I raise my hand, rage pouring through me like molten silver, and electricity explodes from my palm in a massive bolt that splits into six perfect streams. One for each hellhound. One for each monster that killed my friends.
Electrical currents spread across their bodies, and they convulse and die where they stand. All that remains is crumpled monsters and the smell of charred fur.
“Jade.” Sam holds out a hand, careful and slow, like he’s approaching a wild animal. “Whatareyou?”
“Not now.” I turn away from Nina’s bloodied notebook, Vera’s defiant snarl, and Deidre’s useless barrier. “We have to get out.”
“But that lightning… you just…”
“Later.” I grab his arm, electricity crackling under my skin, containing it enough that I don’t hurt him. “We need to get outside.”
Questions burn behind his eyes, but he simply nods in agreement.
Elizabeth and Francis nod too. They’re pale and bloody, trusting me even though they just watched me do the impossible. Not like it matters, because I’m not letting this timeline stick. My only goal is to get to Logan so we can reset.
The tunnel to the surface stretches on forever. Every shadow is a hellhound. Every sound is claws on stone. There are the occasional groups of mangled bodies, but we keep moving and fighting until we reach the place where moonlight floods the opening and we burst onto the hillside.
There are a dozen survivors, maybe fifteen, huddled in the darkness while hellhounds circle the perimeter. All that’s holding them back is a fiery wall with black curling along theedges. But the wall is flickering, thinning in places, gaps opening and closing like the fire can’t decide whether to stay lit.
Logan appears beside me in a burst of flame that sputters at the edges. Blood drips from his temple, and his skin has gone past gray into a color closer to ash. But his eyes are eerily calm—that terrifying stillness he gets when everything is falling apart and he refuses to let it show. “They swarmed the western tunnels. Half of Deidre’s group?—”
“Deidre’s dead,” I tell him. “They’re all dead. The hellhounds hunted us systematically, group by group, and they killed them all.”
He doesn’t even flinch, and somehow, that’s worse.
“Reset it.” I grab his hands. “Take us back. Now.”
He pulls me to his chest, electricity still crackling across my skin, and exhales like he’s been holding his breath for the entire loop.
Black flames build around us, but they stutter and flicker. For one horrible second, nothing happens, and I think he’s burned through whatever power makes this possible.
Then the fire catches, the world tilts and spins, and we’re pulled back into the vortex.
JADE
The Obsidian Cavesmaterialize around me for the fourth time.
Music pulses against my skull, floating flames dance above the crowd, and I breathe in the same awful combination of sulfur from the volcanic vents, sweat, cheap alcohol, and lingering smoke from a fire trick gone wrong.
I really hate this party.
Logan’s fingers thread through mine. Shadows are deepening the hollows beneath his cheekbones, his eyes are bloodshot, and when his grip tightens, his skin is cold.
“We’ll stay in the central cave and form a unified front,” he says, steady and commanding, but there’s strain underneath. “We’ll create a fire wall and kill them before they can spread.”
“Okay,” I say, since why not? We’ve already tried everything else.
He squeezes my hand once before letting go.
“Hellhounds!” he screams across the cave, still strong and expecting obedience. “Everyone together! Fire wall! Now!”
Red eyes glow in the darkness. People cluster together this time, moving on Logan’s command like a well-trained army, andfire erupts from dozens of hands at once. The flames weave and merge until there’s a blazing barrier surrounding us on all sides.
The hellhounds don’t try to break through the wall. They pace and circle instead, red eyes fixed on the flames, growling low and waiting for someone to slip.
My lungs tighten.
The fire wall flickers.
