"Western team in position," Marcellus says. "Tides are deployed. Ready."
"The wards."
She steps forward. Mira beside her. Seraphina raises her hands and closes her eyes. Mira mirrors the position.
Seraphina's fingers move. The air between her hands thickens, goes white, goes bright. Mira's hands tremble. Then her fingers lock and her expression goes flat and focused, and the trembling stops.
The wards are invisible. I can't see them. But I can feel something resisting, a pressure against my skin that has nothing to do with wind.
Seraphina pushes. The pressure pushes back. Her jaw clenches. Her arms shake. Mira steps closer, matching thefrequency, her hands moving in the same pattern as her mother's. The wards hold.
"These aren't Adrienne's work," Seraphina says through gritted teeth. "Layered. Older. Konstantin had other witches build these."
"Can you break them?"
"Not alone."
Two of Lanthar's Fae step forward without being asked. They set their hands flat against the earth. The ground beneath the fence line cracks. Fine fractures spreading outward from their palms, threads of gold light running through the soil, undermining the ward's foundation.
Seraphina pushes again. Mira pushes. The Stone warriors push. The pressure against my skin spikes, hard enough that my teeth ache, and then it snaps. A release I feel in my chest.
"Wards are down," Seraphina says. She opens her eyes. Wipes blood from her upper lip. "All of them."
"All teams, go," I say. "Now."
"Southern team breaching," Julian says.
"Western team breaching," Marcellus says.
We breach.
Maximus and I hit the fence together. His shadows surge forward, pouring through the chain-link. I reach with the telekinesis and rip the gate off its hinges. The metal screams across the gravel.
The guards on the gate turn. One reaches for a radio. The shadows wrap his arm before his fingers find the button. The second raises a silver-loaded sidearm and I pin him flat against the fence post. Kael's wolves come over the fence line and finish both.
The roof guards. Two of them, rifles up, silver rounds glinting in the moonlight. I pin the first flat against the roof surface with the telekinesis. The second gets a shot off. The crack splits theair and the silver round sparks off the gravel three feet from Simone. She doesn't flinch. She doesn't slow down.
Good thing they shoot like Stormtroopers.
Two Fae scale the building. I hear the impact. No more shots.
An alarm. High-pitched, electronic, cutting through the yard from the central structure. Someone inside triggered it.
"They know we're here," Alexei says.
Alexei is at the main door, reading the lock, hands moving fast. Click. The door opens.
Inside.
The smell hits first. Blood. Old blood, new blood, the chemical tang of IV tubing and antiseptic layered over something organic and wrong. The lights are fluorescent and buzzing. The hallway stretches. Doors on both sides. Closed. Locked.
The alarm is louder in here. Red light pulsing from a panel on the wall.
Maximus and I move together.
His shadows go left. I reach right, mapping the space with the telekinesis, finding bodies behind walls and furniture that could be cover.
Three guards rush from the corridor ahead. Fast. Armed. Silver-loaded. The first one fires and Maximus's shadows snatch the round out of the air, wrapping the barrel, folding the weapon sideways. The guard stumbles, and the shadows wrap his arms to his sides and pin him against the wall. The second guard pivots toward me. I rip the weapon out of his hands. It flies across the hallway into mine. I put a silver round through his head. He drops. The third makes it two steps before Maximus closes the distance and rips his heart out of his chest.
