Calista.
That bitch killed Gran. She’d admitted to it and I still let her live. What the fuck was wrong with me? I should have drowned her in the pool in the ritzy gym. Fuck my job and fuck the bounty. I wasn’t playing by the rules anymore. My teeth were going to rip out her throat.
As we neared the area that surrounded the gate, the ground grew soggy. Brock’s paws splashed in a few inches of water, whereas mine didn’t.
Crazy magical shit.
The closer we got to the area of the gate, the more water there was. Brock’s large wolf paws were sloshing through it now. I was just trying to figure out why the sirens would be flooding the land when I spotted the gate to the underworld. A circle of spinning green light six to eight feet high glowed in the middle of the forest. A bright, green fog only I could see swirled in a continuous motion above and around the gate. And a tendril of thick, green sludge—a glowing sickly ooze—seeped from the crack in the gate—the source of all our problems.
Calista and her sister were identical from a distance. Long green hair that looked like strands of kelp hung to their waists. They were both lithe and lean in what looked like bikini tops and short skirts, but lined with long muscles. They were barefooted, as was a siren’s preference, to better sense the water beneath them.
They stood about ten feet to the right of the gate, looking away from it, scouting the ground around them. Behind them, the water was cascading into the gate.
And when they noticed, which they would, they’d have the location of the gate.
Shit, shit, shit.
Even without being able to see the gate itself, the water was flowing into it and disappearing. Anyone would be able to notice how the water in all directions dropped and vanished at one single point.
The bitch was smart. Calista had been doing this to see where the water traveled, knowing the gate was cracked open a little and that the water would flow into the underworld, revealing its location.
Brock must have realized her intent too, because he changed course, pivoting and running out into their line of sight, trying to draw their gazes away.
If the sirens managed to open the gate all the way and call through the army that I’d seen readying inside it, we were so fucked there’d be no unfucking ourselves.
The sirens spotted Brock right away. They sank into battle stances, knees bent, hands out in front of their bodies, and hissed, narrowing their eyes at him, and then at his pack of wolves assembling in front of them.
I decided I’d be of better use in my human form with my katana, so I started to shift as Reo and Haru made their way over to my side. In less than a minute I was standing naked in the water, which rose halfway up to my calves. I was ready to fight these bitches naked when Reo tossed me a loose sundress. Tugging the dress down over my head, I reached out and took the blade he also offered me. The moment my fingers wrapped around the hilt of my katana, purple magic flared to life along the newly restored blade.
Reo leaned close. “They’re demon in essence. Behead them and then stab them through the heart to be sure,” he whispered in my ear.
I nodded. Glad he was also on board with killing these psychos.
Brock and the pack were pushing the sirens away from the gate when a wall of water rose up behind them—where they wouldn’t see it in time.
“Brock, look out!” I screamed, and started running toward him.
The sirens were too powerful. It was unnerving. No one should be able to command a wall of water as massive as this one. It had to be at least ten-feet tall.
“I can see the lines of power. They’re pulling from the ocean!” Tianna said from beside me and I jumped. She’d come out of nowhere, running as fast as I was. Cass zipped up next to us on his hoverboard, trailing sparks of the golden magic he used to power it.
“How’s that possible?” I shouted, almost reaching Brock, whose wolf was now fully encased in a water bubble. “We’re like forty miles from the ocean.”
Those damn witches the sirens were allied with were powerful. Really powerful.
I didn’t have a plan; I wasn’t that type of fighter. I operated on instinct, and my instincts were telling me not to let the love of my life drown. While Tianna and Cass squared off with the sirens, I crouched without stopping to place my blade on the ground and ran full speed into the wall of water encapsulating Brock.
My body broke through the water and crashed into Brock’s wolf with such force that something snapped as my arms wrapped around his middle like steel bands. Pushing with all my strength, and using the advantage of momentum, I muscled us both out of the wave and onto the ground on the other side, all while keeping my katana from stabbing either of us, a feat in itself.
Brock’s drenched wolf heaved, gasping for air as his wolves whined around us.
‘Thanks,’he huffed through my mind.
Rage like I’d never experienced before consumed me. The sirens had killed my gran, and now they’d tried to take out my baby daddy.
Those bitches were going to die.
Standing, I sidestepped the hovering vertical wall of water and gripped my katana tighter.
