“That will keep them away for a bit.” When his attention returned to me, he cupped my cheeks. “I’m sorry, but there is no time for choices.”
Bands of darkness swirled around both of us when he pulled me by the hand, running out of the room. By the time we reached the hallway, full outfits and shoes covered our bodies—his was black, as usual, while I was entirely dressed in winter white.
“Why are they here?!” Vanessa panted, bursting out of her room at the same time while wiping splatters of black blood from her skin with a t-shirt. She threw it on the floor.
“They are after Natasha,” D answered, reaching us too.
“Why?” I asked, startled.
“We have no idea,” Isis added, and I turned to see her entering the other hall with the Fae, though she was heavily relying on him to walk before heblinkedthem to the elevator.
She seemed worse than I’d left her last night.
“Go!” Dante ordered, letting go of the wall of darkness around the joined balconies to engulf the elevator instead. We all rushed toward it.
He pressed his thumb to the panel until a tiny door popped open, but the earsplitting screeches and hisses reached us as he pressed it.
“Close, damn it!” Vanessa urged the slow-moving doors while we watched the creatures inundate the penthouse, moving over the ceiling, walls, and floors, like roaches—all coming toward me.
I gasped, taking a step into the back wall when one of them tried to jump into the elevator, deformed claws reaching for me. The swaying dark shield sliced its hand on contact as the doorsclosed. The limb jerked on the floor like it was still alive before it disintegrated with the shadows.
Isis and the others’ voices partially filtered into my ears, someone even grabbing my hand without getting a response. I could do nothing except stare at the elevator doors as though they were still open, the crawlers rushing toward me. The deformed, enraged face of the one who reached for me was etched into my mind, venom dripping from its fangs.
I couldn’t feel the oxygen going into my lungs. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t move.
The fear instilled in me my entire life was all too real and debilitating.
“Natasha!” Isis called, partially bringing me out of it as Bjørn wrapped his arms around us both.
Weblinked, his actions taking me out of the already open elevator and onto the open space before us. We had arrived at what Dante called the helipad, but I hadn’t even noticed.
“Look at me,” Isis urged, standing before me. “Natasha!”
Blinking, I finally saw her distressed face, and she breathed a sigh of relief, hugging me.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about, baby girl,” she assured.
When I glanced past her, I saw nothing in the helipad that could help us leave, but Vanessa and the others were taking a stance on the open roof of the building, forming a circle around Isis and me while a storm brewed in the sky above us. Isis held on to me for support and I held on to her, helping her.
My gaze returned to the sky, and I wondered who was doing that, was it Dante or D? Was it both of them?
Before I passed out when the Hunters attacked us at the diner, I thought I’d imagined seeing D somehow manipulate light, now I knew I’d truly seen him do it.
To my dismay, crawlers overwhelmed the roof while human screams rose from the streets below—their terror palpable. What seemed like hundreds of those things climbed over the edges of the building, all trying to get to me.
Without hesitation, Vanessa transformed like she had at the diner, crimson overcoming her eyes and lips, fangs, and claws in full display as she hunched over and hissed, swiping at them. D’s wings snapped out of his back as he squared up to them, lunging the creatures off the roof one by one when they jumped at him. Dante’s shadow streams began to shoot out of him, power obscuring his forest-green eyes until no white could be seen—only swirling pools of darkness.
Bjørn’s hood fell back with the growing winds to show his long golden hair turning slate grey, and flowing behind him while his twisted claws reappeared. Muscles seemed to bulk under his clothes, partially ripping his sweater, and that sky-shattering sound he’d emitted in the mountain erupted from him again. His twisted claws swung at the pouncing creatures, shredding through them with terrifying ease.
He turned to make sure no creatures had reached us, and when I saw his face, a gasp stalled in my throat. His usually pale skin had fully blackened, his irises becoming bright red like glowing fire, and two horns protruded from his forehead. Unlike the wolves, the crawlers didn’t coward in fear of him since there was no logic in them, but at that moment, I realized that my worst fear had come true. I was surrounded by monsters…
Yet, every one of them had chosen to become their own kind ofmonsterto save my life.
The sound of a powerful machine ripped through the sky the next instant, and I looked up through my whipping hair to see it slowly centering itself above us. After ripping apart arms and legs from two crawlers, Vanessa rushed to our side, helping us out of the way while the flying machine began to descend.
“Is that an airplane?” I shouted over the noise, watching the protective circle widen around us to let the machine land on the roof.
