions was his least favorite part back when he’d been in the Mage Corps. Sitting there, not knowing Sage’s status, Jono could understand why.
He opened his eyes and moved his head to crack his neck. Emma and Leon were curled up together on a chair in the private waiting room they’d been escorted to. Wade hadn’t moved from his seat beside Jono, too worried to even fidget. Tiarnán and several other fae from his law firm took up other seats in the waiting room, the lot of them waiting on word from Deirdre.
