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Phelps shouted something, and Victor gasped, throwing himself over me.

The impact hit a heartbeat later in a wave of bullets. The stuttering made Victor’s body jerk with each impact. He grunted, blood spraying from his mouth, but he draped himself over me like a shield. A couple peppered into my thigh and shoulder, making me grunt in pain.

“Victor.”

The bullets stopped with a punctured scream, and Victor fell to my side, gasping and choking on blood as more soldiers flew across the yard. A tentacle latched onto Phelps.

I gaped at it—half horrified, half hopeful—while reaching for Victor.

“Don’t die on me,” I commanded.

“Not planning on it,” Victor choked out. “Though I might pass out from lack of blood.”

It took a lot to kill a vampire like Victor, but blood loss made them weak. His eyes were glassy, and his breathing was wet and ragged.

“I’d offer, but I’m running low myself.”

Nox nudged him, and energy slid from me to Victor. It wouldn’t keep Victor moving forever, but he spit out blood and put himself in front of me again.

Erlik lifted Phelps higher, the tentacle coiling tighter. Phelps glared at the gaping darkness, his face a mask of fury. He even wriggled enough to pull a sidearm and aim directly into the maw of the nightmare that held him, firing until the gun clicked empty.

The bullets did nothing.

The void swallowed him whole a second later.

For a heartbeat, there was just the crackle of distant gunfire and the wet, labored breathing of the men still scattered across the lawn. Everyone stared in horror, fearing it would spit the pieces of him out.

Then Erlik convulsed, its massive form shuddering.

New tentacles erupted from its mass. The tear in the sky stretched wider, the purple and black heart of the otherworld pulsing overhead. The house shuddered, the tear sending it through the Veil as it began to collapse in on itself.

My heart skipped a beat, remembering Jude had been inside.

I caught a glimpse of pale blond hair.

Jude?

He ran from the house, gaze drawn backward as if tracking the movement of the tentacles was somehow possible. I tried to get up, needing to get to him. Victor wrapped his arms around my waist, keeping me back.

Then a shadow of a squirming mass wrapped around Jude.

“No!” I screamed, jolting toward Jude, but held in a vice-like grip by Victor.

Jude snarled at Erlik, face morphing into something that wasn’t Jude at all. Too many teeth. Black eyes. A face gaunt and narrow. It fought, claws appearing out of nowhere as it tore at the shadows, making headway at first, until more dark tendrils joined the first, wrapping him in inky goo.

The changeling?

The thing wearing Jude’s face screamed, though the sound vanished beneath the cocoon of ooze.

Erlik pulled it close, like a giant spider collecting a fly it had captured, dragging it into the darkness to swallow it whole.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then Erlik shuddered again—tentacles spasming, coiling and uncoiling in erratic, jerky movements. The massive shadow-form rippled, and for a heartbeat, I thought it might reject the changeling the way a body rejects poison.

It hung there in the air, suspended between the collapsing house and the widening tear, a pulse of movement stopped. Nox leapt away, a blur of shadow and fur, racing across the lawn toward the collapsed house.

Another sputter of bullets fired—at the monster, maybe, but ricocheting off it, slamming into Victor and me.

The world tilted. My knees buckled. I caught myself on Victor’s arm, but my vision swam, dark spots dancing at the edges. Copper heat poured up my throat as I toppled, something in my chest giving a warning it was about to burst.