The siren’s face tints red. “You want to add slander to your charges?” Yanking his phone out of his pocket, he taps a few times before the three of us turn to stone, Ever’s voice crackling over the recording. He missed the first chunk of our conversation, but caught enough that the evidence is damning.
“That woman’s a threat to everyone here,” he loudly declares, drawing the eyes of several curious people. To the guards, his voice takes on an alluring lilt. “Think of how impressed your boss will be that you apprehended such a dangerous myst. I’m sure he’ll insist on giving a raise to the one that captures her.”
One of the younger guards is so earnest to prove himself, he barks over his shoulder, “Call the gargoyles, they’ll want to interrogate them themselves.” To Ever, he says, “Ma'am, you need to come with me,” and grabs her upper arm in a bruising grip.
I don’t think, I just react. One second the suicidal bastard has his hand on my mate, the next, it’s laying on the ground.
He cries out, clutching his bloody stump of a wrist to his chest and babbling incoherently around his sobs. Ignoring his sniveling, I stare down the rest, their gazes torn between the blood dripping down the knife in my hand, and the calm expression on my face.
“You think being human is bad? Try being skinned alive.”
While a couple of them hesitate, most are too locked under the siren’s spell and charge us anyway. I’m about to snap up Bellamy and Ever and shadow walk them away from danger when a stream of fire hones in on Bellamy. He dives out of the way, snatching the man’s abilities, but doesn’t turn them back on him so he doesn’t expose himself. Wrapping a shadow tendril around him, I yank Bell off the ground before another can stomp on his face, but the momentary distraction costs me.
“Look out!” my angel shouts, my heart skipping a beat as I see the hulking gorilla-sized fist flying towards my cheek.
Only for Ever to shove the behemoth’s chest and send himflying.
He’s flung at least twenty feet, skidding across the metal benches until crashing into a cement pillar, a chunk breaking loose and tumbling down on his stomach.
The entire arena has screeched to a stunned halt, silently gaping at the fight breaking out in the stands. When he goes to shove the debris off, it doesn’t budge, and true panic fills the guard’s eyes, clearing away the haze of the siren’s influence. “What the hell did you do to me, you crazy bitch?! I can't use my powers!”
As he starts to hyperventilate, the peaceful bubble bursts and people start screaming, rushing out of the stands towards the exit.
I don’t give a shit that they look at me like I’m a monster. I care that they’re looking at my mate like she’s one too.
Devastation has her face crumbling as Bellamy wraps an arm around her waist to support her, jaw clenched as he watches the shit show encore of tonight’s event. “We need to get out of here.”
“He was right,” another guard breathes, fumbling his phone out of his pocket. “I don’t know how you snuck past the barrier, but the gargoyles will-”
Bellamy snaps into motion, dislocating the guy’s arm from its socket before he can radio for backup, and smashing his phone for good measure. He grimaces. “Won’t buy us much time, but long enough to get her home.”
“See? If you’d have let me kill the siren when we caught him eavesdropping, none of this would have happened.”
Bell groans. “Empathy is overrated. Next time, you have my blessing.”
“As sweet as this is, can wego? Please?” Ever begs, eyes wide and scanning the raging crowd in fear, and my hackles raise.
She’smydream girl. It’smyresponsibility to deal with anything that scares her.
My shadows snap out in a riot of furious whips, scooping up every person in a fifty foot radius and flinging them into the arena. Some land on the tops of the trees or scrambling to hang onto the ledges above sheer drop-offs. Others fall into the pit ofquicksand, and the more they struggle and panic, the faster they sink.
Scooping my mimic babies close, I take a moment to reattach the springy toddler leash to Ever’s wrist juuuuuust in case she has any new tricks up her sleeve. Daddy Ledger is already going to be pissed when he hears what happened tonight, the last thing I need is to lose our mate in the shadow realm on top of everything else. Finding Bellamy eyeing her wrist, I make a mental note to get him one too. Maybe metal for him, though.
Can’t crash my next date if he’s chained up in the basement.
Chapter 23
Ever
“Ithink we’re almost there.” Myles picks up the small, silver sphere delicately, one panel open and shifting the internal wiring aside to reach the core. “You’re right, it’s two degrees hotter today. Shit.”
It’s a nerve-wracking balance, not being able to test it and also trying not to accidentally activate it. Myles has infused it with his magic, but we’ve hit an annoying new complication. His intent was for it to absorb supernatural abilities, but he can’t set it to happenpermanentlyyet or it might strip us of ours. So now we’re in a frustrating loop of it absorbing whatever magic he tries to reset it with before it can alter the device’s intent like a miniature void.
But does it actually cannibalize the energy and let it naturally dissipate back out into the world, or are we feeding a ticking time bomb?
“Tungsten is probably the way to go then.”
He nods, screwing the back panel in place again. “Agreed. I reached out to my usual guy, but he’s backed up on custom jobs for at least a month.”
