I felt rage coil up my spine like a living thing.
Zuko hit the ground, his hand falling from my wrist, followed by Jesper.
All four of their matebonds muted.
“Fates, Rune, they’re coming out,” Slater hissed over the comms. “You are the only ones affected by the gas right now. I’ve told Drecken, but?—”
“He can’t come,” I hissed at him. “He needs to teleport us all out of here after this. I can handle it.”
“I know you can. I told him that. He agreed.” He sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m hacking into the controls to stop the gas now. Hang in there, do you understand me?”
“Perfectly.”
The door in front of us swung open, and Allison Whettlock stood in the frame, backlit by the lighting from the security feeds behind her.
rune
. . .
Allison lookednothing like the Aura I thought I’d known.
She smelled the same, though, with the sharp floral scent that coated her. Imp magic popped off her in brittle waves, the stolen shimmer of supernatural energy that she was never supposed to carry. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering who the imp was that had been hurt to give her access to that power.
Her blue eyes, once bright and bubbly when she’d sat with me in the first-year house, were now icy, hard, and rimmed in anger. The pixie cut she used to wear had grown out. Her hair hung straight and glossy to her shoulders, framing a face that had hard frown lines carved into it.
Beside her stood her father, Jeff Whettlock. He was older, with glasses perched on his nose and a lab coat splattered with the faint shadows of long-scrubbed bloodstains. His expression was tight, jaw clenched, and blue eyes sharp with calculation.
The hissing above us stopped, and the walls that had fallen down sucked back into the ceiling.
“Okay, venom baby, the tourmalyke gas is disabled. They should wake up in a few minutes depending on how concentrated it was,” Slater told me.
“Wow, Allison, you look like shit,” I greeted her with a fang-filled smile.
Her hate-filled gaze narrowed at me as she moved aside, making way for a woman with blonde hair and green eyes to run out of the safe room.
She came at Dimitri, who was still unconscious, with a knife, fast. Faster than a human should’ve been able to move.
I moved, catching her wrist mid-swing, fingers tightening until her bones shattered and the knife clattered to the floor. I kicked it back away from the other Whettlocks. My venom coursed through her veins as I chose Cthulhu’s strand to kill her with.
She went rigid, terror seizing her expression as she dropped to her knees. Her skin turned wooden as roots escaped her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, hollowing her out.
I wanted the Whettlocks to suffer for what they’d done, and Zuko’s fae spider’s venom was one of the most gruesome venoms I’d found.
“What did you do?”Allison screamed, her face twisting into horror as her gaze stayed glued to the woman’s corpse at my feet.
“She tried to kill my mate,” I replied, venom dripping from my fingers onto the woman’s hollowed-out wooden face. “I reacted. This is the venom from an earth fae spider. I do believe I’ll give her hollowed-out corpse to said spider.”
“Susan!”Jeff’s voice cracked.
Allison’s breathing hitched.“Mom?—”
“Oh, she was your mom?” I gasped dramatically before a smile slid over my lips. “How tragic. How does it feel to have the life of someone you care about snuffed out in an instant? That’s what you’ve been doing to so many supernaturals, after all.”
Allison’s gaze snapped to me, hatred burning in her eyes.
“Rune Bloodwyne,” she spat. “You fuckingmonster!”
Slater’s voice echoed through the comms. “Rune, bad fucking news. Tourmalyke gas is in every level of the facility now. I’m working on it, but the saturation is off the charts. Agents are dropping like flies, but thankfully Drecken used his magic to wipe out most of the humans. Corin and I are hacking all of their systems to stop the gas. You’re the only one at a hundred percent right now.”
