Emil’s decision to bring me here has surprised me.
Of all the places he could have taken me…
He chose to bring me to my pack—to these dark beings whom I now think of as my family.
My focus snaps back to him, my eyes wide. “Why did you?—?”
While I speak, I’m instinctively tugging toward Anarchy, needing to join the fight, but Emil’s hold on me only tightens.
His voice cuts through me like a dagger. “If you don’t want your father to kill your pack, call them to you.Now. Before he follows us.”
I draw a sharp breath with the realization that my father could very well have the same transportation powers that Emil has. After all, the light magic keeper controls all kinds of light magic, and there are many good witches who can translocate themselves using spells. It certainly isn’t a skill that belongs only to dark creatures.
If my father knows that my pack is out here—which is highly likely—he could follow me here within seconds.
I don’t waste another moment, raising my voice to cry out to them. “Anarchy! Lucian! Family!Come to me! Now!”
At my cry, every member of my pack breaks off from their fight and sprints toward me.
My heart leaps at how quickly they respond to me.
Even Jonah jumps away from Valki, leaving her lurching across the alleyway mid-punch, her fist cracking the stone wall she hurtles into.
“Darkness!” Anarchy cries, her focus on me while her three brothers race along beside her. “You’re alive!”
Before I went into the church, we’d all known my chances of survival had been slim. They still are.
Behind them, Lucian beats his wings, rises into the air, and dives over the top of both Valki and Gad, sweeping toward me so fast that he reaches me within a heartbeat.
Jonah skids toward me at the same time.
They’re all aiming for the mist, still lingering for several feet around me and Emil.
They will know it’s an indicator that the keeper is preparing to transport us out of here.
Back within the alley, Gad races toward Valki, assisting her to regain her balance before he turns to us. His fangs are drawn and I know he could reach me within a blink of my eye. Potentially get so close, he’ll come with us wherever the keeper takes us.
He could do a whole lot of damage on the way.
“Vampire!” I shout, causing him to narrow his eyes at me and also, thankfully, to pause where he is. “If you value your life, you’ll run?—”
“We aren’t afraid of you!” he spits back while Valki towers beside him.
In her berserker form, she’s even larger in stature than Emil and Jonah, and right now, every muscle in her body is pumped and corded, her movements so twitchy, I could believe she’ll move as fast as Gad.
“I’m not talking about me,” I call, tension thrumming through me while the mist begins to thicken, another tornado of energy starting to build.
It doesn’t feel fast enough. My only hope is to keep Gad on his back foot long enough that we have time to get out of here.
At the same moment that I speak, white light bursts to life within the church, splashing against the inside of the windows.
Cracks scatter across the stained glass, which makes a horrible shrieking sound as if it’s about to explode outward.
Gad and Valki both shrink up against the stone wall opposite the church, as far back from the shrieking glass as they can get without leaping over the high wall.
I guess I don’t need to explain to them that I’m not the worst threat to them right now.
Light magic is bad news for all dark creatures.
