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My head snaps toward Echo. She’s still on her feet. Cali has shifted closer to her, Scar working the other side, the three of them holding their section of the hill while Roxy and Raze tear through another wave farther up.

Good.

Because three more dead fuckers are already climbing over the bodies between the entrance and me. And we’re not making a fucking dent.

Behind them, the hillside keeps opening. More gray hands punch through the dirt. More mouths drag in breaths they don’t need. Red light burns brighter beneath the ground until the whole hill looks split open from the inside.

Everywhere I look, my brothers, my woman, the women who chose this fucked-up club right along with us, are fighting.

But every corpse we put down seems to make room for two more to claw their way up.

Then something reaches my ears beneath the scraping claws, snapping bones, and those horrible wet breaths.

Something that doesn’t belong to the fight.

A laugh.

Far below us.

And getting louder.

My hellhound’s ears flatten.

Because whatever is laughing down there… sure as shit isn’t one of the dead.

My lips peel back from my teeth as hellfire burns between them.

Let Malgrave throw every fucking thing he has at us.

I’ve spent long enough being hunted by Hell.

Tonight, Hell gets hunted back.

A massive arm punches through first. The thing that follows looks like Hell burned something alive and forgot to let it die. It tears itself free of the stone, easily twice my size even in hellhound form, its body pitch-black from head to foot. Not black skin, but burned skin, thick, scorched flesh pulled tight over slabs of muscle, cracked open in places with a deep red glow burning underneath.

Two long horns sweep back from its skull, blackened at the base and sharpening into vicious points above its shoulders. There’s barely anything human left in the face between them. No lips, almost no nose, just charred flesh stretched over heavy bone and a mouth packed with teeth that look burned right down to the roots.

Then its eyes open.

Fire.

Not red irises.

Actual fucking fire burns inside the sockets, brightening as its head turns toward us.

Smoke pushes from its nostrils with the first breath.

One huge hand curls into a fist, claws scraping over stone as it steps down onto the hillside. Heat rolls off the bastard hard enough to reach me from twenty feet away.

My hellfire reacts instantly.

Infernal Guardians.

Fucking great.

The guardian’s burning eyes snap to me.

Yeah, I felt you too.