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One second he was on the ground, the next he was there, shoving my father’s hand away from me, using his body as a shield. Jason wrapped his arms around me, and a second later gasped and grunted as the knife plunged into his back.

I screamed, trying to pull him away.

The knife came down again. And again. And again. Jason grunted with each blow, his body jerking against mine, his grip tightening even as he began to crumple. His blood soaked through, the tip of the blade nicking me as we stumbled backward. I dragged him with me, desperate to get away. We knocked over a candle, smearing the lines of their symbols as we fell.

Jason’s weight pressed me into the dirt. His blood was everywhere—on my hands, my chest, my face.

His eyes found mine. Wet with tears, full of fear and pain.

“Jason,” I tried to say, the sound stolen from me as he slumped against me, eyes open, but lifeless.

“Jason!” The word tore out of me, raw and broken.

Something inside me broke open. Heat cast off the icy chill trying to crawl up my spine. I shoved all of it into my scream. The pain. The fear. The grief. The disbelief. Every last bit of it, pouring out of me like I could wake up and find it was all just a nightmare.

But the shadows writhed, awakening, expanding, and devouring the light.

All the candles doused at once. The torches roared higher, flames spitting everywhere, and then collapsed, plunging the entire clearing into darkness.

Jason’s blood trickled over me, still warm, even as his body grew lifeless against mine. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw him standing near the treeline, looking sad, holding out a hand for me.

I reached for him, wanting him back with me. Wanting this all to be over. Wanting all these terrible people, including my father, to just vanish into the ether. Or find themselves devoured by the rising darkness.

And something inside me cracked. A sensation of cold fire poured free, like a door had exploded open, erupting from me like a scream made of light and shadow. It rippled through the clearing, through the cultists, through the air itself. The air wriggled with waves of purple and green, woven over everything like a second skin.

Then Jason’s body stirred.

He shoved up and off me with an unnatural stiffness, his movements jerky, wrong, eyes hollow as he turned toward the rising noise of chaos around us. Vacant eyes focused on my father.

38

ANGEL

I crouched low in the shadows, watching the symbols pulse with power like some Matrix-level code. One moment the lattice glowed faintly, intricate, layered, ancient, a strange cage of otherworldly energy. The next, it exploded, lines of light shattering into fragments and dissolving into the night like ash on the wind.

The wave of power rippled through the house, across the yard, and slammed into me with the force of a Mack truck. I blinked and found myself on my back, gasping for air, shards of glass scattered around me. Every window had shattered along with the glowing lines of magic.

My heart skipped a beat, fearing the worst as everything—motion lights and street lamps—all winked out. The power was gone from the whole block. The sky blazed with stars usually hidden by light pollution, and a million tiny dots of darkness drifted through the air.

Motes?

My Bastion form flickered, energy wavering like I’d been hit by a taser blast. The silence of the strange eruption was almost deafening. I sucked in air and struggled to my feet, trying to pull myself together in one form or another. My cat, having decades more practice, took control and stabilized my shift, healing a thousand cuts from the glass just as the sting began to register.

The sound of a car door slamming in the distance brought my attention up.

I dropped low, claws digging into the dirt, ready to fight⁠—

“Angel?” Victor’s voice cut through the dark. His presence explained why I hadn’t heard footsteps. Of course he’d followed me.

The fence gate creaked open. Victor stepped through, his face pale in the strange, stifling dark. He was in his full vampire form, eyes bright, movements liquid, as he slunk into the backyard. The sort of monster of legends rather than the polished aristocrat most knew him as these days.

“What was that?” he asked, creeping to my side. “I smell blood. How hurt are you?”

I was healing. Slower than usual, but I’d be fine. I needed to find Jude.

Victor pivoted, his body going rigid and protective as something launched out of a window above and landed a few feet from us. A cat⁠—

I shifted back to my human form. “Nox,” I whispered, fear gripping me. “Where’s Jude?”