Lauren’s near the tunnel mouth, fighting against the current of fleeing people, trying to go back to Deidre’s body.
I grab her arm before she can get past me. “Don’t.”
“My sister?—”
“She’s gone,” I say, but it sounds distant and dead, like someone else’s voice coming out of my mouth. “But you’re not. Keep moving.”
Her face crumbles. She stops fighting.
We burst onto the hillside.
The night air hits my face, cold and clean, nothing like the copper and sulfur coating the back of my throat. The sky churns above us, dark clouds swirling with lightning flickering in their depths. It’s waiting for me. Ready.
I scan the chaos.
Nina’s near the cliff face, her hair flying as she throws fire at a hellhound backing her toward a twenty-foot drop. Vera’s dagger is out as she faces down three hellhounds at once,because of course Vera Jackson would try to take down three at once. Avery’s honey-blonde hair is tangled with ash, a hellhound closing in on her and Tyler while her fire sputters and dies. Alessandra and Callie are back-to-back against a boulder, their fire barriers flickering.
Logan’s beside me, his face pale, his fire reduced to embers curling around his fists.
I ground myself on the hillside and raise my hands to the churning sky.
The first bolt slams into my palms.
Electricity surges through every vein, and underneath all that power, the last piece of the girl who hesitated cracks and breaks.
Now, there’s only the storm.
I thrust my hands toward Nina. Lightning arcs from my fingertips, and the hellhound backing her toward the cliff vaporizes into ash. She stumbles, catches herself, and stares at me with those dark, calculating eyes.
Vera’s still fighting those three hellhounds. I pull down lightning and split it three ways, each stream finding its target. They die simultaneously.
Another bolt crashes down. I catch it, redirect it, and kill the hellhound that’s seconds away from slashing Avery and Tyler to pieces.
Catch. Kill.
Catch. Kill.
Alessandra and Callie’s fire barrier fails as my lightning hits the hellhounds circling them. Callie pulls Alessandra against her, both of them staring at me like I crawled out of a nightmare.
Catch. Kill.
The rhythm takes over, primal and automatic, and my body becomes a conduit for the angry sky.
A pack of hellhounds breaks toward the tree line. Four streams of lightning leave my hands, and four piles of ash hit the ground.
Margot Ridgeway, cornered. Dead hellhound.
Rebecca Gibson, pressed against a rock. Dead hellhound.
Garrett, scrambling backward. Dead hellhound.
Lauren, on her knees, not even trying to fight. A hellhound stalks toward her, and I vaporize it before it can take another step. She doesn’t even flinch.
Catch. Kill. Catch. Kill. Catch. Kill.
The last hellhound falls.
My body’s vibrating. Smoke rises from my clothes, my hair, and the scorched earth around my feet. The smell of ozone fills my nose, and underneath it, my own burning skin.
